(Radio Iowa) – Senator Chuck Grassley will undergo surgery this week after hurting his hip. Senator Grassley’s staff released a statement yesterday at about 5:30 p.m., saying Grassley is in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery. The statement did not indicate how Grassley injured his hip or what kind of surgery would be performed. Grassley sent a tweet shortly after seven o’clock last (Tuesday) night, praising Governor Reynolds for her “Condition of the State” message, but not commenting on his own condition.

Grassley has just started his 8th term in the U.S. Senate and has the most seniority of any currently serving senator. Grassley, who is 89, is also the second oldest senator.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds is proposing state-funded savings accounts for parents who send their children to private school. Reynolds outlined the plan during the annual “Condition of the State” address at the statehouse. “Our first priority in this legislative session and what I will be focusing on over the next four years is making sure that every child is provided with a quality education that fits their needs,” Reynolds said. The governor’s plan would create Education Savings Accounts. In the next school year, about 76-hundred dollars in state money would be deposited in each account — for low income parents enrolling a child in a private school. In the third year, ALL Iowa parents would be eligible for state money to cover private school tuition and related expenses.

“Every child is an individual who deserves an education tailored to their unique needs,” Reynolds said, “and parents are in the best position to identify the right environment.” This is the third year Reynolds has asked the Republican-led legislature to pass a so-called “school choice” plan and this year’s bill is the most expansive. Reynolds campaigned against some fellow Republicans in the Iowa House who opposed her previous plans. This new proposal is expected to send nearly 107 million dollars to low income Iowa parents who enroll their child in a private school for the next school year.  “Every parent should have a choice of where to send their child and that should not be limited to families that can afford it,” Reynolds said. The governor’s staff did not have state spending estimates for future years, when all parents would be eligible for state funds to cover private school expenses for a child.

Senate Democratic Leader Zach Wahls says the governor’s plan, in year three, will give taxpayer dollars to wealthy Iowans who can already afford to send their kids to private school.  “It will hurt our state and especially devastate our small towns and rural communities,” Wahls said. House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst says private schools aren’t REQUIRED to take students — and there’s no private school option in 42 Iowa counties. “So school choice, parental choice, is a misnomer,” Konfrst says. “…This is the latest scheme to hurt public education.” A newly-created, five-member House committee will review the governor’s school choice plan at a meeting early this (Wednesday) afternoon. Jack Whitver, the Republican leader in the state SENATE, suggests the governor’s bill could move quickly through the legislative process.

“We passed our first ‘school choice’ bill three or four years ago, so it’s been a conversation that’s happened over five years,” Whitver says. “But certainly over the last month we’ve continued to talk with (the governor), talk with the House, find out what they’re comfortable with, what we’re comfortable with and, hopefully, we can find agreement here in the next couple of weeks.” Reynolds also used last (Tuesday) night’s speech to reveal a state government reorganization plan. Reynolds hired a private consulting firm to help develop the outline, which would shrink the number of state agencies from 37 to 16. “Aligning state government with the only reason it exists — serving Iowans,” Reynolds said.

The governor’s aides say there will be no employee layoffs and more than 215 million dollars would be saved over the next four years under the reorganization plan. Reynolds also called on legislators to provide one-and-a-half MILLION dollars in state funding to groups that would offer parental counseling to men and teenage boys in at-risk households. This would be in addition to continued state funding for groups that provide pregnancy tests and other resources for expectant mothers. “It sends a powerful message that a pro-life state is one that surrounds every person involved in an unplanned pregnancy with protection, love and support,” Reynolds said. Reynolds has not proposed new state abortion restrictions.

The governor and Republican lawmakers say they’re waiting for an Iowa Supreme Court ruling on a six-week abortion ban that’s been blocked from taking effect.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Police in Red Oak are reporting two separate arrests. At around 1:18-a.m. today, 35-year-old Richard Dean Pierce, III, of Council Bluffs, was arrested for Driving Under Suspension. His bond was set at slightly more than $491. And, at around 8:40-p.m. Tuesday, 27-year-old Nikolus Brenton Schooling, of Red Oak, was arrested in the 400 block of E. Market Street in Red Oak, for Possession of a Controlled Substance/Methamphetamine. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $1,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa 4th District Congressman Randy Feenstra is taking the Biden administration to task over how they have investigated cases of classified documents differently in the possession of former president Donald Trump and Biden’s son Hunter. “They knew about the documents before the election. They raid Mar A Lago before the election, but they didn’t do anything with the Biden (documents) when they knew the information was there until they don’t after the election — and that’s what to me, where’s the fairness where’s the equal treatment under the law,” Feenstra says.

