More area and State news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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The area’s top news at 7:06-a.m., w/KJAN News Director Ric Hanson

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COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – June 16, 2017 – The southbound Interstate 29 on-ramp at 25th Street (exit 55) will be closed after the morning rush hour Monday, June 19th, until approximately late July 2017, weather permitting, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation’s District 4 office, in Atlantic. The southbound I-29 traffic will be shifted to the northbound lanes (one lane in each direction)

Construction during the 2017 season is part of the Iowa DOT’s Council Bluffs Interstate System Improvement Program. The Iowa DOT reminds motorists to drive with caution, obey the posted speed limit and other signs in the work area, and be aware that traffic fines for moving violations are at least double in work zones. As in all work zones, drivers should stay alert, allow ample space between vehicles, and wear seat belts.

The latest traveler information is available anytime through the 511 system. Visit 511ia.org; call 511 (within Iowa) or 800-288-1047 (nationwide); stay connected with 511 on Facebook or Twitter (find links at https://iowadot.gov/511/511-social-media-sites); or download the free app to your mobile device.

Des Moines (Radio Iowa) — The new leader of the largest agency in state government vows to “improve morale” among “front-line” social workers and conduct a “bottom-to-the-top” review of Iowa’s child welfare system. Yesterday (Thursday) was Jerry Foxhoven’s first day as director of the Iowa Department of Human Services.  “Part of my challenge will be to work with the people in that system right now and for all of us to step back and say: ‘What are we doing that’s working? What we doing that’s not working?’ And if it’s not working, we need to change it.”

An outside consultant has already begun a review of cases involving two teenage girls who died after being adopted by their foster families. After just a few hours as the agency’s director, Foxhoven says what he knows about the cases is what he’s learned from media reports. “These are terrible tragedies. They’re awful. It sickens me and shocks me,” Foxhoven says, “but I certainly know if kids have come to our attention and they end up the way these kids ended up, that we need to look and say: ‘How did this happen and what do we need to change it so that it doesn’t happen again?'”

Foxhoven is a 64-year-old attorney and Drake Law School professor who has spent his career as a child advocate. He led several groups that advised the department on the foster care system and juvenile detention. Foxhoven says after a conversation with Governor Kim Reynolds, he got “fired him up” about taking the reins at D-H-S. “I felt like going to the Kentucky Derby and being one of the horses behind that gate, saying: ‘Open that gate. I want to run!'” Foxhoven says. “And so I’m excited about it.”

Reynolds told reporters earlier this month she was looking for a D-H-S director who wasn’t “afraid…to do things differently.” Foxhoven says he’s a “mission-driven” person and the governor gave him a pretty simple mission. “What she didn’t say was: ‘Keep me out of the newspaper. We’re looking bad. Help me look good.” She never said that,” Foxhoven says. “What she did say to me is: ‘Tell us whatever it is we need to do to make it safer for kids in Iowa,’ and so that made it really easy to say: ‘I want to do this.'”

Foxhoven grew up in Yankton, South Dakota, in what he describes as a “working-class family.” Foxhoven got a degree from Morningside College in Sioux City, majoring in history and political science. After earning a law degree from Drake University, he stayed to work in central Iowa.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Kim Reynolds has made it semiofficial: She intends to run for governor of Iowa next year. Reynolds ascended to the governor’s chair from her post as lieutenant governor last month, replacing Terry Branstad after his confirmation as U.S. ambassador to China. She’d been widely expected to run but had yet to make a formal announcement.

A news release from her campaign organization said this Thursday:

“The Governor and Lt. Governor intend to be candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor in 2018. A final decision and formal announcement will be made in the coming months.”

Her running mate would be the state’s acting lieutenant governor, Adam Gregg. She named him to replace her but only in an “acting” capacity in order to avoid any legal fight over her power.

Gas prices are continuing to drop as crude oil prices fall. Radio Iowa’s Dar Danielson says the report from the state ag department shows the average price for regular unleaded gas in Iowa as of Tuesday was two-dollars, 25 cents a gallon. That’s down four cents from last week. It’s also seven cents lower than last year. A look at the Gasbuddy website shows the lowest price of one-dollar, 99 cents a gallon is in Storm Lake. It also shows many other areas of the state with prices just above two-dollars a gallon. The national average retail gasoline price was two-dollars, 32 cents a gallon.

