Iowa’s unemployment rate bumped up to 3.9% in May, even as more Iowans worked at jobs. Iowa Workforce Development reported yesterday that the rate was up slightly from the 3.8% unemployment rate in April. The total number of Iowa residents working rose to 1.58 million in May and the state’s labor force participation rate increased to 66.4%. The number of unemployed residents also increased by an estimated 1,300 people. Iowa was tied with Wisconsin for the nation’s 10th lowest unemployment rate. The U.S. unemployment rate for May was 5.8%, nearly two full percentage points above the Iowa rate.
During a news conference yesterday, Governor Kim Reynolds said her office will be appealing the decision made by an Iowa judge that permanently blocked a 2020 law that imposed a 24-hour waiting period for abortions. The judge ruled the law violated a 2018 Iowa Supreme Court decision that protects abortion rights. The governor said she does not agree. The state of Iowa has 30 days from the date of the ruling to appeal the decision to the Iowa Supreme Court.
Danny Homan, the longtime president of AFSCME Council 61, announced yesterday he will retire at the conclusion of his term after 16 years. A new president will be elected when the labor union holds its next convention next month. Homan was first elected president in 2005, and has been with Council 61 for the past 33 years. AFSCME Council 61 represents more than 55,000 members in more than 230 bargaining units across Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas.
A three-year review by Iowa’s attorney general has found that Roman Catholic priests sexually abused minors across the state for decades while church leaders covered it up, but reforms implemented since 2002 have ended the crisis. A report issued yesterday by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said the number of complaints, victims and the duration of the abuse was “overwhelming” and the “cover-up was extensive.” But it found that only five Iowa priests have been accused of misconduct since 2002. The report said bishops who participated in concealing past problems are no longer in charge in Iowa.
Governor Kim Reynolds yesterday announced a partnership to expand support for mental health, including training, resources and outreach to educators and schools across the state. The new Iowa Center for School Mental Health is a partnership between the Iowa Department of Education and the University of Iowa College of Education’s Baker Teacher Leader Center. Reynolds said the partnership will better prepare schools and teachers to meet the behavioral and mental health needs of K-12 students in Iowa. The Center will offer crisis response services, face-to-face and online training and coaching for teachers, strategic planning support, needs assessment and program evaluation of social-emotional learning and positive behavioral interventions and supports implementation. The Center is expected to begin providing services to schools this summer and throughout the 2021-2022 school year. To support the Center, the Iowa Department of Education allocated $20 million in federal relief provided in the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act.
Iowans’ approval of Governor Kim Reynolds’ job performance has increased five percentage points since March. The latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Reynolds’ job approval rating at 51 percent, with only 44 percent disapproving and five percent unsure. The poll shows more Iowa adults approve of the way Reynolds is handling issues like the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic, voting laws, criminal justice and schools and education. With regard to her handling of the pandemic, some specifically pointed to the way she allowed Iowans to use their own judgment to make choices and kept the state open for business throughout the pandemic, but yet took action as cases spiked.
An Iowa man has been charged with making and placing a pipe bomb recently found by a girl in a Des Moines suburb, but investigators do not believe he’s linked to a separate bomb left at a nearby polling place in March. A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says agents looking into the explosive devices discovered in Ankeny have so far found no connection between the two. ATF agents last Friday arrested 46-year-old Chad Allen Williams of Johnston in connection with a bomb found June 9 by an 8-year-old Ankeny girl playing outside her home. The bomb did not explode.
