Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (WDCpix)

“There was no way, financial, legal, or otherwise, we could have imposed haircuts, selectively default on any of those institutions, without the risk of downgrade and default,” Geithner told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week.

Don’t tell that to Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Ohio Democrat — who heads the committee’s domestic policy subpanel — says that federal officials had plenty of leverage to push Goldman for a lesser payout, but simply chose not to use it. Indeed, an investigation by his office, Kucinich said, found that Goldman was already preparing to take less than 100 cents on the dollar for the complex, AIG-backed securities it held at the time. He’s charging that Geithner — who headed the New York Federal Reserve when it funneled billions of dollars through AIG to other firms — simply put Goldman’s interests above those of taxpayers.

“There was only one way for Goldman Sachs to get all of the billions they claimed from AIG, and that was if the New York Fed voluntarily agreed to give it to them,” Kucinich, the populist former mayor of Cleveland, said in a little-noticed exchange with Geithner last week. “If the Fed had fought for taxpayers, Goldman would have had to take some losses and the cost to the people could have been minimized.”

Some legal experts agreed. “This ‘legally obligated’ stuff is a lot of nonsense,” said an expert on the Wall Street bailout who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. “They [Fed officials] are only as legally obligated as they want to be.”

That Goldman is such a powerful player in Washington politics (then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson once headed of the firm) could only have contributed to the decision to pay on par, the expert noted. “The idea of imposing a haircut [on Goldman] just kind of wasn’t in the bloodstream of the people involved.”

The controversy stems from the $27 billion the Fed paid in late 2008 to settle roughly $62 billion in insurance contracts that AIG held with a number of large firms. As the mortgage market tanked, AIG had paid out billions to those companies — collateral based on the falling value of the securities. But the banks were all scrambling to cash out on the balance because they were allowed to make more collateral calls as AIG’s credit rating was being downgraded — and because the value of those mortgage bundles was still sinking fast. Effectively, the Fed scrapped the insurance contracts and bought the securities outright. “We paid the fair market value at that time for the assets,” Geithner said last week.

Critics of that arrangement have long wondered why the Fed agreed to pay the full amount, rather than negotiate a better deal for the taxpayers footing the bill. More recently, the scandal has surrounded news that the Fed, at the time, tried to hide those full payments from the public.

The gist of Kucinich’s beef, which focuses just on Goldman’s contract, is more nuanced: Because of a months-long disagreement with AIG over the value of the underlying securities, Goldman took out supplemental insurance policies on $2.5 billion it feared it would lose if AIG failed — much like seniors take out supplemental health policies to cover services that Medicare doesn’t. Goldman executives have said repeatedly that, aided by those policies, the firm was fully protected in the event that AIG went under.

“If AIG had defaulted on its obligations, our shareholders would have been protected against loss because we were fully hedged,” Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally said in an e-mail Friday. “But, because AIG could meet its obligations, it avoided default.”

Left unmentioned, Kucinich said, is that Goldman’s supplementary policies were invalid in the case of a government takeover of AIG — which was the only way the insurance giant was ultimately able to meet its obligations. Translation: After the government stepped in to rescue AIG, Goldman was in a position to lose $2.5 billion, leaving the Fed with a good deal of leverage to negotiate lower payments on behalf of taxpayers.

“The New York Fed had a lot of leverage — a lot of leverage — to negotiate a reduction which would have saved taxpayers billions,” Kucinich told Geithner.

He wasn’t the only lawmaker making a stink about the deal. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) blasted Geithner over the Goldman payments, arguing that Fed officials had “every opportunity” to negotiate a better arrangement for taxpayers.

“The commitment to Goldman Sachs trumped the responsibility that our officials had to the American people,” Lynch said.

Geithner, for his part, fought back against all the critics. The Treasury secretary argued that — because current law doesn’t allow regulators to unwind troubled investment houses the way they can unwind failing commercial banks — officials were left will little choice but to prop up AIG and make good on all of its financial obligations.

