Creative Commons photo by jimmywayne via Flick

House Republicans attempted to invoke House Rule 60, a procedural move that allows a majority vote on the floor of the House to pull a bill out of a committee even if the committee has not approved it. The hope was that seven Democrats would join the 44 Republicans in the House and force a vote on House Joint Resolution 6, sponsored by state Reps. Dwayne Alons, R-Hull, and Delores Mertz, D-Ottosen. The bill would begin the process of amending the state’s constitution to declare marriage as only between one man and one woman.

Only Mertz joined with the GOP, causing the effort to fail. House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, told reporters that the issue is likely dead this session.

“This is it,” he said. “Either there’s 51 people who want to do it or there’s not.”

Paulsen said afterward that the outcome did not come as a shock.

“I’m not surprised by the result of today’s vote,” he said. “Gov. Culver and the Democrat leaders have made it clear they do not want Iowans to have an opportunity to vote on defending traditional marriage. The likelihood of the vote count changing this session is highly unlikely,”

In the Iowa Senate, Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, attempted to bring a similar bill, Senate Joint Resolution 2001, to the floor by getting a majority of lawmakers to sign a petition pulling it out of committee. All 18 Republicans signed on but only one of the chamber’s 32 Democrats — Tom Hancock of Epworth — joined them, causing their effort to fail as well.

McKinley said the fate of marriage will now be left to voters in the fall legislative elections.

“Iowans are tired of senators saying back home that they support allowing Iowans a vote and then not keep their word when they get to Des Moines,” McKinley said. “While our bi-partisan effort fell short of gaining the 26 votes needed to proceed, the voters this November will have an opportunity to decide if they are content with the continued Democrat obstruction and inaction”

Hancock told The Des Moines Register that he voted with Republicans because he lives “in a highly Catholic area” and his constituents want to vote on the marriage issue.

Gay-rights advocates applauded the defeat of the procedural moves, saying Republicans are out of touch with mainstream Iowans. A recent Des Moines Register Iowa Poll found that 62 percent of Iowans believe lawmakers should focus on other things besides gay marriage.

“Republicans once again pursued an agenda that is out of touch and irresponsible,” said Brad Clark, campaign director for One Iowa, the state’s largest gay-rights organization. “We applaud House Democrats who demonstrated their commitment to a responsible agenda to balance the budget and their commitment to freedom for all Iowans.”

Before the 2010 legislative session was underway, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, made his opinion clear on the issue.

“I will not write discrimination into the constitution of the State of Iowa,” Gronstal told The Iowa Independent. “I’m going to block that at every opportunity. There will be no vote on the constitutional amendment.”

With Gronstal’s adamant support of same-sex marriage, along with House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, social conservative leaders conceded that the likelihood that a ban could ever be passed in 2010 was very remote. The best they could hope for was to attempt to get Democrats on the record in support of same-sex marriage and use the issue during the 2010 legislative elections.

Supporters of marriage equity are taking nothing for granted, though. During the 2009 session House Republicans also failed to force a vote on marriage using House Rule 60. But a constitutional amendment was tacked on to several other bills. State Rep. Chris Rants, R-Sioux City, first attempted to attach a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage to the state’s Health and Human Services budget, but the move was ruled out of order.

He then attempted to insert language in a Democratic tax proposal that would have defined a married couple as “a man and a woman” for the purposes of the state’s tax code. That effort also failed.

In the Senate, less effort was put into getting a ban passed, causing Christian radio host Steve Deace to criticize McKinley during his drive-time program on Iowa’s largest radio station for “feeding constituents a line of bull” about doing everything possible to stop same-sex marriage.

Anti-McKinley fliers were reportedly being distributed in Pella, paid for by a Virginia-based conservative group called Public Advocate of the United States, that called McKinley a “chicken” for not pushing harder to force a vote.

McKinley made one attempt at forcing a vote on a constitutional amendment in 2009, requesting that Gronstal join him in crafting legislation to begin the process. Gronstal refused and the matter was dead.

Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday urging lawmakers to sign a petition that would allow Senate Joint Resolution 2001, which would begin the process of amending the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage, to be brought to the Senate floor for a vote despite not being approved by a committee.

A similar move is expected to take place Tuesday morning in the Iowa House.

All 18 Republicans signed on to the petition, but 26 signatures were needed to force a vote. McKinley said one of the chamber’s 32 Democrats also signed the petition — state Sen. Tom Hancock of Epworth.

