Posted February 05, 2014in Civic Skinny
How much money do big hitters give to state candidates in a year? Last year — not an election year for statewide candidates — Jim Cownie gave $89,850, Bill Knapp gave $78,900 and Bruce Rastetter gave $71,150.32, according to newly released figures from the Iowa Campaign and Ethics Commission. This
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Posted January 29, 2014in Civic Skinny
The Board of Regents late Wednesday asked the Iowa Supreme Court to intervene in the case involving Iowa State University basketball player Yempabou Palo. The action was taken without a meeting of the board, without a vote of the board, and apparently without discussion by the board. So who made
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Posted January 22, 2014in Civic Skinny
Consider the odd case of Bubu Palo and university justice. Bubu Palo was, or maybe is, a basketball player at Iowa State. He went to Ames High School, and he is a good student and a good athlete. On Sept. 18, 2012, the Story County Attorney charged Palo with sexual
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Posted January 15, 2014in Civic Skinny
Rick Green, The Des Moines Register’s new publisher, has his work cut out for him. The latest audited figures show a continued steep drop in the circulation of the print editions of the Sunday and weekday newspapers. They also show a significant decline in online readership. The report, for the
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Posted January 08, 2014in Civic Skinny
The lawyers who beat the city in the franchise-fee case aren’t satisfied with their $7 million in fees awarded by Polk County District Judge Joel Novak. On the day after Christmas, the last day possible to file an appeal, Brad Schroder, Bruce Stoltze and Steven Brick went back to court,
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Posted December 31, 2013in Civic Skinny
Des Moines City Manager Rick Clark will retire later this year and move to the Cleveland area, where his wife, Mary Grace Herrington, has taken a job in public broadcasting. It will be a homecoming of sorts for Clark, who was born in Cleveland. Clark has spent almost his entire
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Posted December 26, 2013in Civic Skinny
Here’s an astounding fact: The last time there was a Congressional race in Polk County without an incumbent seeking re-election was in 1940. GOP Rep. Cassius Dowell, a Des Moines lawyer first elected to Congress in 1915, died on Feb. 4, 1940, and Republican Robert K. Goodwin — of the
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Posted December 18, 2013in Civic Skinny
Twelve drummers drumming… …oh so vigorously for Phil Dorweiler and his many Kirke in-laws, especially Bob and Laurel…loud enough to be heard through vinyl windows for James and Roxanne Conlin…to thank councilman Ted Ohmart of West Des Moines for 16 years of fine service…and to welcome new councilman Rick Messerschmidt…for
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Posted December 11, 2013in Civic Skinny
“What I’ve always really most admired about Tyler is he’s a family guy,” Tyler Olson’s wife, Sarah, says in a campaign video supporting her husband’s effort to get the Democratic nomination to run against Gov. Terry Branstad. She and the couple’s two young children figure prominently in the video. Perhaps
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Posted December 04, 2013in Civic Skinny
Were matters so out of hand in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids three years ago that one lawyer there feared for her safety, feared that she might be shot by another lawyer there? And was her boss scared, too? When then-U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose — now federal district
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