Considering changes to Iowa’s HIV transmission law may make sense, but hesitation persists

Republicans are not being honest with Iowans about the state of the budget and have chosen to play politics instead of working to overcome challenging economic realities, Gov. Chet Culver said Thursday.

An Iowa sisterhood that developed out of shared grief has no interest in increasing its numbers. In fact, the five founding Iowa women are hard at work to decrease their prospective membership pool.

Tiffan Yamen, Kate Safris, Janet Petersen, Jan Caruthers and Kerry Biondi-Morlan discovered one another in 2003 after each had experienced the death of an infant daughter, and their shared experiences sparked a new mission.

Iowa could end the 2009 fiscal year with $161 million less in net revenues than expected, according to estimates by the Legislative Services Agency. That could force Gov. Chet Culver to call a special session to balance the budget.

In a previous report, The Iowa Independent detailed the criminal case of a Bremer County man who was charged and convicted to 25 years in prison under the state’s criminal HIV transmission law. Although this case was by no means the first to be prosecuted under provisions of the statute some consider archaic, its details have provided a springboard for Iowa’s launch into a larger national debate regarding whether criminal prosecutions for diseases are appropriate or constitutional.

“We haven’t had this type of work being done this early in the last three cycles,” said Tom Harrington, who chairs the Democrats’ 4th District Central Committee. “We’re hoping that by organizing early, helping find good candidates and having this infrastructure in place for them that it will be a big leg up over what past candidates have had.”

An examination of the state’s HIV transmission law and related court cases by the Iowa Independent has found that certain provisions may have unintended consequences, for instance, that despite its name, actual transmission of the virus is not required for a person to be subject to prosecution under it.

Wading into a contentious debate being waged within the Republican Party of Iowa, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of GOP activists and elected officials Thursday night that the only way back into the majority is to resist demands for ideological purity.

The 2009 budget will be balanced without a special session, and when previous budget cuts are coupled with a $440 cash reserve, the outlook for the 2010 budget is positive as well, Gov. Chet Culver said Wednesday.

The casual observer couldn’t be faulted for seeing Gov. Chet Culver’s itinerary and thinking the 2010 campaign was already underway, but the governor insisted that his 13-city whistlestop tour across Western Iowa was “about getting things done and setting the politics aside.”

More than three months have passed since two companies holding millions of debt for Postville’s kosher meatpacking plant declined to accept the bids that were submitted during a court-allotted bidding process. Now, however, it looks as if there is an interested buyer who may have the blessing of key creditors.

Democrats are pushing for a vote on federal climate change legislation, perhaps as early as Friday, despite continued misgivings from farm-state Democrats like U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell.

Even the worst of times can be teaching moments. That’s the thinking behind a collection of advice and best practices developed and distributed by the Iowa Association of School Boards.

A national commission investigating immigration enforcement under the Bush administration has released a comprehensive new report documenting the impact immigration raids have had on families, workplaces and communities across the country, drawing on information from raids in Postville and Marshalltown.