“We faced a very simple choice: Let AIG default or prevent it,” Geithner said. Allowing the former, he maintained, would have led to an economic collapse much worse than the one that occurred.

“Thousands of more factories would have closed their doors,” he testified. “Millions more Americans would have lost their jobs. The value of Americans’ houses and savings would have fallen even further than they did at that time. People would have rushed to take their money out of banks. It would have brought about utter collapse.”

A March 2009 report from the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program indicates that AIG’s trading parties were well justified to fight for full payment on behalf of their shareholders. “[F]rom the counterparties perspective, offering a concession would mean giving away value and voluntarily taking a loss, in contravention of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders,” the report states. “They were contractually entitled to the par value of the [securities].”

But some critics of the Goldman payments have argued that, shareholders or none, the giants of Wall Street should have shown more willingness to absorb the consequences of a financial meltdown caused largely by them.

“Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won’t be laid off,” former New York governor Eliot Spitzer wrote last year. “Why can’t Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden?”

Instead, champagne-sipping Goldman employees are celebrating their bonuses this month.

Kucinich, representing a part of the country decimated by foreclosures in recent years, preferred to focus his criticisms not on the firms, but on the federal officials charged with protecting the public.

“The government gave Goldman Sachs more than Goldman Sachs had any right to expect while at the same time giving no financial relief whatever to millions of Americans facing a foreclosure crisis,” he told Geithner. “If that doesn’t illustrate what the New York Fed thought it was working for — or who it was working for — I don’t know what does.”

Big counties consider joining forces for more influence with the state legislature.

Rod Roberts reports more than $100,000 cash on hand for gubernatorial bid.

Iowa social conservatives not so fired up about prospect of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown.

Iowa Family Policy Center and conservative blogger exchange jabs over Vander Plaats endorsement.

Branstad poll “accidentally” leaked showing huge primary lead for former governor.

Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron

Last month, the Washington, D.C., City Council voted 11 to 2 to legalize same-sex marriage, and the district’s mayor signed the bill shortly before Christmas. But Congress has the authority to block any law passed by the council, although Democratic control of both chambers makes that unlikely.

The legal brief King signed was submitted Wednesday to D.C. Superior Court by televangelist Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.

Among the lawmakers joining King are Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Mike Pence of Indiana and Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.

The liberal blog Iowa Progress pointed out the potential hypocrisy of King moving to overturn the DC City Council vote last month, saying King’s opposition to the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage was because they were legislating from the bench. This is a case of “legislating from the legislature,” so while he may not agree with their decision he should be willing to let it stand. And if he doesn’t “all these claims about defending judicial minimalism and popular sovereignty will just seem like excuses for homophobia”.

This isn’t the first time the Kiron Republican has turned his attention to D.C.’s local politics. Last March he helped stall a bill granting the District of Columbia full voting rights in the House of Representatives by attaching an amendment gutting the city’s gun laws.

Amid the excitement of a new decade, the unresolved issues of 2009 and other years past are becoming more irksome and in need of solutions.

The Road to Recovery … or Not

The entire country watched in June 2008 as flood waters savaged downtown Cedar Rapids. The videos and pictures of the Cedar River overtaking downtown structures, destroying businesses and displacing residents were simultaneously heartbreaking and striking. Yet for every headline garnered by Cedar Rapids, another smaller Iowa town was left to cope with its own slow and tedious recovery without the benefit of national news crews.

Veterans Memorial Coliseum is shown drenched by flood waters on June 11, 2008. (file photo: Lynda Waddington/The Iowa Independent)

State officials have argued that all that could be done was done. They tout Iowa’s swift recovery, comparing the progress here to natural disaster recovery in other parts of the country. Yet even now families remain displaced, businesses are shuttered and Iowans, long known as America’s most politically intense residents, are becoming more and more disenchanted with government as a whole.

