Gazette Daily News Briefing, July 8
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, July 8.
There will be a chance for rain again Friday morning, but ultimately it will end up as a sunny and cool day. According to the National Weather Service there will be a 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mostly between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Friday. After that it will be partly sunny, with a high near 82 degrees. On Friday night it will be mostly clear with a low of around 62 degrees.
Iowa will likely see another large budget surplus for a second straight year, but what lawmakers will do with it is not clear.
Iowa brought in more money than expected last fiscal year, fueled by higher wages, farm income, strong job growth and federal stimulus spending. Then state tax receipts surpassed $9 billion in the budget year that just ended, an increase of more than 12 percent over the previous year, according to a new state report.
Republicans who control the Iowa Legislature used an over $1.2 billion budget surplus for the 2021 fiscal year, and a $2 billion Taxpayer Relief Fund, as the basis to pass another tax cut package earlier this year.
Bettendorf Republican state Rep. Gary Mohr, who chairs the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, didn’t rule out the possibility of further tax cuts next year when asked on Thursday.
Seven people died in five car crashes on roads across the state over the long July 4 weekend, according to the Iowa State Patrol.
The patrol responded to 36 crashes during the weekend, five of which were fatal and six of which caused injuries, according to a tweet from the department. Crash reports show that in one of the five fatal crashes, three people were killed.
Patrol officers also pulled over 4,096 people during the weekend, made 33 felony arrests and handed out 2,134 speeding tickets.
There have been 159 fatalities so far in 2022 — 11 of them in the first week of July, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has fined a northwest Iowa dairy owner the maximum $10,000 penalty for releasing 376,000 gallons of manure into a creek from a new anaerobic digester that hadn't been properly sealed or certified.
Winding Meadows Dairy, in Rock Valley, was part of a wave of Iowa dairies that got permits to build digesters last year after Iowa lawmakers passed a bill that allows animal feeding operations to exceed capacity if they have a digester to treat manure.
Back in January, before the certification had been filed, a manure applicator pumped in manure and water from two lagoons “to see how the digester worked,” the consent order states. They got an answer, but not the one they were looking for.
Digester advocates say the anaerobic process — used at wastewater treatment plants for decades — is a way to create electricity and heat, while the leftover digestate doesn’t smell like manure.
Opponents of the digesters believe the devices are a backdoor way to encourage more large-scale animal confinements in Iowa, as a recent legal change in the state removes the animal cap on large feedlots if their manure is treated by digesters.
