(Radio Iowa) – Managers from Mason City, Fort Dodge, and four Kansas airports are asking the U-S Department of Transportation to approve an application for SkyWest Airlines to provide charter jet service under the Essential Air Service program. SkyWest launched the SkyWest Charter subsidiary in April as the charter authority only requires pilots to have 500 hours of flight experience, compared to the 15-hundred hours for a traditional airline pilot or first officer.

The Air Line Pilots Association International union has opposed the plan, saying it jeopardizes aviation safety standards. Skywest Charter’s chief commercial officer Wade Steel says his company’s safety programs far exceed the requirements of the FAA’s Part 135 charter authority rules.  “We plan to launch operations with dual captains on our flight deck and are committed to using pilots with an ATP license, and yes, that means those with 15-hundred hours in both seats. This is a commitment that no other Part 135 carrier has made.”

Speaking at a news conference today (Wednesday) Steel says SkyWest Charter has waited for over a year for the U-S D-O-T to approve their application for commuter authority and says it’s time for the agency to act and not leave smaller commercial airports in limbo for future air service. “There is nothing new in this application, and others are regularly exercising this authority with lesser standards and without opposition,” Steel says. “We are simply seeking fairness in approving a clearly fit operator so S-W-C can provide safe, reliable services as the industry works through the ongoing captain shortage.”

Mason City Municipal Airport manager David Sims says north-central Iowa relies on having commercial air service out of the airport, but that’s getting tougher under the Essential Air Service program. “The number of quality providers for E-A-S service continues to drop just due to the pressures from the pilot shortage. For the last several years, SkyWest has come in and been providing safe and quality airline service to communities.

However they are now being limited due to the pilot shortage,” he says. “We know that a highly qualified operator like SkyWest Charter will be able to provide our community with exceptional air service,” Sims says. Sims says there’s no regulatory reason why SkyWest Charter’s authorization should be withheld. “We’re concerned that SkyWest Charter’s application has been allowed to languish at the D-O-T for over a year. We understand their application is being contested by various groups who continue making false claims about the safety and security of SkyWest Charter, however, SkyWest Charter has committed to meeting and exceeding all existing FAA and TSA regulations, including having two pilots who have 15-hundred hours or more,” Sims says.

SkyWest Airlines filed a 90-day notice in March of 2022 that they were pulling out of 29 communities, including Mason City and Fort Dodge, but the D-O-T ordered the airline to continue service until it found a suitable replacement.

(Radio Iowa) – There’s smoke over Iowa again from the Canadian wildfires, but National Weather Service Meteorologist, Brad Small says that smoke is high up and not causing problems. “We’ve seen a little bit over northwest and west-central Iowa in the midday here. It’s much worse to our north however from the eastern Dakotas into Minnesota it’s actually getting down to the surface there where we’ve had visibility dropped to a few miles in places,” Small says. He says a variety of factors impact how low the smoke hangs in the air.

“Smoke density wind speed thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere all come into play it’s fairly rare to get smoked down to the surface this far removed from the fires down here in Iowa,” Small says, “but it can’t happen and hopefully in this case it’s all stay to our north and northeast.” Small says the smoke issues were bigger in New York and other eastern states recently because they are closer to the source. He says things could change in Iowa.

“The biggest concerns that looks like for the next couple of days are going to be northeast of us, the smoke might get down to the surface in far northeast Iowa,” he says. Small says the rest of the state shouldn’t see any low hanging smoke. The D-N-R’s air quality measurements show air quality concerns only in a small area in the northwest and southwest corners of the state.

(Radio Iowa) – Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says he has seen a document that alleges a paid FBI informant was told a Ukrainian had recorded 17 phone calls with Hunter and Joe Biden. “Fifteen of them between Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian and two of them between then Vice President Biden and a Ukrainian,” Grassley says, “and the implication from the 1023 is there may have been some money transferred for political influence.”

A 1023 is the number on the forms FBI agents use to write down information from confidential sources. The filled out form Grassley is referring to was shown to members of the House Oversight Committee last week in a secure room, with sections redacted. Grassley says he and the chairman of the House Oversight Committee saw the document earlier, when references to the recordings were visible.

“Chairman Comer and I have read the unredacted document except for a couple of half inch redactions that I really don’t know what they,” Grassley says, “but we have read the document almost completely in its purest form.”Grassley says congress doesn’t know if the FBI listened to the recordings. “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Grassley says. “What has the FBI done to investigate these claims?”

The allegations were made in 2020. The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee has said officials in the Trump Administration found no evidence to support the bribery allegations. Last week, President Biden called the allegations malarkey.

