DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa appeals court has rejected a Des Moines attorney’s challenge to Gov. Kim Reynold’s use of a businessman’s private airplane, upholding previous rulings that Reynold’s use of the flights did no real harm and were allowed by Iowa law. The Iowa Court of Appeals said in a ruling filed Wednesday that a state court judge was right to dismiss the lawsuit filed by attorney Gary Dickey.

Dickey, a Democrat, filed a complaint last year with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, alleging Reynolds, a Republican, underestimated the value of the flight she and her family took to the Liberty Bowl in Tennessee in December 2017.

The jet was owned by Reynolds’s campaign contributor David North, CEO of a company that has a contract with the state. The board dismissed Dickey’s complaint, ruling the flights were allowable under Iowa’s gift law. Dickey appealed and a judge agreed with the dismissal. The appeals court says Dickey failed to show he suffered perceptible harm required by Iowa law to justify a court overturning the board’s decision.

Dickey says he will ask the Iowa Supreme Court to review the decision.

The Harlan Police Department reports two recent arrests. On Sunday, 47-year old Jody Kay Bails, of Audubon, was arrested following a traffic stop. Bails was transported to the Shelby County Jail where she was charged with operating while intoxicated, child endangerment, permitting unauthorized person to drive, operating a non-registered vehicle, and open container.

And on August 30th, 29-year old Cameron Stuart Cunningham, of Harlan, was arrested following a call for service. Cunningham was transported to the Shelby County Jail where he was charged with public intoxication and supplying alcohol to a minor.

(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case Tuesday where an Iowa City man says he should have been allowed to use the state’s “stand your ground” law in his defense in the fatal 2017 shooting at the pedestrian mall. The law was passed just a few months before Lamar Wilson shot and killed Kallek Wilson of Iowa City. Wilson was found guilty by a jury of voluntary manslaughter and other charges. Wilson’s attorney Melinda Nye, told the justices Wilson should have been given a hearing to determine if the “stand your ground” provision applied,

“The procedure that the court ultimately relied on resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial and an unfair hearing,” Nye said. Nye says if that pre-trial hearing had found the “stand your ground” provision applied, then Wilson should have received immunity from criminal prosecution. Justice Christopher McDonald questioned Nye’s argument.

“Immunity from damages, which is what the statute says,” Justice Christopher McDonald said. “It doesn’t say immunity from criminal liability or criminal conviction.” “The immunity applies to both the criminal liability and the civil liability,” Nye replied. Other justices asked how this type of pre-trial hearing would be different from the actual trial. Nye said it would be an evidentiary hearing, and the burden of proof would be on the defendant to prove they acted in self-defense.

Assistant State Attorney General Louis Sloven argued that the statute shouldn’t be interpreted to include immunity from criminal prosecution because that phrase was purposefully left out. “That language is not in this statute at all,” Sloven said. The justices discussed the wording of the law and Justice McDonald asked this question.

“This might be poor drafting?” Justice McDonald asked. “Maybe this language isn’t doing any work.” Nye said there isn’t a procedure for cases like this outlined in the statute simply because the statute didn’t exist before, but she added that procedure would be determined through decisions like this one. The justices heard the oral arguments at Muscatine High School. Chief Justice Mark Cady said the court would most likely come to a decision “months from now.” Wilson is serving a 24-year sentence.

(Radio Iowa) — New U.S. Census Bureau data shows the percentage of Iowans who lack health insurance remains among the lowest in the country. The state is ranked seventh best for having a 4.7 percent rate of people without health insurance in 2018 – the same percentage as the previous year. That’s about 148,000 uninsured Iowans.

Nationwide, the 2018 rate increased for the first time since 2009 with 27.5 million Americans without health insurance at any point during the year – up from 25.6 million the previous year. The data shows the shift was mainly driven by a decline in Medicaid coverage.

Four people were arrested on separate charges Tuesday, in Mills County. The Sheriff’s Office reports 36-year old Michael Wayne Schnepp, of Council Bluffs, was arrested for Driving While Barred, and Failure to provide proof of insurance. 57-year old David Lloyd Richey, of Glenwood, and 48-year old Brian John Beebe, of Carson, were arrested on warrants for Violation of Probation. And, 35-year old James Dean Borman, of Shenandoah, was arrested at the Page County Jail, on a warrant for Theft in the 4th Degree.

BONDURANT, Iowa (AP) — A small Iowa school district is scrambling to cover a nearly $900,000 loss after officials failed to account for a big property tax break given to Facebook for its massive data center east of Des Moines. The Des Moines Register reports that Facebook’s fourth data center in Altoona is exempt from taxation for 20 years as part of a development agreement Facebook signed with the city. Exemptions also were granted for the first three centers.

But the Polk County assessor’s office says it was never notified about the exemption and included the $52.4 million building in the tax base numbers provided in 2018 to the Bondurant-Farrar school district and other taxing authorities. The error was caught this year.

Now the district must pay back the erroneous windfall, which officials say amounts to about 3.5% of its budget.

MUSCATINE, Iowa (AP) — A second murder trial has begun for a southeast Iowa woman accused of the 1992 killing of her former boyfriend. The Muscatine Journal reports the trial began Tuesday in Muscatine for 56-year-old Annette Cahill, who was charged in May 2018 with first-degree murder in the beating death of Corey Lee Wieneke. Wieneke’s body was found in October 1992 on his bedroom floor in rural West Liberty.

The first trial ended in a mistrial in March 2019 when the jury couldn’t reach a verdict. Cahill, of Tipton, has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege Cahill killed Wieneke because of his involvement with another woman. Decades after the killing, prosecutors charged Cahill in part because a woman came forward to investigators to say that as a 9-year-old, she overheard Cahill confess to the killing.