The few times that national cameras panned away from downtown Cedar Rapids, national viewers glimpsed thousands of working family homes drenched to their rooftops. Urban viewers were enchanted by footage of cows, herded onto a Vinton resident’s deck for protection from flood waters. Large portions of the residential area in the small town of Creston were damaged as a result of basement and ground-level flooding. No one can forget the images of a leveled Parkersburg following a May 2008 tornado. Many of the aftermath stories remain on public display at the state’s I-JOBS page, and much remains unfunded.

But once it is understood that the working class — farmers, nurses, shift workers, teachers and others — bore the brunt of Iowa’s disasters, it is much more easy to understand the state’s following economic downturn. Working class Iowans pay a disproportionate share of their income in state and local taxes, according to research by the Iowa Fiscal Partnership. This means that the very economic foundation of the state has been rattled by tornadoes, pounded by flood waters and then mostly left with empty platitudes of progress to bolster its continued support.

Those set aside in favor of corporate bailouts and unable to surf the tides of promised change remain disillusioned, confused and, at times, angry. Their way of life has not only been threatened, but, in many instances, decimated. Their long-held beliefs in the value of hard work, helping neighbors and self-reliance have been shaken and, for some, shattered. They no longer relate to a government that appears uncaring, and they no longer believe in political parties that provide soundbites that would be offensive if they weren’t so tired and humorous.

Iowa politics in 2010, despite being the vehicle by which reform and recovery could happen, have been regulated by those outside of Des Moines’ affluent circles to an oddity or, worse yet, a distasteful fairgrounds freak show. For when economic reality becomes too horrible, it is sometimes easier to grasp the nearest unfathomable boogyman than to confront the true monster on your doorstep.

It is in front of this backdrop of dismay and disconnect that Iowa politics will play in 2010, and it will factor into every facet of the state.

The Right to Love and Marry

Several participants in April's Tea Party protest at the state capitol advocated for legislators to allow a vote on same-sex marriage (file photo).

In April, same-sex marriage was legalized in Iowa. As some state politicians rallied against the Iowa Supreme Court decision and others praised it, most Iowans quietly pointed to increased farm supply costs and skyrocketing health care payments.

But groups have galvanized on both sides of the issue and are preparing to continue the battles begun last year at the statehouse.

Same-sex marriage, depending on which group’s advisories you read, is either proof of society’s inevitable enlightenment or the complete downfall of all held dear. And while there are distinct minorities of Iowans on both sides of the issue who are ready to do whatever it takes to ensure that such marriages are the keystone of all action within the 2010 state legislature, many more residents are afraid that the battle over certain couples’ right to marry will overshadow the business that must take place if the state as a whole is to stand on firmer economic ground come summer.

But once your home has been washed away by flood waters, or blown apart by tornadoes, it is difficult to surmount a fight against another struggling family, traditional or non-traditional. By that same token, difficulties paying for needed prescriptions and sleepless nights worried about mortgage payments aren’t often precursors to a rising up against any perceived discrimination. It is hard to fight for anyone else, hard to stand on even preached moral principals, when the very ground beneath one’s feet remains the consistency of sand.

As a result, those who stand to lose the most by having the legislature dominated by political grandstanding on same-sex marriage could be the people who stay home, shaking their heads at a spectacle created and honed in 2010 election madness. Those who stand to gain the most — specifically, those who are paying more attention to November ballots than first quarter earnings statements — will be those who rejoice and revel in the folly.

Renewed Faith in Antitrust

Producing the nation’s food supply has always been a precarious occupation. Natural disasters, weather fluctuations and simple bad luck have historically plagued Iowa’s crop and livestock producers. It is part of the territory, and farmers have come to understand the roller coaster ride that often determines if their seasons will be profitable.

The past few years, however, a new unknown has emerged that many producers view as more threatening than those they’ve previously faced: Market concentration. Within each of the nation’s agricultural industries a few, large corporations have emerged that dominate the sector and, some producers have argued, use collusive and exclusionary tactics to drive independent and smaller operations out of business. The large corporations, on the other hand, argue that their market dominance and sheer size allow them to develop innovative techniques for smaller producers as well as lobby all farm interests before Congress.

