(Red Oak, Iowa) – A traffic stop at around 8:12-p.m. Monday, in Red Oak, resulted in the arrest of a woman from Atlantic. Police say 27-year-old Brittany Marie Asay was taken into custody for Driving While Barred. Asay was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Republican leaders in the Iowa House and Senate say it’s likely lawmakers will move up the date the Iowa personal income tax drops to just one flat rate, but there’s no agreement on the governor’s call to eliminate the income tax. House Speaker Pat Grassley notes the state income tax rate is currently scheduled to drop to three-point-nine percent for the 2026 tax year.

“We’ve got about $3 billion in our Taxpayer Relief Fund,” Grassley says. “That needs to be back in the hands of Iowans as soon as possible and so I think that’s what you’re going to see a lot of conversation around in the upcoming months.” Grassley says House Republicans believe tax cuts should be sustainable and let the state meet its budget obligations without raising a different tax to make up for lost revenue.

“Quite frankly I don’t think we should be raising taxes to cut taxes,” Grassley says, Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver says Senate Republicans want to cut taxes as much as possible as quickly as possible.

“I think everyone kind of agrees we want to get the cuts that we put in place…expedited and then the conversation will be: ‘What do we do next?’ Whitver says. “Do we cut it a little bit and then come back next year? Do we cut it a lot? Do we phase it out over time? Do we put some formula in place to phase it out?”

The 2024 Iowa legislative session begins Monday. Governor Reynolds has said she wants to eliminate the state income tax by January of 2027. She’ll outline her legislative agenda during the annual Condition of the State address next Tuesday.

(Radio Iowa) – The governor’s budget director says he’ll ask legislators to create an I-T division with his department. The Office of Chief Information Officer merged with the Iowa Department of Management in 2022 and Department of Management director Kraig Paulsen has already brought most of the I-T staff from across state government into his agency. Paulsen says the consolidation is dramatically improving the state’s cybersecurity efforts.

“Perhaps most importantly, we’re providing real-time visibility into threats and risks that we can rapidly respond to the cyber event, regardless of the agency or the system where it originated,” Paulsen says. “Collectively, this represents a huge leap forward in how we’re protecting the information of all Iowans.” Paulsen says he eliminated 55 open I-T positions within state government.

Doug Jacobson, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Iowa State University, says it makes perfect sense to centralize I-T functions, as it gives the state better ability to monitor threats. But Jacobsen says top officials need to make sure every employee in state government is aware of potential security issues.

“When you centralize like that, you need to make a little more concerted effort to make sure that the organization continues to have that culture that everyone has a role in security,” Jacobsen says. Legislators and Governor Terry Branstad created the Office of Chief Information Officer as an independent state agency in 2013 and made it responsible for technology services in state government. It’s also been responsible for distributing federal funds to expand broadband service in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – One popular New Year’s resolutions is to lose weight. Nutritionist Heather Rasmussen says if you are positively committed to eating right and getting off the couch, you can absolutely get on course to better health. “It should be done all year ‘round but the new year gives people an opportunity to reevaluate what they’re doing both diet-wise and physical activity,” Rasmussen says, “and maybe to change their mindset and create some goals surrounding their health including diet and exercise.”

Anytime you form a goal, she says it allows you a chance to pause, look over your situation and make changes to your lifestyle, even if the change is temporary. Rasmussen says permanently changing dietary habits is extremely difficult, so for those trying to stay on the diet wagon, a slow-and-steady approach may be ideal. “People get overwhelmed and say, ‘Okay, I’m never going to eat pizza again in my entire life,’ and then they just don’t do it because it’s too much,” Rasmussen says. “Thinking about my patients, what are your short-term goals? I know you want to lose 50 pounds but what do you want to do for this month, or this week?”

If you find yourself slipping on your nutritional mission, it might help to scale back long-term goals in favor of more short-term ones. Good habits, especially ones drastically different from typical lifestyles, are hard to start and even harder to keep.

Research shows that on average, it takes about 66 days for a habit to become automatic.

(Radio Iowa) – Unity Point Health has released a list of the most popular names for the newborns in 2023. The organization’s two hospitals in Des Moines and West Des Moines deliver the most babies in the state. Charlotte, Eleanor, Amelia, Ava and Olivia were the five most popular names for new baby girls in 2023.

The top five names for boys were Henry, Jack, Oliver, Noah and Brooks. Unity Point says the delivered more than five-thousand babies in the last year.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says he hopes to see the U-S Senate work more in the new year than it did in 2023. He says they only worked two-and-a-half days each week. “That’s not 52 weeks of the year probably more like 40 weeks or 35 weeks of the year. We come in on Monday, start at 5:30 with one vote, work Tuesday and Wednesday go home mid afternoon Thursday,” Grassley says. Grassley is a Republican, and says lawmakers are doing work on the days they are not working or voting on legislation.

“Let me make very clear another aspect of this,” he says, “a senator himself deciding his own schedule probably has enough work for seven days a week. That doesn’t mean you work seven days a week, but he could be busy seven days a week.” Grassley says the Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needs to do a better job in the New Year of having senators work on legislative issues.

“You can’t make policy if the Senate’s not meeting and the fact that we’re only putting in two and a half days a week gives Schumer an “F” for running the United States Senate,” he says.
Grassley was elected to his eighth term in the U-S Senate in 2022.