(Radio Iowa)

Two people were arrested on separate charges Thursday, in Red Oak. Authorities say 33-year old Ryan Atom Dalton, of Red Oak, was arrested a little after 7-p.m., on a charge of Harassment in the 1st Degree. Dalton was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $2,000 cash bond. And, at around 5:10-p.m., Red Oak Police arrested 35-year old Jessi Elaine Gaunt, of Red Oak, for Simple Domestic Abuse Assault. Gaunt was being held without bond, in the Montgomery County Law Enforcement Center.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:30 a.m. CDT

DEWITT, Iowa (AP) — Authorities have identified two people whose bodies were found in an eastern Iowa house. Davenport television station KWQC reports that police say 51-year-old Brian Paul Glasz and 54-year-old Michelle Renee Glasz were found dead in their DeWitt home on Tuesday. They were husband and wife. Police say they plan to release the cause of death of the two, today (Friday).

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A Nebraska man has been found guilty of second-degree murder in northwest Iowa for the death of his estranged wife. A Woodbury County jury was in its second day of deliberation when it found 29-year-old Rogelio Morales, of Hubbard, Nebraska, guilty Thursday afternoon. Prosecutors say he killed 21-year-old Margarita Morales on April 19, 2015, in his car near a Sioux City residence.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Former star of “The Bachelor” Chris Soules has waived his right to a speedy trial and has requested that his trial be postponed. Soules is charged with leaving the scene of a deadly crash and faces up to five years in prison if he’s convicted of causing the April 24 crash that killed 66-year-old farmer Kenneth Mosher. The Des Moines Register reports that attorneys for Soules said Wednesday they need at least a 90-day extension to obtain items from prosecutors and schedule depositions.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Iowa authorities have charged a man who they say has been scamming churchgoers in several states by telling them he needed to get home because his parents had been killed by a roadside bomb in the Middle East. Court records say Alan Farha II is charged with theft in Linn County. Court records show convictions on similar accusations last year in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A Nebraska man has been found guilty of second-degree murder in northwest Iowa for the death of his estranged wife. A Woodbury County jury was in its second day of deliberation when it found 29-year-old Rogelio Morales, of Hubbard, Nebraska, guilty Thursday afternoon.

Prosecutors say he killed 21-year-old Margarita Morales on April 19, 2015, in his car near a Sioux City residence. Court documents say Morales told investigators a fight broke out when his wife told him she no longer wanted to be in a relationship and that she was seeing another man. Defense attorney Mike Williams said in his closing arguments that there’s no doubt Morales killed the woman but said Morales “is guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not murder.”

Republican Senator Joni Ernst is urging G-O-P leaders in the Senate to embrace “transparency” and give the public a chance to review the Senate G-O-P’s alternative health care bill BEFORE the senate votes on the plan. “Hopefully, we will be able to have a time period where we do receive feedback after the language is released,” she says.

Ernst is among the Republicans in the U.S. Senate who’ve been meeting privately to come up with an alternative to the health care bill that passed the U.S. House in April. However, Ernst says there’s no document, yet, to release. “‘We don’t have language,” Ernst says. “And what I am hoping is that language that will be presented to us includes all of the items in discussions that we have had in our informal work group.”

Earlier this week, Ernst sat beside President Trump at a White House meeting to discuss the health care bill. President Trump reportedly called the bill that passed the HOUSE “mean.” Ernst isn’t joining Trump and offering a negative analysis of the House bill, but Ernst says Republican senators “will make the revisions necessary.”

“We really have been working on our own thoughts and ideas in the senate, in our informal work group,” Ernst says. “We are making sure that we are representing our constituents in our own home states and find a way that we can best serve those constituents.” Unlike the House bill, Ernst suggests Senate Republicans are going to try to find a way to make sure Americans don’t lose their insurance policies because of pre-existing conditions.

Ernst says Iowans tell her affordability is their number one concern when it comes to health insurance.

(Radio Iowa)