While U.S. Supreme Court rulings and national policy have played a significant role in the changing landscape of America’s and Iowa’s agricultural sector, most producers believe the largest culprit to the woes they’re facing is lax government oversight of existing antitrust laws. And, in a move unprecedented in American history, federal agencies appear to be, if not actually siding with producers, at least willing to listen.

Throughout 2010, the U.S. departments of Justice and Agriculture will hold a series of workshops for discussions on possible anti-competitiveness in several key sectors — seed, poultry, dairy and other livestock. The first, which will focus on the seed industry, will take place in Ankeny this March. The workshops mark a significant change from “hands off” life under the George W. Bush administration, when the the U.S. Department of Justice oversaw and approved mergers between Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms (2007) to create the country’s largest hog processor, between Dean Foods Co. and Suiza Foods Corp. (2002) to create the largest milk processor and between JBS and Smithfield Beef (2008) to make one of the nation’s largest cattle feeders.

The U.S. Justice Department, which appears to be making good on then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s pledge for more scrutiny of American agriculture, has brought in Christine Varney, a woman who built a trust-busting reputation within the Clinton administration, to lead its antitrust division. This Justice Department, unlike all of its predecessors, isn’t sitting back and waiting on an anti-trust complaint. It is willfully and meticulously investigating possibilities before formal complaints arrive.

Exactly what this means to Iowa, which maintains critical economic interest in agriculture, remains unclear. Although Iowa has fared better than other states in supporting and maintaining family farms, and has recently found the benefit of promoting smaller organic operations, the state also has strong ties to the large corporations that have now fallen under scrutiny.

Immigrating to Jobs, Congress

Census figures estimate that roughly 450,000 people over the age of 65 live in Iowa, comprising about 15 percent of the state’s total population. By the year 2030, the percentage is expected to blossom to 22.5 percent of the state’s population, or more than 650,000 Iowans over the age of 65.

It is widely known that due to Iowa’s out-migration of younger (and often brighter) residents, as well as its traditionally slow birth and immigration rate, the state is poised to lose a U.S. congressional district following the 2010 census.

What is less discussed, however, is the fact that Iowa’s rural counties are aging more rapidly than urban areas. As of the 2000 census, individuals age 65 and over comprised 20 percent or more of the population in 30 of the state’s 99 counties. Not only are all the impacted counties from 2000 rural, but the U.S. Census Bureau believes that trend will encompass 88 of the state’s counties by 2030, affecting the most rural first. At that time Iowa is expected to be the 12th oldest state in the union.

The direct and indirect impacts to the state, the tax base, local workforces and wider rural geographic health are far too complex for adequate recount in this short discussion of interest areas for 2010 and the next decade. Just in the realm of ongoing federal health reform, for instance, the implications of Iowa communities with 40 percent or more of their populations over the age of 65 — Littleport, Elk Horn, Berkley, Athelstan and Beaconsfield during the 2000 census — makes it clear that providing insurance alone won’t be nearly enough. As The Iowa Independent has documented throughout 2009 in a series of articles on rural health, those residing in rural areas are more likely to be living at or below poverty levels, with more chronic conditions, without sufficient nursing and physician access and lacking critical infrastructure needed for advances in tele- or distance-medicine that might alleviate existing inadequacies.

The 11 Iowa counties projected to maintain a percentage of older residents below 20 percent in 2030 also tell a story. The population centers in Polk, Linn, Johnson, Black Hawk, Pottawattamie, Story, Woodbury and Dallas counties are included among them. The other three — Marshall, Muscatine and Wapello — are all considered rural counties with one big difference from the rest of the state’s other rural areas. Each is home to significant immigrant populations.

At the time of the 2000 census, 12.5 percent of the populations in Marshall, Muscatine and Wapello self-identified as being either Hispanic or Latino. The latest estimates for each of the counties now lists that population demographic at above 15 percent. While this percentage compared to other states would not be considered significant, it stands out in Iowa, a state with an overall estimated percentage of persons of Hispanic and Latino origin at roughly 4 percent.

