(Radio Iowa) – A report from the State Auditor has found the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division wasn’t reviewing payroll journals before forwarding time sheets to the agency that pays state employees. The payroll records were being submitted to a manager, but according to the state auditor’s report no one in the Alcoholic Beverages Division was reviewing the time sheets or signing off on them. The auditor’s report suggests that could let employee errors or dishonesty about their payroll journals slip through. The agency says it has updated and changed its procedures, with the Comptroller of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division downloading the payroll report and the agency’s Chief Operations Officer reviewing and signing it.

As you may recall, State Auditor Rob Sand’s Republican opponent, Todd Halbur, was fired as the Comptroller of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division in 2018. This fall, a jury awarded Halbur a million dollars after he sued for wrongful termination and retaliation after he raised concerns about liquor charges. The State Auditor’s report covered all divisions in the Iowa Department of Commerce. It recommended the Iowa Insurance Division ensure credit card payments were not being approved by a person who had access to the cards — and the agency has made that change.

The Iowa Utilities Board has also made changes to ensure one person isn’t responsible for both collecting and depositing payments to the agency.

(Radio Iowa) – Legislation co-sponsored by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley that targets opioid overdoses, with a focus on rural areas, is headed to President Biden’s desk after winning final Congressional approval last week. Grassley, a Republican, says the bill is the result of bipartisan cooperation in both chambers to tackle a national problem. Grassley says, “The bill will ensure rural communities with high levels of opioid overdoses have resources that they need to respond to this social problem.” Counterfeit prescription pills laced with deadly fentanyl are contributing to historic drug overdose deaths in the U-S, Grassley says, including here in Iowa.  Grassley says, “According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, over 80% of the overdose deaths in Iowa last year were fentanyl-related.”

A state report shows 470 lives were lost to drug overdoses in Iowa last year, while among Iowans age 25 and younger, overdose deaths have surged 120-percent in recent years. Grassley says President Biden will, “without a doubt,” sign the Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act into law, but he says another key bill is mired by partisan bickering. “Fentanyl coming into the country is a criminal act. Congress needs to extend the authority designating fentanyl-related substances as a Schedule One drug,” Grassley says. “I tried to extend this authority in March but Democrats blocked it.”

He blames Democrats for the “open southern border” and allowing a “flood” of dangerous drugs into the U-S. That second bill would permanently schedule all fentanyl knock-offs, preventing criminals from tweaking the formula slightly to skirt the law.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports three arrests from the past few days. On Monday (and as reportedly separately), 50-year-old Floyd Raymond Henry II, of Red Oak, was arrested at the Montgomery County Jail, on a warrant for Failure to Appear. His bond was set at $10,000. And, there were two separate arrests on Saturday: 35-year-old Nicole Katherine Spracklin, of Plattsmouth, NE, was arrested on I-29 at Highway 34, for Driving Under Suspension. Bond was set at $300; 47-year-old Bryan James Jirkovsky, of Omaha, was arrested Saturday on Highway 34 in Mills County, on charges that include a Controlled Substance Violation, Used or Expired Drug Tax Stamp, and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. His bond was set at $100,000.

The Sheriff’s Office reports also, 23-year-old Mariah Glynn, of Plattsmouth, NE., was driving a 2016 Subaru west on Highway 34 near 295th Street, at around 4:20-p.m. Saturday, when her vehicle struck a stationary, mobile traffic light placed in the area, because of a lane closure on a bridge at that location. The light was pushed into the ditch and ended-up facing an unintended direction. No citations were issued.

(Anita, Iowa) – Members of the CAM School Board, Monday evening, approved a contract with Drew Ticknor, as Head Baseball Coach for Summer, 2023. Superintendent Paul Croghan.

The meeting marked the last for the retiring Board, and the re-organization of the new/incoming Board. That process included the election of President, Vice-President and Board Secretary/Treasurer. Croghan says there were no changes from the past year with regard to those officials, and other, related matters.

The Board approved an SBRC request for a Modified Supplemental Amount (MSA) of $101,900.

And, the approved an SBRC request for a MSA of $94,881 for At-Risk DropOut Prevention. In other business, the CAM School Board acted on approving several Board Policies, including two for emergency medical pen and other substance use.

And, Paul Croghan says the CAM School Board passed a motion to move forward with the process of creating a timeline for the closure of an attendance center.

Their final order of business was to authorize the retention of boundaries for Director Districts, based on the 2020 Census. Those boundaries are unchanged from last year.

(Radio Iowa) – An eastern Iowa recycling operation is investing five-million dollars in three more trash-sorting robots, after earlier successes with artificial intelligence. Since 2019, the Scott Area Recycling Center in Davenport has used an optical sorter to identify materials along a conveyor belt and sort them automatically with high-powered jets of air. Facility supervisor Mike Keppy says the optical sorter has increased the quality of their recycled product as well the value they can receive from selling it in the second-hand market.