In a Senate speech this week, Grassley said a recording was used in the indictment against former President Trump and Grassley asked what the U.S. Attorney investigating Hunter Biden is doing with the recordings referred to in the FBI’s 2020 memo.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – An investigation into a May 24th accident in Red Oak resulted in the arrest today (Wednesday), of 53-year-old Kai Dione Swanson, from Red Oak. According to Red Oak Police, on May 24th, officers responded at around 11:17-a.m. to the intersection of N. Broadway and W. Reed Street, the scene of a single-vehicle accident. The initial investigation determined Swanson’s 2016 Ford Edge SUV vehicle was traveling southbound on N. Broadway. When she tried to turn onto W. Reed Street, the vehicle struck the curb and became disabled in the 200 block of W. Reed Street.

Damage to the vehicle was estimated at $1,500. No injuries were reported. Additional investigation work revealed Swanson was intoxicated. She was arrested June 14th at approximately 10-a.m., after test results from the DCI Lab confirmed her blood alcohol level was greater than the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle in Iowa.

Kai Swanson was booked into the Montgomery County Jail on a charge of OWI/1st offense, and later released on her Own Recognizance.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa State University professor who’s developing a new class for pre-med students has studied the company behind the traveling “Medicine Shows” of the late 18-hundreds. Sarah Dees, an American religions professor at I-S-U, says the Kickapoo Medicine Company sold a variety of concoctions. “The Kickapoo people exist. It’s a (Native American) nation that continues to exist,” Dees says. “The company leaders, though, just took that name, kind of appropriated it and then started selling medicines that they claimed were authentic, but actually they really weren’t — so their advertisements were fairly misleading.”

And Dees says it’s where the term “snake oil” originated. “It was the wild west of medicine,” Dees says. “People were just putting stuff in bottles and claiming that it had these miraculous cures. They were traveling from town to town, trying to sell these ‘remedies’ and consumers really didn’t have great information.”

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 marked the end of these kind of traveling medicine shows by prohibiting the sale of misbranded food and drugs. Dees says there are many modern, “New Age movement” examples of companies that turn a profit by misrepresenting products or services as being connected to indigenous cultures. Her fall semester class at I-S-U will focus on the religious and cultural backgrounds behind various healing practices. Dees is writing a book about Indigenous traditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

(Radio Iowa) – A southeast Iowa biodiesel plant is shutting down. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports managers of the W-2 Fuel biodiesel plant in Crawfordsville have notified the state that the plant is closing. The biodiesel refinery shut down back in 2019, but production resumed in mid-2021. The federal tax credit for biodiesel production is worth a dollar per gallon, but the debt deal congress and the president just agreed to will end the credit on December 31st of next year.

W-2 Fuel needed to buy new equipment to test for carbon emissions from its southeast Iowa plant, but company executives say the investment probably wouldn’t pay off if congress lets the biodiesel credit end. There are 10 other plants in Iowa producing biodiesel

(Radio Iowa) – Tuesday (today) is the first day merchants could set up temporary stands to start selling legal fireworks in Iowa. The opening of sales comes as the Drought Monitor shows large swath of Iowa remains abnormally dry, with some areas seeing severe drought. Cedar Rapids Fire Marshal, Vance McKinnon, tells K-C-R-G that part of safely using fireworks is keeping an eye on weather conditions. “If it continues to stay dry, we have to be very cautious because we have no control of where those fireworks go and what the hot embers, where they fall,” McKinnon says. He says those who run professional fireworks shows pay attention to the conditions.

“I was at a fireworks display over the weekend, a professional shoot, and they actually had to shut down the show because of some fire that happened with some grass,” McKinnon says. While it is legal to purchase fireworks in Iowa — many cities have put restrictions on their use. It is illegal to in Cedar Rapids to set off everything except sparklers, caps, and snakes. Violation of the ban is punishable by a fine of up to 625 dollars. McKinnon tells K-C-R-G T-V use caution even with legal fireworks if you are in a dry area.

“We need to really make sure folks are extremely careful,” McKinnon says. McKinnon recommends you attend professional show and let them worry about handling and safely setting off the fireworks.

(Harlan, Iowa) – The Shelby County Board of Supervisors met in a special session Tuesday morning, and held a public hearing to receive comment on a proposed EMS resolution that declares Emergency Medical Response an essential service. In his minutes of the meeting, Auditor Mark Maxwell said Emergency Management Director Alex Londo and Tim Plumb, Chair of the Shelby County EMS Council, told the Board that in 2021 legislation was passed that allowed counties in Iowa to declare Emergency Medical Services an essential service and allow taxation to fund the service. An advisory Council was formed and recommendations were given to the Supervisors for consideration. Plumb and Londo said that regular Advisory Council meetings are held and are open to the public. It was noted that the number of volunteers has been slowly dropping as well as EMS volunteers working in their home communities. The fact was mentioned that the number of volunteers in Shelby County are not enough to provide service to the whole county.