Iowans, who continue to express both outrage and compassion in the aftermath of a massive immigration raid at a Postville meatpacking plant, are only now starting to come to terms with their desire for maintaining the status quo in rural areas and the true need for a larger and younger workforce. Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa and author of a book on Postville, spoke candidly with The Iowa Independent seven months after the raid, noting that the move of slaughterhouses out of cities and into rural areas as well as mechanical advancements in the process has changed the face of rural America.

“The industry now requires a revolving door of employees because the wages are, if not minimum, then very low,” Bloom said. “The locals in these rural pockets don’t want to work for that kind of salary. The plants have this voracious appetite for hiring more and more people because a slaughterhouse worker who works for a year at the same plant is working for an extraordinary amount of time. The turnover in a year is nearly 100 percent.”

Workforce challenges in rural areas, however, are not only limited to meatpacking plants and other large factories. Iowa’s stalwart economic industry, the one most closely associated with rural life, is also beginning to feel the crunch.

At a congressional listening post in October, Clinton County dairy farmer Ben Blanchard discussed both his operation’s need for long-term younger workers and the nation’s need for comprehensive immigration reform.

“The way I feel, and I know that others may not feel the same way, but there needs to be legislation to allow [immigrants} to come over and not just on a work permit or whatever for six months,” Blanchard said, noting that short-term immigration solutions do not allow for farm knowledge and animal consistency.

The list, complied by Nation staffers, Washington watchdogs and grassroots activists around the country, aims to honor individuals and organizations that “may not get enough recognition but that are having a demonstrable effect — in Washington and around the country.”

From the magazine:

Most Valuable Grassroots Advocacy Group: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement

For three decades, Iowa CCI has built and maintained remarkable rural-urban coalitions to fight factory farms, urban blight and abuses of Latino and Asian immigrants. In the current financial crisis, the group has ramped up its activism on behalf of banking reforms that free up credit for small farms, businesses and families while cracking down on payday loan operations. When the American Bankers Association held its annual convention in Chicago, National People’s Action called for protests that declared, “We didn’t break the banks–the big banks broke us!” Iowa CCI, long a backbone member of the NPA coalition, showed up in force. Viewers of Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! got a flavor of the group’s in-your-face activism as Iowa farmer Larry Ginter brought activists from across the country to their feet with his cry, “If you are from rural America and tired of bank greed, stand up! If you are from urban America and you’re tired of bank greed, stand up! If you think it’s time to put people first and hold banks accountable, stand up!”

The nonprofit group, formed in 1975 by a group of ministers in Waterloo who felt Iowa needed an organization to fight for social justice issues, today boasts nearly 3,700 dues-paying members from 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties. It has grown from an annual budget of $45,000 to $1.2 million, with most of its money coming from churches and foundations such as the Ford Foundation. About half of the budget goes to staff salaries, which are modest.

Nationally, the department will distribute nearly $1.4 billion through its Continuum of Care program to help an unprecedented 6,445 programs continue to offer housing and services to homeless individuals and families. It is the first time ever, according to a press release from the department, that HUD is quickly providing renewal grants to prevent interruption in federal assistance. The department also anticipates announcement of new projects in early 2010.

“As we move into the coldest time of the year, it’s critical that no program risk running out of money to keep their doors open,” said Shaun Donovan, secretary of HUD. “These grants will make certain that those programs on the front lines of helping the homeless have the resources they need to house and serve persons who might otherwise be forced to turn to the streets.”

The Continuum of Care grants provide permanent and transitional housing to the homeless. In addition, they fund services such as job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and child care. They are awarded competitively to local programs that meet the needs of their homeless clients.

Iowa programs receiving grants are:

Based on the Annual Homeless Assessment Report released by HUD in July 2009, nearly 1.6 million people use emergency or transitional housing programs over the course of a year, and, on any given night, roughly 664,000 people are homelesss. Of those who are homeless on any given night, 15 percent are estimated to be military veterans, about 37 percent are believed to have substance abuse addictions, and more than 25 percent are severely mentally ill.