The Republican from Hull says with his party now in control of the House, they will press for answers about how former president Trump was investigated and raided by federal agencies while Republican concerns about hunter Biden were ignored: “Today we’re creating a policy to create a subcommittee through the judiciary committee to investigate the weaponization of the F-B-I and the D-O-J. This is a big deal we got to get to the bottom of this,” he says.

Feenstra joined fellow house G-O-P members in voting for the family and small business taxpayer protection act which would repeal the I-R-S enforcement funding in the Democrat Inflation Reduction Act and prevent the Biden administration from hiring more I-R-S agents. “You have government overreach here 87-thousand new I-R-S s agents they’re gonna target 90 percent of Americans who make under 400-thousand dollars. That was our first bill and I’m glad we got it done,” Feenstra says.

The bill will likely not make it to the floor in the Democratic-controlled U-S Senate.

(Radio Iowa) – State traffic safety officials are singling out five Iowa counties where crashes, injuries and deaths are the worst to focus efforts on changing driver behaviors and making roads safer. Brett Tjepkes, chief of the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau, says the initiative is called the High Five Rural Traffic Safety Project and it’s now underway in Appanoose, Fremont, Humboldt, Keokuk and Mitchell counties.

Tjepkes says, “How we selected the High Five counties is, we looked at some of these underserved areas that have a higher incidence of drivers and passengers not wearing their seatbelts involved in crashes and not wearing their seatbelts, meaning, either seriously injured or killed.” The High Five project involves a three-tier approach, including law enforcement, engineering, and education with the ultimate goal of building safer communities. In the engineering portion, experts from the Iowa D-O-T are teaming up with the Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University.

“They’ll meet with local engineers and look at some of these crash locations and try to find are there some low-cost engineering solutions that we might be able to implement that could reduce crashes in certain areas,” Tjepkes says. “Some of these examples may be just some better painting, markings that are on the roadway, or signage, or wider shoulders.” The education portion of High Five targets drivers of all ages, but also tries to reinforce certain messages with teenagers, before they might form bad driving habits.

“We partner with an organization called Seatbelts Are For Everyone, or SAFE,” Tjepkes says. “The SAFE program works with local school districts to have some peer-to-peer type of education opportunities, the importance of wearing seatbelts and other traffic safety topics with high school-age kids.” A recent study found nearly three-quarters of all deadly crashes in Iowa take place on secondary rural roads, and most of Iowa’s roads are considered secondary. Tjepkes says Iowans have a great national score for seatbelt use, but some people continue to ignore the law.

“Almost 96% of Iowans wear their seatbelts, but also 45% of the people killed in crashes are not wearing their seatbelts,” Tjepkes says. “So this one thing is, with what we’re doing, we really feel that we can make an impact and save people’s lives by encouraging them to wear their seatbelts through programs like the High Five.”

Last year, 338 people died in traffic accidents on Iowa’s roads, a number that’s down from the past few years. Iowa hasn’t had fewer than 300 traffic deaths in a year since 1925.

(Radio Iowa) – The top Republican on a senate panel that drafts tax policy says property tax reform plans will be developed first before other any tax ideas are considered.

“Obviously, property taxes is the name of the game this year,” Republican Senator Dan Dawson of Council Bluffs said, “and we’ll see what opportunities we have here.”

Dawson, who is chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, is hinting that GOP legislators are likely to propose changes that are phased in, because the state’s property tax system is complicated.

Senate Ways and Means Committee. (RI Photo)

“The system didn’t get there overnight and I don’t expect us to change things overnight,” Dawson said, “but we’re going to have to kind of find out a different way of going about our system right now, because it’s not sustainable.”

Senator Pam Jochum of Dubuque, the top Democrat on the committee, has been urging Republicans to move cautiously, since property taxes pay for a variety of city and county services. And more than 40 percent of property taxes support K-12 schools.

DES MOINES – The Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs today announced it has awarded more than $1.5 million in grants to leverage local infrastructure projects and engaging programs that build culturally vibrant communities across the state.

The $1,573,997 in grants come from the department’s Iowa Great Places, Strengthening Communities, School Arts Experience, Artist Catalyst, Creative Places Project, Folk Arts Learning and Humanities Collaboration programs.

In southwest Iowa:

The Iowa Arts Council also awarded a total of $84,784 through the latest two rounds of three quarterly grant programs: School Arts Experience, Artist Catalyst and Creative Places Project grants. The small matching grants are intended to help jump-start creative projects in the classroom or community and support artists with their career development needs. Included among the grant recipients is The Wilson Performing Arts Center in Red Oak, which will introduce K-8 students to theater by bringing a visiting performer to three southwestern Iowa schools this spring. Grant award: $2,500.

