Gazette Daily News Briefing, February 16
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, February 16.
Snow returns Thursday. According to the National Weather Service there will be patch blowing snow starting mainly from before you wake up in the morning through 4 p.m. Three to seven inches of snowfall is the current predicted total. The high is predicted at 28 degrees, with a low of 6.
In a precursor to a potential run for the White House, former Vice President Mike Pence took aim Wednesday at the Linn-Mar Community School District and its transgender-affirming policies during a rally in the early GOP nominating state.
“No one should have a greater role over what our children are learning or the values they're being taught than their parents,” Pence said to a room full of parents and supporters at a Pizza Ranch in Cedar Rapids.
The Linn-Mar policies, adopted last year but largely in place at many other school districts as well, spell out inclusive practices for transgender students, including giving them access to restrooms, locker rooms or changing areas that correspond with their chosen gender identity. Students in the seventh grade or above could request a “gender support plan” that calls for teachers and peers to address the student by a new name and new pronouns. The policy leaves it up to the students whether to notify parents.
Pence said “average Americans have been dragged into a left-wing culture war” that has “invaded our schools, our colleges and our workplaces.”
Pence did not say whether he will launch a 2024 White House run against his former running mate, former President Donald Trump, who already announced his campaign. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who formally launched her presidential bid Wednesday, is scheduled to campaign in Urbandale and Marion early next week.
Compounding the escalating costs associated with the University of Iowa’s construction of its 14-story Stead Family Children’s Hospital, campus officials are asking permission to spend $45 million replacing damaged windows on nine floors — tripling the $15 million they originally planned to spend replacing cracked or delaminated windows on two floors.
If the Board of Regents next week approves the higher cost, UI plans to start replacing windows this spring — nearly four years after first discovering problems with windows on floors four and five in July 2019, just two years after the hospital opened in 2017.
In UIHC’s request for board approval to spend three times the planned amount, officials explained the problem is more widespread than surmised and the hospital is "experiencing systemic issues with the windows failing to perform consistent with the agreed upon specifications.”
Iowa lawmakers once again are moving forward with a bill that would restrict the ability of cities like Cedar Rapids to use traffic enforcement cameras along interstates, state highways and county roadways.
A three-member House Public Safety subcommittee this week advanced legislation, House File 173, that would prohibit municipalities from placing or using automated traffic enforcement systems along state and county roads within the city’s boundaries, including state highways and interstates.
Placement and use of such devices by cities would be restricted to city streets. However, the bill does not prohibit the Iowa Department of Transportation from placing and using the devices on primary roads, or a county from placing and using cameras on secondary roads. The bill also limits the civil penalty for a traffic citation captured by the traffic enforcement cameras.
This has been a hot button issue for years. In 2018, the cities of Des Moines, Muscatine and Cedar Rapids successfully challenged rules established by the Iowa DOT that prohibited cities from placing the systems on highways and interstates.