During a taping of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press,” the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 61 President Danny Homan said it is time to increase taxes and reform the entire system.

“I have called for tax increases. I have also called for eliminating tax exemptions,” Homan said. “We have wonderful exemptions in this state. Ostriches, for example, you don’t pay any sales tax on ostriches. Somebody that goes out and buys an airplane, they don’t pay a sales tax on an airplane, nor do they pay sales tax on the parts to repair that airplane. If someone in this state can afford an airplane, they ought to be able to afford to pay taxes on that thing. Draft horses, wine — wine shipped into this state does not suffer any sales tax. Rare and precious coins. I’m sorry, if you’re trading in rare and precious coins, maybe you could afford to pay sales tax on that.”

Iowa Federation of Labor State Secretary-Treasurer Janice Laue agreed, saying Iowa’s tax system is too regressive.

“Now when it’s time for, you know, to tighten our belts and we’re putting all the burden on the employees to carry this — carry us through this hard time, we should go back and ask the citizens of this state if these services are important to them, which I believe they are, that everyone share in the burden, and it wouldn’t amount to that much money,” she said.

Following the announcement of his 10 percent across-the-board cut to the state’s budget, Gov. Chet Culver called on public sector labor unions to reopen their contracts or face huge layoffs. AFSCME and the State Police Officers Council agreed, eventually voting to accept furloughs and deferred retirement payments in order to avoid layoffs.

“We’re taking five unpaid days to help balance the state budget. I don’t see anybody else doing anything to help balance the state budget,” Homan said. “I could be wrong, maybe somebody is. Maybe some people have written a check into the general fund. I haven’t seen them. All I’ve seen is our folks stepping up to the plate again. Again! And taking what amounts to giving money back to the state.”

For three decades, rules governing the disposal coal ash, the toxic byproduct of burning coal, have been left up to states, creating a patchwork of differing regulations with questionable effectiveness. However, after the massive coal ash spill in Kingston, Tenn., last year, which resulted in nearly a billion gallons of coal ash sludge flooding 300 acres of land, the EPA promised it would finally regulate coal ash.

But some fear the new rules may only cover ash stored in wet ponds, leaving sites many consider the most dangerous in the Hawkeye State unregulated.

A report released last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office laid out several potential options for federal regulations. Included among the possibilities is designating coal ash as a hazardous material if it’s kept wet, and non-hazardous if it’s moved to a dry landfill.

In Iowa, environmentalists are most concerned with disposal of dry coal ash in unlined, unmonitored former quarries and mines that received a waiver from the state allowing them to use the ash as fill. The sites face little state oversight and few regulations.

And because the sites are considered dry landfills, many fear new federal regulations wouldn’t apply.

“Regulating wet coal combustion waste as hazardous waste is an important first step, but it doesn’t go far enough,” said Carrie Le Seur, founder and president of Cedar Rapids environmental law center Plains Justice. “The EPA itself has documented many cases of proven damage around the country where coal ash landfills have contaminated groundwater because water leaches through the fill site.”

Coal ash contains much greater concentrations of elements such as mercury, zinc, lead, arsenic and selenium than coal itself, but it is currently not considered hazardous waste by federal law. An EPA report released earlier this year found the cancer risk to be 1 in 2,000 from exposure to arsenic in drinking water for residents living near unlined landfills containing coal ash and coal refuse, which is 500 times the level usually regarded as safe by current federal regulations.

The fear among environmentalists is that using it as fill in a quarry or mine reclamation project could result in the toxins leaching off the site into groundwater, something which has been documented in other states. Even in Iowa, officials with the state’s Department of Natural Resources have said contamination could already be occurring, but without monitoring it would go undetected.

“This contamination process can take many years, but for nearby residents, the health risk is very real,” Le Seur said. “The difference between coal ash and municipal waste is that every time a coal ash fill leaks, it leaks toxic heavy metals that poison human beings and other living things. We know that.”