The Iowa Arts Council, a division of the department, awarded Folk Arts Learning grants to help sustain artistic traditions and cultural heritage in the state. Funding for the program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Museum of Danish America, Elk Horn, will bring in an experienced pressman to teach staff how to use an early-20th century Chandler and Price letterpress for workshops and demonstrations. Grant award: $2,850.

More information is available HERE.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa State Patrol has identified the two people who were killed in a multi-vehicle accident Sunday morning on I-80 near Iowa City.

The patrol says 57-year-old David Mosinski of Fairfield, died when his pickup hit a semi that had jackknifed on the roadway. Thirty-seven-year-old Junier Caballero-Venero of Houston, Texas, was a passenger in the semi and got out after it jackknifed. The patrol says he was then was hit and killed on the roadway.

The accident report says the roads were icy and it was foggy at the time of the accident. The accident involved some 15 vehicles, nine of them semis.

(Iowa DNR News) – Elk seem to be visiting Iowa more frequently each fall, and thanks to social media, their visits are now shared at the speed of downloads among tens of thousands of people among the various social networks. Most of these sightings are in western Iowa due to the proximity of the larger wild elk herd found in the Black Hills of South Dakota and in central and western Nebraska. These visitors tend to be young males conceivably searching for new territory. And this fall was no different. “I had reports coming in weekly to my office all fall,” said Josh Gansen, wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Saylorville Wildlife Unit covering nine counties in central and west central Iowa.

The number of individual elk visiting the state is likely very low, state experts say, and the frequency of reports in the fall are based on these elk covering a lot of distance and appearing on different trail cameras. “It’s to the point that it’s no longer uncommon,” Gansen said. The elk rut (breeding season) out west is in September and October, which is around the same time as the juvenile elk have been showing up in Iowa. The Iowa DNR is collecting scat and muscle tissue for DNA analysis to learn more about these animals, including where they are coming from, said Doug Chafa, wildlife biologist with the Iowa DNR’s Missouri River Wildlife Unit in western Iowa.

Elk were native to Iowa, but left as the state was settled. While there isn’t a population in Iowa, they, along with moose, are protected in Iowa Code, which includes a $1,000 fine if illegally killed. That does not exclude the right of a person from dispatching an elk that is causing property damage or from causing physical harm. “Three or four years ago, we had an elk that was trying to get into a penned livestock area damaging the fence in northwest Iowa, and it had to be dispatched,” Chafa said. However, most elk wander in and out of Iowa with no issues. But not all. This fall, an elk was hit and killed on I-80 and another was found dead within sight of Hwy. 20, east of Sioux City. The Woodbury County elk was a 1 to 1-1/2-year-old adolescent animal weighing approximately 450-500 pounds which is significantly larger than a white-tailed deer.

“An adult elk can weigh between 750-800 pounds with hooves as large as your hand,” Chafa said. As a comparison, a five-year-old buck white tailed deer can weigh up to 250 pounds at its heaviest. Large wildlife always catches peoples attention and Chafa said if you encounter an elk, give them plenty of room and don’t approach it. “Take a moment to enjoy seeing a wild elk in Iowa,” he said. “As long as these animals are not causing any problems, our position is we are going to leave them be.”

(Radio Iowa) – Democrats and progressives say polls show the top agenda items Republican lawmakers plan to pursue in the 2023 legislature are unpopular with Iowans. Matt Sinovic, executive director of Progress Iowa, hosted what he called “The People’s Condition of the State” event at the Capitol this (Tuesday) morning. “Think of where the public opinion is on these issues,” Sinovic said. “Every poll that we’ve seen…We wan fully funded public schools. We want to raise in the minimum wage. A vast majority oppose the voucher scheme that we expect to see.”

Governor Reynolds will deliver the annual “Condition of the State” address tonight (Tuesday) at 6 p.m. and she’s likely to use the event to unveil her latest plan to provide state money to parents who send their kids to private schools. Mazie Stilwell of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa says her organization is on high alert because she expects the Republican-led legislature to pass new abortion restrictions. “Abortion, for now, remains safe and legal in Iowa, but it hangs by a thread,” Stilwell says, “even though a growing 61%of Iowans support abortion access.” Some labor union advocates predict G-O-P lawmakers to try to pass more restrictions on bargaining rights and pass new limits on benefits.

Peter Hird is an officer of the Iowa Federation of Labor A-F-L-C-I-O. “All employees deserve to have their voice on the job through a union,” Hird says, “whether they work for a private employer or serve the public.” Connie Ryan of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa says despite November’s passage of a constitutional amendment on gun rights, polls show Iowans oppose repeal of gun safety laws. “We ask all fair minded Iowans to join with us in this fight for everyday Iowans,” Ryan said.

The Republican Leader in the Iowa House says more Iowans voted for the gun rights amendment than for any candidate running for statewide office, showing Iowans want their freedom to carry weapons protected.