(Radio Iowa) — Whether you’re shopping for clothes for yourself or for your kids heading back to school, Iowans can save a nice chunk of change with this weekend’s annual Sales Tax Holiday. John Fuller, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Revenue, says the taxes will be eliminated on qualifying purchases all day today (Friday) and Saturday.  “Generally, if you can wear it, clothing or footwear that’s under $100 would be tax free,” Fuller says. “Tax in Iowa is 6% and if there’s a local option sales tax, that’s an additional 1%, so it could be 7%.”

Fuller says there are a few restrictions. “Watches, jewelry, Rollerblades, those are not considered clothing by this law,” Fuller says. “The best thing to do for your listeners might be to go to tax.iowa.gov and there’s information more specifically on what is and what is not taxable.” The tax-free “weekend” is only today (Friday) and Saturday and does not apply on Sunday. Fuller says many people ask why Sunday isn’t included. “That would require a law change,” Fuller says. “The Iowa legislature would have to take that up to add an extra day.”

The two-day sales tax holiday has been held in Iowa the first Friday and Saturday of August each year for nearly 20 years.

More info. at https://tax.iowa.gov/iowas-annual-sales-tax-holiday

(Radio Iowa) — The State Board of Education Thursday voted down proposed new rules for using restraints and seclusion rooms for students in a procedural move to allow them to make changes. There are still concerns about how to determine if behavior is serious enough to warrant punishment, how big seclusion rooms should be, and how long it should take to notify parents of the punishment. The board decided to vote down the rules so they can hold some more meeting statewide for input, and then make changes and allow for another public input period before final adoption. The board heard public comments before the vote, including those from Winterset Superintendent Susie Meade of Winterset, who favored keeping things the way they are. “I hear this from all of my colleagues from throughout the state. Folks, this is an epidemic and we need to be providing teachers with tools to support students — not limiting the few resources we have available to assist students when they are struggling to regulate their behaviors, dealing with mental heal…or dealing with the impact of trauma,” Meade says.

Meade says the manual for such issues used to be a half-inch thick and now it is 60 pages long. “What makes me really sad is we have fewer outside resources to support our students than we had 20 years ago — yet many more expectations and regulations,” according to Meade. A-C-L-U lawyer, Daniel Zeno, says his group and others pushed for changes and he wants to see them move forward.”And the reason is because we know this happens to kids in schools in Iowa. And it happens disproportionately to black kids and to kids with disabilities,” Zeno says. “The point of the petition was to reduce the use of the rooms.”  He says the rules don’t take anything away from teachers. “The rules do not completely ban them. They are still allowed to be used — they just are limited. And we think that is a good thing,” Zeno says. “It is a traumatic experience for a kid to be put in what is essentially solitary confinement.”

Zeno had a few suggestions for changes to some of the wording the proposed rules. Department of Ed Deputy Director Dave Tilly says they did their best to improve the rules — but says each district is different and there’s not a single solution. “It depends on the facts of the situation and we’re covering such a wide potential waterfront of behaviors that the challenge is writing rules that in fact address those and but leave to the good judgment of the practitioners, decisions they have to make,” Tilly says. He leads the Division of Learning and Results and says they can go out across the state and hear from more people on the changes. “We’ve already spent two years working on these rules, and I don’t anticipate there will every be a place where we will come where everyone will fully agree,” Tilly says, “but our intent here given the importance of these is to get them right.” Tilly says.

Department of Education lawyer, Nicole Proesch says everyone has worked hard to come up with the revised rules. “It was all respectful, and even though we didn’t come to a complete consensus — as you can see from the public comment — there are people on all sides of the issue. The department really did try to come down to a compromise,” Proesch says.

Proesch says the Board of Education had to take the action it did to be able to revisit the rules and revise them without starting over again. They will now look at moving forward with the changes and the added public input process.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa U-S Senator Joni Ernst says an infrastructure bill that cleared a senate committee this week includes money for replacing Iowa bridges and repairing some locks and dams. Ernst is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The panel passed the 287-billion dollar bill unanimously Tuesday. In addition to infrastructure funding, Ernst says the bill removes “Washington red tape” to streamline project funding. “For Iowa, specifically, we really need to be able to deliver the transportation infrastructure projects that keep our people and our economy moving,” Ernst said. Several provisions from Ernst were included in the final version of the bill, including funding for lock and dam modernization, additional transportation planning funding and an amendment that will ensure Iowa’s portion of highway funding is maintained.

Additionally, the bill includes more than three-billion dollars for bridge replacements, something Ernst says is needed in Iowa. “Right now, Iowa currently has the most structurally-deficient bridges in the nation,” Ernst says. The bill does include a grant program for charging stations for electric vehicles. Ernst says she is disappointed the provision doesn’t apply to new ethanol and biodiesel pumps. “Not having that included in that grant program was really disappointing to me, but I’ll continue working with my colleagues on that issue,” Ernst says.

In the end, Ernst says it’s rare to have a bill pass a senate committee unanimously. “Making sure that our infrastructure is taken care of is very important to everyone,” she said, “regardless of what state we come from.” The bill will now head to the full Senate for consideration.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:05 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Ousted Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven says aides to Gov. Kim Reynolds are lying when they say he never objected to paying a portion of the salary of a governor’s staffer out of his budget. Reynolds issued a statement Thursday afternoon saying Foxhoven never raised such concerns and never asked the staff for a legal opinion.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Law enforcement officials say they have lost track of evidence from a 1980 murder case that an Iowa inmate wants to examine for DNA that could prove his innocence or guilt. The missing evidence comes in the case of William Beeman, who is serving a life sentence in the death of 22-year-old Michiel Winkel. Its absence could prevent the public from knowing definitively whether Beeman was the right man in the rape and stabbing of Winkel _ or should be Iowa’s first inmate exonerated by DNA science.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A judge has found a 19-year-old man guilty of the stabbing deaths of two friends in Sioux City. The Sioux City Journal reports District Judge Tod Deck on Thursday found Tran Walker guilty of first-degree murder in the Jan. 28, 2018, deaths of his former girlfriend Paiten Sullivan and his friend Felipe Negron Jr. Evidence introduced during the trial showed Walker stabbed Sullivan 43 times and Negron 17 times. Sullivan was 17 and Negron was 18. Walker faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Police have charged a man with murder in the shooting death of a Des Moines man more than a month ago. Des Moines police said Thursday that detectives had charged 20-year-old Michael Resco Lyke Jr. with first-degree murder, attempted murder, intimidation with a weapon and assault causing injury. Lyke, of Des Moines, is charged in connection with a June 28 shooting that killed 41-year-old Earl Marcello Caldwell, of Des Moines. Another man was injured.