The facility processes 40-thousand tons a year, with hopes the new machines will increase that tonnage while decreasing the material that’s sent to the landfill. The new machines will go online next summer.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a combat veteran and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Monday announced that she secured a number of her priorities in the annual defense bill, the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Ernst said also, “This important bill ensures the United States military remains the most lethal fighting force on the face of the planet.”

Included in the FY2023 NDAA is focus on:

Supporting our partners:

• Key parts of the senator’s bipartisan DEFEND Act to create an integrated air and missile defense network with Middle Eastern partners to counter Iran.
• Providing training to Ukrainian forces on how to de-mine the Black Sea.

Ending energy reliance on our adversaries:

• The bipartisan HARD ROCK Act to rebuild the National Defense Stockpile and force DoD to procure critical minerals from the U.S. or our partners and allies.
• An initiative to prevent INDOPACOM from procuring energy from adversaries, specifically North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.
• A provision to limit DoD’s procurement of electric vehicles with parts sourced by slave and child labor.

Standing with our servicemembers:

• Standardizing how the military diagnoses traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder across all military services.
• Ending the DoD’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate due to readiness and end strength concerns.
• A pay increase for our servicemembers.

CORALVILLE, Iowa – The Iowa Department of Corrections, Monday, reported the death of 57-year-old Floyd Eugene Stockdall Jr.   His death, Friday afternoon in hospice care at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center, authorities say, was due to natural causes.

Stockdall, Jr., was residing at the Classification Center due to chronic illness. He had been serving a 60-year maximum term for the crimes of Prohibited Acts – Manufacture, Delivery, Possession and other charges from Polk County.

His sentence began on April 1, 2014.

(Radio Iowa) – State Ombudsman, Bernardo Granwehr, says his office fielded almost 65-hundred complaints in the fiscal year that ended in July. “That’s about a five percent increase from the previous fiscal year. And we’re up really almost 60 percent from fiscal year 2014,” he says. Granwehr says the vast majority of the increases in complaints came from inmates in state prisons and county jails. He says they take a preliminary look at all complaints.

“But in terms of complaints that actually lead to an investigation — I would say probably 20 to 40 percent would be would be just an estimate of what we would further look into,” Granwehr says. “….most of them we find that the government is doing its job properly and has handled the situation appropriately.” He says one of the first things that they ask is if the person has taken advantage of the grievance process that is available or whatever process is available in trying to resolve their situation.

“We often say, please take advantage of that process first. And then if there is an issue, or you continue to have an issue, you certainly can always call us back. But the yeah, that should be the first resort to take advantage of those existing processes for resolving complaints,” Granwehr says. He says drug testing has created some of the complaints, as he says there have been a good number of false positives. Granwehr says the state agency with that knowing they are expected to have supporting evidence in addition to those positive tests. He says hiring an outside agency to scan the mail has addressed the issued of drug-soaked paper materials getting into prison.

“By basically scanning that material, and sending those scanned things to inmates, it continues to ensure that they have their rights to an access to communication with the outside world, but you know, deprives that avenue for smuggling the drug in,” Granwehr says. You can see the entire report on the Ombudsman’s website at: www.legis.iowa.gov/Ombudsman/

Police in Red Oak arrested a man on active Mills County warrants, Monday. Authorities say 21-year-old Nicholas Sebastian Turnbull, of Red Oak, was arrested at around 6:25-p.m. on the warrant for Failure to Appear on charges of Possession of a Controlled Substance/marijuana – 1st offense, and OWI/1st offense. Turnbull was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $1,000 bond.

And, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports Braden Gray was arrested in Villisca, Monday evening, on an active Montgomery County warrant for Failure To Appear on an original charge of Driving while license is denied or revoked. Gray was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $1,000 bond.

(UPDATED) Accidents in Boone and Chickasaw Counties, Monday, claimed two lives. The Iowa State Patrol reports 34-year-old Brian Allen Lage, of Ogden, died in a collision that took place at around 5:20-p.m., in Boone County. Lage was driving a 2010 Chevy Silverado pickup, when his vehicle rear-ended a 2021 Kenworth Construction truck registered to Manning Ag Service.

The accident happened as the Kenworth, driven by 63-year-old Edward B. Adams, of Pleasant Hill, was slowing to turn left from Highway 30 westbound into a private field drive near R Avenue. Lage, who was wearing his seat belt, died from his injuries at the hospital in Boone. The accident remains under investigation.

The second accident, in Chickasaw County, happened at around 11:55-a.m. in Lawler, as 21-year-old Joseph Alan Gathje, of Lanesboro, MN, was attempting to load a tracked vehicle into a semi-trailer flatbed. The tracked vehicle rolled off of the trailer and into the ditch, pinning the Gathje, who died at the scene.

The accident remains under investigation.