Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The administrator of the Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control retired in the wake of steady funding cuts to the division, the Director of the Iowa Department of Public Health told The Iowa Independent Monday night.
Furthermore, Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said she has no intention of stopping tobacco use prevention and smoking cessation initiatives, even if the Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control folds from lack of funding.
News of Bonnie Mapes‘s termination was made public in a letter to state news editors from Sen. Herman Quirmbach (D-Ames), an ex-officio member of the Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Commission.
“I was dismayed to learn that last week Iowa Department of Public Health Director Mariannette Miller-Meeks quietly fired Bonnie Mapes, administrator of the Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control,” Quirmbach’s Aug. 1 letter read (read it in full here). “Miller-Meeks has told some members of the Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Commission that she intends to seek legislation to disband the Division entirely and that she has little interest in developing effective tobacco control policy, despite a statutory responsibility to do so.”
Miller-Meeks did not indicate this was her intention, and that she would “continue to look at funding and priorities.”
The letter’s referencing to the termination as a “firing” is also not accurate, she said.
“Ms. Mapes was to retire in March 2012,” Miller-Meeks told The Iowa Independent Monday.
With significant cuts to the Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control in the overall budget this fiscal year — from $7.8 million to approximately $2.8 million — funding to partnerships and to the division was uncertain. Miller-Meeks said in order to pick up the financial slack, “the decision was made to terminate Ms. Mapes. She was eligible for early retirement and she chose that option.”
Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks
The Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control, which offers tobacco and smoking cession counseling, programming and anti-smoking literature and ads, has seen a steady decline in funding from the Legislature for a number of years. In the 2011 Legislative session, lawmakers attempted to cut the entire division, which Democrats pushed back to save.
Miller-Meeks said if the division ultimately folds, it will be from a lack of funding.
“We will continue tobacco and smoking cessation. What people don’t know is that our divisions have tobacco provisions attached to them,” she said.
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