COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – Police say a Council Bluffs mother has been charged after leaving her 12-year-old son on a roadside when he threw a tantrum. The Daily Nonpareil reports that 33-year-old Shameka King is set to be arraigned Feb. 20th on child endangerment and abandonment charges.

Shameka King

An officer found the boy walking along an Interstate 80 ramp at 6:30 a.m. in the morning last fall. The boy said his mother left him after he got out of the car over an argument about which shoes to wear to his school in Omaha, Nebraska.

Police say the boy had no phone, money for food or a key to the hotel room. Police say King initially verified the boy’s account, asking police, “What am I supposed to do? Be late for work?”

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A former BNSF Railway employee has won more than $1 million in a wrongful termination lawsuit. The Lincoln Journal Star says Daniel Monohon, of Ottumwa, Iowa, was fired from a Lincoln branch of Fort Worth, Texas-based BNSF in 2014 for what the railroad said was insubordination.

Monohon says he was fired after he questioned BNSF’s policy of requiring employees to wear seatbelts while driving a vehicle that can operate both on rail tracks and a conventional road. Monohon’s attorneys, Corey Stull and Jeanette Stull of Lincoln, argued that his firing was a violation of the whistleblower provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act.

A federal jury in Iowa agreed and awarded Monohon $1,031,000 in lost pay and other damages.

MARATHON, Iowa (AP) – A northwestern Iowa town is considering turning to the sun to provide power to its nearly 250 residents. The Sioux City Journal reports that the town of Marathon in Buena Vista County is considering building a 1.42-megawatt solar project on city-owned land to supply power to residents. The more than 1,400 solar panels would be built on a former baseball field.

A study by renewable energy company Trusted Energy, based in Spencer, says the proposed project would save Marathon residents $2 million over 20 years in electric costs and produce 2 million kilowatt hours per year.  Currently, Marathon receives its electrical service from the neighboring city of Laurens.

The Marathon City Council agreed to look into the project at a meeting earlier this month.

Democrats across the country are regrouping after the 2016 triumph of Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans. Iowa Democratic Party leaders will convene today (Saturday) to elect a new chairperson. Eight people are competing for the job to lead the party as it prepares for 2018, when Iowans will hold an election for governor. A state senator who many party insiders had hoped would run for governor announced this week she would not. Liz Mathis of Cedar Rapids says it was a family decision.
“We just concluded in the end that we weren’t in a place right now where that would be something that we could do,” Mathis says.

Mathis, a former T-V anchor in eastern Iowa, says she cannot afford to quit her current job at a social service agency in Cedar Rapids to run for governor full time, plus her husband has started a business and worried about the impact of a campaign.
“When I was a reporter, he moved to a couple of different cities with me and then he established roots in starting a business. He was gravely concerned about how that would affect him personally, how it would affect his business and the prying that happens sometimes by people who want to destroy you instead of champion you…

“Thinking through all this,” she said, “I guess the cons were more personal in how that would shape my life and my personal life and I really love my husband and I want to keep him around, because he’s a big supporter.” Mathis was concerned about the impact a campaign might have on her two daughters, plus she’s run three expensive campaigns for her state senate seat in the past five years. “And that’s pretty rigorous,” Mathis says. “The first one…in 2011….was a free-for-all….It was kind of like a congressional race compressed into seven weeks.”

After winning that special election in November of 2011, she was reelected in 2012 to a full term. She calls her 2016 a “hollow victory” since so many Democrats elsewhere suffered losses. Mathis says she hopes to help OTHER Democratic candidates run and win in 2018. Another Democrat from Cedar Rapids has taken HIS name out of the mix for the 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Rob Hogg says he will run for reelection to the state senate. Hogg also has the new responsibility as leader of Senate Democrats to help recruit candidates for the state senate. Hogg must also raise campaign money for all the Democrats running for senate seats next year, not just himself.

(Radio Iowa)