×

Local Columns

Summing up work on appropriations, education

Last week ended the second legislative funnel. If a bill sent to either chamber has not made it through a committee, it is dead, unless it is an Appropriation bill or a Ways and Means bill. There are still ways to move priority legislation that hasn’t passed the opposite chamber, generally by ...

House bill addresses labeling of meat

Week 10 has ended here at the State House. We have one month left, four weeks. It is hard to believe we are already halfway through March! Next Tuesday, the 19th, will mark the first day of spring, and those of us that depend on farming for our livelihood have begun to watch the calendar and ...

Holding illegal immigrants accountable

Last month, the country learned the tragic news that 22-year-old Laken Riley — a nursing student from Georgia — was murdered by an illegal immigrant while out on a jog in broad daylight. As a father of four, my heart breaks for the friends and family of Laken who are enduring ...

Lawmakers tackle economic development, mental health

There is one more week until the second legislative funnel. This means any bill the House has sent to the Senate must pass a committee to remain alive this year. This excludes Appropriation bills and Ways and Means bills. Economic development This week, the House passed Senate File 574, a ...

House looks at stronger history standards for students

We have been moving through bills at a rapid pace. These bills were what we call non-cons which stands for non-controversial. Some of them are very simple bills, but there are some that are very complicated, but both the Republicans and the Democrats agree on the importance of the bill for the ...

When bullets almost took his life, Ed Micus’ poetry developed a soul

The seeds of Eddie Micus’ love of poetry were sown in a small green house on Second Avenue South in Fort Dodge where he grew up with his four siblings whose mother memorized poems from her own childhood. But it was two decades into his life and 8,000 miles away, in a jungle in Vietnam, ...