Jennifer Lefeber, Myrtue Medical Center Emergency Room Director commented that the low number of volunteers and the high level of care that some patients require will continue to need the same high level of cooperation that is now in place between the existing private and volunteer ambulance services. Lefeber also noted that with volunteer ambulance service prolonged waits for transfers is not uncommon. Gene Gettys, Harlan City Administrator and who sits on the current Ambulance Commission, said that when 911 is dialed for a medical emergency it is now expected that an ambulance will be at the scene within a reasonable amount of time. The time of arrival on the scene by an all-volunteer service, he said, may be greater than a full time service depending on volunteer availability.

Joel Wahling recognized the need for a full-time ambulance service but asked if there were other ways of funding this undertaking by Shelby County. Wahling said keeping property taxes in line is a priority of property owners. Glenn Birks, an EMS volunteer in Earling, urged the Supervisors to declare this an essential service and it is imperative to get this passed. Darin Haake told the Board of Supervisors that too much work has gone into this process not to complete the process of calling for a public measure to be placed on the ballot this fall. Neil Gross, Shelby County Sheriff, said that the Advisory Council has done its due diligence to start this process. His experiences in calls that require EMS units service, is that the response time of EMS is critical.

The Auditors office noted that no response was received in his office regarding the series of hearings. Supervisor Kenkel noted that the funding options are limited, because of legislation and it will take new legislation to change the funding mechanism. The hearing was then ended, and a motion to approval the final resolution was passed unanimously. The Resolution declares emergency medical services to be an essential County service, and authorizes upon voter approval on November 7, 2023, the imposition of a Local Option income surtax not to exceed 1% and/or an ad valorem property tax not to exceed seventy-five cents per one thousand dollars of assessed value on all taxable property within the county.

The Shelby County Supervisors then unanimously approved the Sheriffs Deputy appointment of Derick Steffen.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Adair County Board of Supervisors, Wednesday morning, passed a Resolution allowing a Speed Limit sign for a joint road with the City of Casey. The request was made by a resident landowner in the area. The Board also considered, but took no action, on the renewal of a 28-E Agreement (Cost sharing), for Environmental Health Services with the Adair/Guthrie County Environmental Health Agency. Environmental Health Director Jotham Arber explained there are some differences from the previous agreement, with regard to billing and the annual base fee, which went from $7,500 to $15,000.

The Adair County Supervisors heard from Laurie Cooley and Amanda Wahlert from Zion Recovery Services, with regard to Opiod Settlement Funds. And, Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman reported on County Secondary Roads Department Maintenance and Activities.

Kauffman also presented a voucher, and assorted plans, for the Board to approve, and Chairman Jerry Walker to sign. The voucher was with regard to a FY23 Farm-to-Market Rock Contract with Schildberg’s, in the amount of $247,414.72, and the title sheets for plans covering the W14 Jefferson Culvert Project, W11 Union Culvert Project, and Right-Of-Way contracts, amounting to $5,374.08.

(Radio Iowa/Fox News) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says the U.S. should stop humanitarian aid to Ukraine and focus on providing more military equipment.  “This is where we can provide some savings,” Ernst says. “Let’s focus on what America does well and that’s providing military platforms and those types of services.” Ernst, a Republican from Red Oak, served 23 years in the Iowa National Guard and Army Reserve. Speaking on Fox News, Ernst says it’s important to our own national security to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defeat the Russians.

“The Ukrainians are doing an incredible job of pushing back our adversary,” Ernst says, “and because of what they have done in Ukraine and these incredible fighters, we see a diminished capacity from Russia over the next 10-15 years for them to come after our great United States of America.” The Biden Administration last month gave the go-ahead for NATO allies in Europe to provide F-16 fighter jets and air defense systems to Ukraine. “Russia has invaded a sovereign nation,” Ernst says. “…I think we need to provide the military platforms as necessary for them to win and I am critical of this administration because I don’t feel they have done enough soon enough.”

Since the war began in February of last year, the U.S. has provided 75 BILLION dollars in aid to Ukraine, most of it military assistance. Ernst says our European allies are better positioned to provide food and other humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Ernst made her comments Monday, during a debate series sponsored by the Edward Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. Her hour-long conversation with a Democratic senator from New Hampshire will air Sunday night on Fox News.