“While our bi-partisan effort fell short of gaining the 26 votes needed to proceed, the voters this November will have an opportunity to decide if they are content with the continued Democrat obstruction and inaction,” McKinley said in a statement shortly after the effort failed.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, has repeatedly said he will never allow a vote on same-sex marriage.

Below is video of Senate Republicans discussing their petition Tuesday morning.

William Lietzau (Defense Department photo)

William Lietzau, a Marine colonel who currently serves as deputy legal counsel to the National Security Council, is poised to become the Pentagon’s new deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs in the next several weeks. Lietzau, an international law expert described even by his critics as a brilliant and energetic attorney, previously served as a special adviser to Jim Haynes, the top Pentagon lawyer during Donald H. Rumsfeld’s tenure, when Rumsfeld and Haynes codified torture and indefinite detention as hallmarks of Bush-era terrorism policy. The position, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, came open late last year, after Phil Carter, the previous deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs and a favorite of civil libertarians, abruptly resigned.

As the next deputy assistant secretary, Lietzau will be at the center of the Obama administration’s decisions about trying the remaining Guantanamo detainees in reformed military commissions or in federal courts. He will also be central to the construction of a post-Guantanamo terrorism-detention policy in an administration that claims to be more committed to the rule of law than its predecessor. Lietzau is said to have gained the confidence of senior administration officials over the past year, particularly as he helped revise the military commissions to include greater process protections for defendants — even though civil libertarian groups still consider those rules to be unfair.

Two senior military lawyers who fought with Haynes over military commissions and interrogations in the Bush administration said they were surprised to hear of Lietzau’s impending appointment to the Obama Pentagon. Retired Rear Adm. Don Guter, who served as the Navy’s Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002, described Lietzau as a close Haynes confidante but not an outspokenly opinionated figure. “If he disagreed with Jim Haynes you’d never know about it,” Guter said. “Because of his close association with Haynes I’d be more comfortable if I saw something public [indicating] he’d made a break with those policies.”

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig also described Lietzau as closely tied to Haynes, whose role in instituting extreme interrogations at Guantanamo Bay against the wishes of military lawyers cost him Senate confirmation for a federal judgeship. Romig, the Army’s Judge Advocate General during Bush’s first term, said that although he did not know specifically what positions Lietzau took on detainee interrogations or if Haynes even consulted him on the issue, “at that time, he was certainly in the bosom of the administration that was running interrogation programs that at the very least were quite troubling, and in many minds were a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.” Lietzau’s expertise in international law — he was part of the Clinton administration’s delegation to the 1998 Rome conference that wrote the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court — should have allowed him to know “what was right and wrong with [Bush's] interrogation policies,” Romig said.

While Lietzau was close to Haynes, he also became close to retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones, now Obama’s national security adviser. The two officers met in Europe a few years after Lietzau had left the commissions, when Jones commanded U.S. military forces on the continent and Lietzau was his staff judge advocate. Lietzau joined the National Security Council last spring at Jones’ request.

Lietzau has many advocates in the legal and policy communities. John Bellinger, the former National Security Council and State Department legal adviser during the Bush administration, sparred frequently over detainee treatment with Haynes and David Addington, Dick Cheney’s attorney, who took far more extreme positions. But Bellinger, now a partner with the law firm of Arnold & Porter, considered Lietzau a first-rate appointee. “I think Lietzau is an excellent choice who knows the issues and is pragmatic and non-ideological,” he said. “I have never seen him to approach terrorism issues or international justice issues in an ideological way.

Similarly, Eugene Fidell, a Yale Law professor and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, called Lietzau’s appointment “creative,” despite any substantive policy disagreements they had. “The last thing I want is someone to come into the job without the respect of the military bench and bar, which he would have,” Fidell said, “and having to start from scratch in understanding the legal environment.”

Rosa Brooks, a Pentagon policy official who criticized the military commissions during the Bush years, added that while she couldn’t confirm Lietzau’s appointment, “I am a fan of Bill Lietzau’s. He’s smart, an honest broker, and has both intellectual and moral integrity.”

