Annoyed by calls on your cell phone from a familiar-looking number –but it winds up being a telemarketer? State Senator Ken Rozenboom is, too. “Because I’m in the senate and I’d like to respond to constituents, I tend to answer the phone but increasingly, of course, they’re telemarketing calls,” Rozenboom says. “This Monday was the last straw for me.”

Rozenboom got a call with a 641 area code and a 295 prefix, indicating it was a call from someone in his hometown of Oskaloosa. “I answered it, listened the sales spiel on credit cards, disconnected, called the number back immediately,” Rozenboom says. “This nice lady says: ‘Good morning.’ And I’m kind of caught off guard ’cause I didn’t expect an answer and I said: ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m Ken Rozenboom and I just got a telemarketing call from this number,’ and she said: ‘Oh, I get those all the time. I’m so sick of it!” And then I said: ‘Well, the rest of the story is I’m Senator Ken Rozenboom. I’m actually going to drop a bill in the Iowa Senate today to try to get away from this fraudulent use of peopel’s phone numbers.”

It’s against the federal “Truth in Caller ID Act” to make such misrepresentations, but the practice is widespread and is now known as spoofing. Rozenboom is sponsoring legislation that makes it a crime to use “false or misleading” numbers when making calls to Iowans. Rozenboom says officials in the Iowa attorney general’s office have told him it could be another legal tool for going after telemarketers preying on — and annoying — Iowans. “Whether it’ll actually make a difference or not I think is a matter of technology,” Rozenboom says. “I sure hope it does.”

If the bill becomes law, the fine would be 40-thousand dollars PER call. The bill cleared an Iowa Senate subcommittee Thursday. Rozenboom says as he walked out of that subcommittee meeting, his phone cell phone rang. It was another one of THOSE calls.

(Radio Iowa)

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

NORTHWOOD, Iowa (AP) — A felony charge has been dropped against a man accused of punching and damaging a northern Iowa casino gambling machine. Police had charged 55-year-old Dion King with felony criminal mischief. The Mason City Globe Gazette reports that Worth County Attorney Jeffrey Greve dropped the case Tuesday after King paid for the damage to the machine. Authorities say King admitted punching the machine out of frustration.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Republicans appear united in proposing about $32 million in new funding toward the state’s roughly $3.2 billion K-12 education budget. A GOP-controlled Senate education committee voted 9-6 Thursday for the 1 percent increase. The vote comes one day after the education committee in the Republican-majority House approved a similar measure. The funding is expected to be finalized next week. The amount is less than the $54 million increase proposed recently by Gov. Kim Reynolds.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa prison officials say the flu has contributed to the death of a 29-year-old inmate. The Iowa Department of Corrections says Rashod Develt Aldridge died Thursday morning at an Iowa City hospital. His cause of death is listed as cardiac arrest, but officials say he had been in the hospital for treatment of complications from a chronic disease and the flu. Aldridge was serving a 20-year sentence for the March 2015 stabbing death of his father, 50-year-old Roosevelt Aldridge.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A key Iowa lawmaker says there’s not enough support to advance a House measure that seeks to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa. The Des Moines Register reports that Public Safety Committee Chairman Rep. Clel Baudler, R-Greenfield, says there aren’t enough votes in the committee to advance the bill. The proposal would allow those convicted of first-degree murder to be executed by lethal injection. Iowa abolished the death penalty in 1965.

Police in Council Bluffs, late Thursday afternoon released more information with regard to an Officer involved shooting, but the names of those involved were being withheld until all parties can be formally interviewed. The person who was shot by a CBPD Officer remains hospitalized in stable condition, with non-life threatening injuries.

As we reported earlier, Council Bluffs Police and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), were conducting a joint investigation into an officer-involved shooting that occurred at around 3-a.m. Thursday, in the parking lot of a convenience store at 611 East Broadway.

A preliminary investigation indicates that a Council Bluffs police officer, while responding to a call of suspicious vehicle on the business lot, discharged his firearm while attempting to take the driver  of the car into custody.

After being shot, the driver of the car sped off the lot and crashed, resulting in the car flipping onto its roof.  The driver then fled the wrecked vehicle on foot and was apprehended after a short foot chase. The injured driver was transported by ambulance to a metro area hospital for treatment.