Gazette Daily News Briefing, September 20
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for September 20, 2023.
According to the National Weather Service there will be a 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 5 p.m. in the Cedar Rapids area. Otherwise it will be partly sunny with a high near 81 degrees. The slight chance for rain will continue into the evening, with a low of around 60 degrees.
The most important qualities a new Cedar Rapids police chief should display, based on a community survey and outreach, are in community engagement, technology advancements, diversity and inclusion, training and education, collaborative partnerships and accountability and transparency.
The city, without a permanent police chief for five months, is hoping to post the job by the end of the week, Assistant to the City Manager Amanda Grieder said during a meeting Monday of the city’s Public Safety and Youth Services Committee.
Cedar Rapids is looking to replace Chief Wayne Jerman, who retired in April after turning 66 and aging out of his certification. Jerman, who spent 10 years with the city, was paid over $188,000 a year and oversaw operations of the department that is made up of 270 full-time equivalent positions, according to the city budget.
After receiving no increase in general education funding from the Iowa Legislature in its last session, the state Board of Regents has more than halved its ask for the upcoming term from a $32 million to a $14.8 million increase.
In its new funding request for the 2025 budget year, which starts July 1, the board is seeking $4.5 million appropriation bumps for both the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, along with a $5.8 million funding increase for the University of Northern Iowa, according to documents made public Tuesday.
If granted that full ask, the regents’ higher education budget would swell from $491.5 million to $506.3 million — but still below the $547.6 million in general operating funds the state appropriated the three public universities over 20 years ago in fiscal 2001.
Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds pushed back Tuesday on comments former President Donald Trump made over the weekend suggesting state laws banning abortions after six weeks — like the one Reynolds signed in July — are a "terrible mistake."
Trump, the front-runner according to polls in the Republican presidential primary, made the comments in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker, pointing to the policy that a GOP primary opponent — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — signed into law in April in that state.
"I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake," Trump said of DeSantis in the NBC interview.
Trump, whose U.S. Supreme Court appointments were instrumental in delivering the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and federal abortion protections, did not say whether he would support a national abortion ban or what the cutoff should be. He said he would bring together Republicans and Democrats to find a “number of weeks or months” that’s going to “make people happy.”
The Florida law makes abortion illegal after six weeks with some exceptions. Iowa's law, currently blocked because of a lawsuit, bans abortion after cardiac activity can be detected in an embryo or fetus with some exceptions, which can be as early as six weeks.
"It’s never a 'terrible thing' to protect innocent life," Reynolds posted Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter. "I’m proud of the fetal heartbeat bill the Iowa legislature passed and I signed in 2018 and again earlier this year."