Numerous paths to regulation

The GAO document said the wet-dry designation was only one potential method of regulating coal ash. Also under consideration is for federal guidelines to mirror the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act’s subtitle D, which would regulate coal ash at the federal level as a solid waste. The ash would not be considered hazardous waste and regulation would largely be left up to the state. Iowa’s DNR has come out in support of this method, saying it would force the state’s most potentially hazardous sites to install protective liners, test groundwater for contamination, and provide financial assurances and corrective action provisions, among other provisions.

Opponents of this method say the EPA couldn’t inspect disposal sites or require permits, and public involvement would be limited. They also contend states may not be able to regulate the sites as well as the federal government due to lack of resources.

Another option would be regulating the ash using RCRA subtitle C, which would designate coal ash as hazardous. Under Subtitle C, states are required to adopt regulations that are at least as stringent as whatever federal standards are set up and the EPA will have the power to inspect sites and bring enforcement actions.

Opponents of this method say it would be prohibitively expensive and would eliminate any and all beneficial use of coal ash in most states.

State action

Iowa’s DNR worked for nearly a year on rules to toughen regulations on coal ash disposal. But opposition from site owners and coal-burning businesses, along with uncertainty about what regulations the federal government may eventually impose, caused the effort to stall.

Several elected officials have said that once the EPA releases its draft rules, the state may need to rework its rules to make sure the public health is protected.

In July, Charlotte Hubbell, chair of the state’s Environmental Protection Commission, called on the state legislature to hold public hearings on tougher rules regarding coal ash.

The chair of the state Senate Environment and Energy Independence Committee, Sen. Dennis Black of Grinnell, said at the time that he would request that Legislative Council, a bipartisan group of Senate and House leaders that serves as a steering committee for the General Assembly when it is not in session, to appoint a committee to look into the matter after the 2010 session. He said doing so before the EPA released its rules would be improper.

In September, Gov. Chet Culver joined the call, saying he was confident the EPA would take the appropriate steps, but if state action was needed there should be no hesitation. He said he was open to the legislature looking at the issue in 2010.

The State Police Officers Council (SPOC) has agreed that its 640 members will take five furlough days during the remaining 7 months of FY2010, a move that will create approximately $847,435 in savings.

The state would also suspend contributions to a deferred compensation retirement plan, according to the agreement. The governor’s office estimates this provision will create approximately $226,232 in savings.

The agreement mirrors one reached by the state and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 61 last week that saved 479 jobs.

By agreeing to these measures, SPOC members will be safe from layoffs during the current fiscal year, which ends July 30, 2010.

Next week , the SPOC Board will submit the agreement to union members for a full vote. An announcement on the outcome of the vote is expected close to the AFSCME vote on Nov. 25.

“I want to thank the leadership at SPOC for joining with us to protect essential public safety jobs,” Culver said in a statement. “This understanding will help to keep Iowans safe while meeting our obligation to balance the state budget.  I am very pleased by the agreement and I encourage the membership to vote yes on this measure.”

Last month, Culver ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cut to the state’s budget. Initial budget cut proposals called for more than 800 layoffs. Culver announced that unions representing employees from the Department of Public Safety and Department of Corrections would have to open up their contracts in order to avoid layoffs. Two of the three unions have now come to understandings with the state government, with the third, Iowa United Professionals (IUP), deciding to accept 55 layoffs.

IUP represents 3,000 members, including social workers and corrections counselors.

The council was authorized in 2007, and the four non-voting members from the legislature serve two-year terms, appointed by the head of each party’s caucus in each chamber. They, along with 23 voting members appointed by Gov. Chet Culver, are responsible for issuing recommendations to help Iowa combat the challenges of climate change.

Watts’s position on the council is noteworthy because he has been an outspoken critic of measures to combat climate change for years. During the 2008 legislative session, for instance, he helped to distribute a book to every member of the legislature that claimed that global warming was natural and irreversible, denying evidence that humans have an impact on climate change. Last February, Watts signed on to a letter written by the American Environmental Coalition, a conservative group founded by evangelicals that calls global warming a “hoax.”