Iowa will send up to 30 state police officers on a two-week deployment to Texas after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds agreed to a request from southern governors to help fight crime at the U.S.-Mexico border. A statement from the Iowa Department of Public Safety did not say when the deployment of the officers would begin or how they would be chosen. The officers will assist the Texas Department of Public Safety. Reynolds said she agreed to the deployment, following similar moves by governors in Nebraska, Florida and Idaho, after receiving assurances from the department that their absences “will not compromise our ability to provide all the necessary public safety services to Iowans.”
Transamerica has agreed to a $5.4 million settlement with roughly 17,000 current and former employees in a lawsuit that accused the investment company of offering several poor performing options in its own employee retirement plan. The federal lawsuit filed in Iowa said the underperforming funds in Transamerica’s retirement plan cost employees between $15 and $20 million because they performed worse than comparable funds employees could not choose as part of the plan. Transamerica is based in Baltimore, but has major operations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Denver, Colorado.
Many motorists wondered about the semi on its side at the intersection of Donald Street and Logan Avenue during the morning commute yesterday. It was a livestock trailer hauling hogs that rolled onto its side when the semi was turning from Logan onto Donald. Towing employees used inflatable jacks to get the trailer back on its wheels. Officials say no other vehicles were involved.
Roman Catholic priests who victimized Iowa children decades ago cannot be prosecuted despite a new law eliminating the statute of limitations for child sex abuse. The Iowa attorney general’s office says the law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds last month does not apply to cases in which the statute of limitations had already expired. That means victims of childhood abuse who are currently 33 years of age and older will not be able to have their abusers prosecuted because they missed the prior deadline to report. They also won’t be able to file lawsuits against perpetrators and officials who concealed their abuse because the new law did not change the civil statute of limitations.
Iowa’s admittedly most liberal county is no longer named for a slave-owning U.S. vice president and instead will honor a local black academic. The Johnson County Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to cut ties with its two-century namesake, former Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson. The lifelong slave owner from Kentucky had no ties to the county. The Wisconsin Territorial Legislature had named the county after Johnson in 1837, one year before Iowa became a territory, and nine years before it became a state. County supervisors decided the county is now named for the late historian and university administrator Lulu Merle Johnson. The Gravity, Iowa, native was the first African American woman to earn a doctorate from the University of Iowa in 1941. Her father was born into slavery.
The first Major League Baseball game ever to be played in Iowa will be at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville on August 12 between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox. The movie quote “if you build it, he will come” is being taken quite literally there these days, as work proceeds on the 8,000-seat temporary stadium being built a couple hundred yards west of the 1989 movie set.
A 32-year-old Georgia songwriter has entered a plea not guilty to first-degree murder in connection with the death of his girlfriend in Iowa. Justin Wright of Atlanta entered his plea yesterday in the death of 20-year-old Wilanna Bibbs. Wright, also known as J Wright, is a multi-platinum songwriter. Bibbs was found shot to death in a Davenport home on May 9. Bibbs mother, Cassandra Bibbs, said her daughter met Wright in Atlanta, where she had moved to start a singing career.
Fire officials say a fire that badly damaged a former City Hall building in Des Moines and destroyed a makeshift black children’s memorial is being investigated as “suspicious.” The fire early Wednesday in Des Moines destroyed a memorial created last summer by the Des Moines Black Liberation Movement to honor black Iowa youth who have died in recent years. The fire is still under investigation and its cause has not yet been determined, but investigators believe the cause is “suspicious.” The memorial was at the entrance to the 132-year-old former North Des Moines City Hall, which has been unoccupied for many years.
