Posted December 16, 2015in Civic Skinny
If a city council person thought she might have a conflict of interests on a coming vote on a controversial issue, and if she asked the city lawyer for an opinion, and if he gave her an opinion that said she could vote on the issue, and if she did
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Posted December 09, 2015in Civic Skinny
Circulation of The Des Moines Register continues to fall in both the metro area and the state at large. An increase in the numbers of people buying the digital edition doesn’t come close to offsetting the precipitous drop in subscribers to the print edition. Statewide, circulation of the print and
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Posted December 02, 2015in Civic Skinny
The most successful labor union dealing with the state of Iowa has but 13 members. They get big annual raises, are covered by one rather simple document, are rewarded with hefty performance-based bonuses and don’t pay a penny in dues. And there’s no rule against nepotism. All 13 make more
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Posted November 25, 2015in Civic Skinny
Your tax dollars at work: Meriam Belli, an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa, will take off the spring semester of 2017 to study “the international funerary industry and…the politics of burial.” She “will explore funerary industries and burial societies, conduct interviews, and gather data in France,
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Posted November 18, 2015in Civic Skinny
Former Governor Chet Culver is getting closer to deciding to run for Congress in the Third Congressional District. He is looking at the numbers — the money numbers and the registration numbers — and lining up a staff. He is studying the issues and talking to longtime supporters. He is
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Posted November 11, 2015in Civic Skinny
He has sold the naming rights for $1 million. He has built the building that will house the Prairie Meadows Pool at the new $40 million Wellmark YMCA downtown. Now all Vernon Delpesce needs is the pool. But to get it, the chief executive of the YMCA of Greater Des
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Posted November 04, 2015in Civic Skinny
Is it a public meeting if the public officials don’t actually meet with one another? That sounds odd, but that’s the central question in an Iowa Supreme Court case that was argued last week. It’s not a simple issue — if it were, it probably wouldn’t be at the Supreme
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Posted October 28, 2015in Civic Skinny
The bad blood between Sheriff Bill McCarthy and Dan Charleston is spilling over into court again. Charleston is a sergeant in the Polk County Sheriff’s Department. He ran against McCarthy in 2012 and was pretty well trounced, getting just 41.4 percent of the vote. He is running again next year.
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Posted October 21, 2015in Civic Skinny
Nick Klinefeldt is the United States Attorney in Des Moines who is responsible for, among other things, going after drug dealers who violate federal law in this area. Charles Grassley is the Republican United States Senator from Iowa who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and who is up for re-election
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Posted October 14, 2015in Civic Skinny
It sounded too good to be true. And, alas, it was. The best show in town this fall could have been on Nov. 5 at Drake University, with lawyers Jerry Crawford and Doug Gross squaring off for the first time in a courtroom. Republican Gross and Democrat Crawford are old
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