(Radio Iowa) – Most of us have plans for the holiday weekend ahead, but if your schedule is open for the -following- weekend, volunteers are needed to help haul the trash out of a north-central Iowa river. Hamilton County Conservation naturalist John Laird said the Boone River clean-up effort will cover more than four miles of the waterway in Hamilton County by canoe. Registration will start at 7:30 A-M on July 8th at Briggs Woods Park in Webster City.

Since the first river clean-up project in 2007, Laird says volunteers have picked up more than 800 tires, more than seven tons of scrap metal, and three and a half tons of trash. Learn more by visiting the Hamilton County Conservation Board Facebook page.

(Radio Iowa) – Cancer patients in Iowa are facing delays in potentially-life-saving treatments as two important drugs used in chemotherapy are in very short supply. Dr. Richard Deming (DEM-ing), medical director of the MercyOne Cancer Center in Des Moines, says almost 50-percent of the cisplatin and carboplatin used in the U-S were made by a single factory in India — which recently stopped making those drugs. While those key drugs are being made elsewhere, there’s now such a tight supply and high demand for them that chemotherapy treatments are having to be pushed back.

Deming says nine in ten cancer treatment centers nationwide are being forced to delay treatments. A delay of even one week can cause “intense psychosocial distress” for patients and their families, Deming says. If the delay goes into months, he says there’s the possibility the delay in treatment may impact the overall ability to cure someone of a curable cancer.

(Area News) – State Auditor Rob Sand, Wednesday, visited Council Bluffs, Missouri Valley, Harlan, and Audubon as part of his 100-town hall tour. Auditor Sand took questions from Iowans on various topics, including Senate File 478. The bill would, in many instances, eliminate checks and balances by limiting the Auditor’s access to the courts. Speaking in Missouri Valley, Sand said “This is the single most pro-corruption bill in Iowa history. It lets insiders protect insiders and limits the ability of the taxpayers’ watchdog to obtain information necessary to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

A group of bipartisan accounting and oversight professionals is also on the record opposing Senate File 478. Their concerns include the threat to the Auditor’s ability to independently oversee the use of federal funds coming into Iowa. Auditor Sand also discussed the new school voucher system that takes money away from public schools to pay for private school tuition. Sand pointed out the new law allows private schools to do anything they want with the tax dollars they receive from the state—except provide a refund.

In Audubon, Sand said “If they want to take a European vacation with your tax dollars after they are paid as tuition, it’s totally legal—no requirement the money be spent on actual education. Public schools have public records, public meetings, and an annual audit,” Sand said, noting the lack of transparency for private schools under the new law. “None of which will apply to private schools—even for the parents of the kids who go there.” (Click to enlarge the photos below)

Missouri Valley Town Hall

Council Bluffs stop

Harlan Town Hall

Audubon stop

Sand discussed his decision to vote against using taxpayer dollars to settle two public records suits last week as a member of the State Appeal Board. Sand was the lone vote against funding the settlements, totaling $175,000, reached by the Attorney General’s office on behalf of the Governor. Sand noted that Iowa law requires public officials who fail to respond to public records requests as required by law to be held accountable in the form of fines and attorneys’ fees. “The Iowa Supreme Court, with all justices appointed by Republican governors, ruled unanimously that Governor Reynolds’ arguments in these cases held no water,” said Sand. “This is a brazen scam by those whose salaries are paid by taxpayers, to skirt a law requiring their own personal responsibility for the fees and fines for hiding public records and using taxpayer funds instead.”

Sand also touted his Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) program. It encourages local governments and school districts to come up with creative ways to save tax dollars. PIE has been so successful, Democratic and Republican auditors in other states are copying it. “It helps our office to hear from Iowans and helps Iowans to hear from someone who is willing to go after insiders’ corruption and waste in Iowa’s governments,” said Auditor Sand in response to the town hall meetings across the state. “I’m proud to continue that work in all of Iowa’s 99 counties.”

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird says she believes a so-called “heartbeat” law to ban most abortions in Iowa is connotational. The Iowa Supreme Court recently deadlocked three-to-three after the governor asked the justices to overturn a lower court’s ruling on that 2018 law. “We argued before the Supreme Court that they should lift that injunction and let that law go into effect,” Bird says.

“The court ultimately did not make a decision in that case because it was tied and so by operation of law that allows the district court decision to stand,” Bird says. “I was disappointed, but I will continue to work for the pro-life cause and I think the fight isn’t over yet.” The 2018 legislation — referred to as a hypothetical law by one Iowa Supreme Court justice — would have banned most abortions after about the sixth week of a pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

Pulse Life Advocates, the group previously known as Iowans for Life, is urging the legislature to convene as soon as possible and pass the same policy again. Bird isn’t making a recommendation about what the legislation should look like. “I think we have many routes ahead of us that would protect the right to life here in Iowa,” Bird says. “I am supportive of a special session if that’s the route the legislature chooses to take.” Bird, a Republican, has been Iowa’s attorney general for nearly six months. Bird says she’ll soon release her review of state-funded victims’ services programs.

“A number of issues came up that we’re working through for the audit to make sure that our office is being responsive when people have questions, that key information can be available to advocates to help them serve victims more quickly and that every part of the state is being served,” Bird says. “We found that some counties weren’t being served by the advocacy organizations that were being funded by our office to serve them.”

Earlier this spring, Bird’s office temporarily suspended the policy of having the state’s victim compensation fund cover the costs of the so-called morning after pill for sexual assault victims. Bird says the “Plan B” medication remains legal in Iowa and her audit of state services for victims will address whether state reimbursement for emergency contraception is appropriate.