Rod Boshart

DES MOINES ? State budget officials said Wednesday another $13 million will have to be borrowed from reserves to balance the fiscal 2017 ledger and, while no special legislative session is needed, lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds will face challenges in managing upcoming finances.Iowa Department of Management Director David Roederer said the expected shortfall for Iowa's fiscal 2017 budget was another $14.6 ...

DES MOINES ? State lawmakers are pulling the plug on a state-mandated summer reading program for struggling third-graders ? a program that already had been delayed and moved back to 2018.The 2018 education budget bill also removes the controversial retention requirement that would have required third-graders to meet a certain reading level before advancing to fourth grade.Sen. Tim Kraayenbrink, R-Fort Dodge, ...

DES MOINES ? Lawmakers plodded through austere budget bills Thursday that few liked, given the state?s tight revenue situation, in hopes of positioning themselves to make a run at adjourning their 2017 session next week.It will be a ?checkbook budget,? according to Justice Systems Appropriations Chairman Gary Worthan, R-Storm Lake, who presented a pair of status quo budgets for courts and corrections as part of ...

DES MOINES ? Gov. Terry Branstad signed two major pieces of legislation into law Thursday.In back-to-back ceremonies, the governor signed a bill immediately barring cities and counties from setting minimum wages higher than the statewide $7.25 hourly floor and a separate measure making significant changes to the state?s workers? compensation law.?This is a bill I?ve waited for a long time,? said Branstad, ...

DES MOINES ? Hull Sen. Randy Feenstra is living the dream as a Republican legislator tasked with reforming, rewriting and reducing Iowa?s income taxes.Feenstra, 47, enters his third term in the Iowa Senate next month as the newly named chairman of the Senate?s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and part of a GOP majority that controls the Iowa Senate for the first time in a decade along with a Republican-led ...

DES MOINES ? Five more industrial sites in Iowa have been certified as ?development ready? by state officials, raising the hopes of officials in Forest City, Clinton, Grinnell, Waterloo and Osage of landing large projects with good-paying jobs to their communities. The announcement Monday by Gov. Terry Branstad, Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds and Debi Durham, director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority Debi ...

DES MOINES ? Iowa?s 333 public school districts would receive an extra $40 million in state supplemental aid for the fiscal year that begins July 1 under legislation approved by the Republican-run Iowa Senate on Thursday.Overall, funding for each student enrolled in K-12 public schools would increase by $73 to $6,664 under the 1.11 percent increase included in Senate File 166 with overall state general fund ...

DES MOINES - A bipartisan group of senators Wednesday supported legislation to regulate rather than eliminate traffic enforcement cameras but still questioned whether the state was going too far in usurping local control of citing and revenue decisions.Members of the Senate Transportation Committee voted 12-1 to send a bill to the Senate debate calendar that would subject fixed and mobile camera deployments to ...

DES MOINES ? Two new ideas to help Gov. Kim Reynolds deal with the state's constrained budget emerged from a public hearing Tuesday: Raise the state's cigarette tax by $1.50 a pack or consider legalizing sports betting at state-licensed casinos if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees in a case it's considering.Reynolds and top administration officials heard pitches for about an hour from two dozen individuals and ...

DES MOINES ? State and federal insect experts say it likely will be next year before they will be able to tell whether a swarm of stingless wasps introduced in Iowa are helping suppress a destructive pest that has attacked ash trees in 52 of Iowa's 99 counties.Three species of parasitic wasps were released in 2016 at two biocontrol sites ? 11,000 in the Whitham Woods in Jefferson County and 14,000 at the Mt. ...

DES MOINES ? A new state advisory panel charged with helping implement an expanded medical marijuana law in Iowa is trying to balance the demands of an expedited timeline with a go-slow desire to avoid pitfalls that may accompany the experiment to widen the approved uses of cannabidiol.?I think the state of Iowa is trying to be careful but compassionate how they roll this out,? said Mike McKelvey, a Mason City ...

CLIVE ? Taking the lump-sum cash option was kind of a no-brainer for Charles ?Chuck? Svatos when he claimed his Lucky for Life winnings Tuesday at the Iowa Lottery headquarters, considering he turned 92 last July.The North Liberty man treated his daughter to lunch at Cracker Barrel after becoming the third Iowan to defy the one-in-1,813,028 odds of matching five numbers to claim the second-level Lucky for Life ...