Gazette Daily News Briefing, April 27
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Thursday, April 27.
Thursday's weather will be similar to the day before it, but warmer. According to the National Weather Service there will be patchy frost before 7 a.m. in the Cedar Rapids area. Otherwise it will be sunny, with a high near 69 degrees. On Thursday night the low will be around 44 degrees with partly cloudy skies.
One of Iowa’s most generous and notable philanthropists, John Pappajohn, died earlier this week at the age of 94.
Pappajohn, along with this wife, Mary, gave more than $100 million to various philanthropic causes
Pappajohn served as director of more than 40 public companies, and his philanthropy has been recognized in the naming of UI’s main business building, the UI Hospitals and Clinics’ Pappajohn Pavilion, the John and Mary Pappajohn Clinical Cancer Center and UI’s Pappajohn Biomedical Institute Building.
He also enjoyed connecting with students, such as in 2015, when he spoke to a crowd of more than 1,000 during a homecoming week event at the University of Iowa. He shared advice with the audience, largely made up of students– telling them: “Philanthropy is a way of life.”
"If you incorporate it in your DNA, it becomes part of your persona,” he said.
The Iowa Senate has passed a budget that could zero out funding for river and stream sensors that measure nitrate and phosphorus to see if conservation practices are working.
The budget for agriculture, natural resources and environmental protection, which passed Tuesday in a party-line vote 33 to 16 with Democrats opposed, shifts $500,000 from the Nutrient Research Center at Iowa State University to a water quality program in the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
The ISU center, which supports the sensor network at the University of Iowa, had been planning to allocate $500,000 to the UI this year for the network and related projects. The budget also eliminated a requirement that the ISU center work with the UI and the University of Northern Iowa.
The sensors send real-time data to the Iowa Water Quality Information System, which has an interactive map online. As of Wednesday afternoon, the network of more than 50 sensors currently employed already showed 13 sensors reporting nitrate levels over the safe standard for drinking water.
The budget bill also removed language from Iowa Code that said Iowa would aspire to have 10 percent of its land under open space protection
In two studies, Iowa ranks 47th and 48th out of 50 U.S. states for its share of publicly-owned lands. Both studies, by Texas A&M University’s Natural Resources Institute and the hiking and climbing website the Summit Post, calculated that just roughly 3 percent of Iowa’s land is publicly-owned.
Iowa’s all-Republican congressional delegation — U.S. Reps. Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn and Randy Feenstra — on Wednesday said they planned to vote in favor of House Republicans’ bill that addresses the federal debt ceiling.
The Iowans negotiated with leadership to remove proposed reductions to incentives for ethanol and biofuels production from a long list of budget cuts in the proposed budget.
And their votes were needed, as the bill passed Wednesday night by a razor-thin 217-215 margin. The budget now goes to the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, who will likely have some significant changes to suggest as negotiations begin.