Lietzau was the first prosecutor for the military commissions established in 2001 — an official Pentagon release called him “instrumental” to the military commissions’ “preparations” — and served in that role until 2003. Yet during that time, the commissions did not bring charges against a single detainee, a fact that raised eyebrows among his colleagues. “I have to believe in his position Lietzau was being used by Jim Haynes as a sounding board or adviser on all international law issues,” Romig said, “because he was not doing much as chief prosecutor.

In a valedictory May 2003 press briefing, Lietzau described his role as “really the process portion of setting up military commissions.” That process, established by Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Haynes, departed significantly from the military’s courts-martial system, restricting a defendant’s right to a public trial and allowing for hearsay to be admissible, although Lietzau pushed for defendants to retain the presumption of innocence. At the briefing, a reporter asked Lietzau if the commissions provided a defendant with a defense comparable to the normal military justice system, and he replied that the commission’s rules “were drafted to accommodate that kind of flexibility that would be needed.” But five years after their creation, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the commissions were unconstitutional, improperly established by the administration and providing defendants with insufficient due process rights. In 2006, Congress passed a law authorizing a new version of the commissions although the Supreme Court in 2008 found problems with the process rights of the new commissions as well.

One senator who voted against the 2006 Military Commissions Act was Barack Obama. Last May at the National Archives, in one of Obama’s most important national security speeches as president, Obama criticized “the flawed commissions of the last seven years” and said his embrace of a reformed version of the commissions would bring them “in line with the rule of law.” Some in the administration believe Lietzau is, however ironically, the man for the job. A senior administration official who would not speak on the record because Lietzau’s appointment has not been announced said that the colonel “believes the rule of law is a fundamental part of our effort in the fight against al-Qaeda” and that Lietzau’s long experience with both the military commissions and international law provides the administration with “value added as we work with Congress” on a “durable” legal infrastructure for terrorism detainees.

At times Lietzau has expressed surprise about the Bush administration’s terrorism decisions. During a talk he gave at Harvard shortly after 9/11, he said he doubted that the administration would seek to try anyone in a military commission; months later he was helping design them. And in an article for a book on terrorism and international law published in 2002, Lietzau averred that President Bush’s assurance that the military treat detainees in the “spirit” of Geneva Conventions ensured that detainees “will continue to be treated humanely.” Over the next several years, dozens and perhaps hundreds of people detained by the U.S. in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere were tortured — activities President Obama expressly forbid during his first week in office by issuing an executive order restricting interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army’s field manual.

Lietzau was a deputy to Haynes during the winter of 2002 and spring of 2003, when Haynes presided over an internal Pentagon debate resulting in the modified adoption for Guantanamo of “enhanced interrogation” techniques authorized for the CIA to use on senior-level al-Qaeda detainees. A Senate Armed Services Committee investigation from 2008 determined that Haynes was a powerful bureaucratic force pressing for harsher detainee treatment. A former colleague in Haynes’ office, Richard Shiffrin, told the committee that Lietzau was present at a key 2002 meeting in which participants expressed “some frustration with the quantity and quality of information being obtained” at Guantanamo, although Shiffrin did not attribute any substantive position to Lietzau. And no source for this piece had knowledge of Lietzau having anything to do with torture.

It is unclear what exactly Lietzau’s appointment signifies in terms of concrete policy decisions or shifts. An email to Defense Secretary Gates’ spokesman, Geoff Morrell, went unreturned. But Bellinger predicted Lietzau would “adopt a balanced approach between the security needs of the country and military and the need to address worldwide concerns that we do not have an appropriate legal framework or legal policies.” The senior administration official said Lietzau was “bound and determined to make sure, whether it’s in three years or seven, when he walks away from this job, there is a durable legal infrastructure” to handle terrorism detainees justly.

Both Guter and Romig, the former senior military JAGs who clashed with Lietzau’s old boss, Haynes, independently described Lietzau as intellectually “flexible” and willing to faithfully implement the policies of his bosses. “The guy is smart, so he can figure out what the Supreme Court has said” about the due process rights to which detainees are entitled, but “it troubles me the guy can go from one end of spectrum to the other, arguably,” Romig said. “It’s very curious they would take somebody to run [policy on] detainees who was in the position he was in seven or eight years ago.”

After numerous meetings at the Capitol Thursday, Brad Clark, campaign director for One Iowa, told The Iowa Independent that he expects Republican lawmakers in the Iowa House to attempt to bring about a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage by invoking Rule 60, which allows a majority vote on the floor of the House to pull a bill out of a committee even if the committee has not approved it.

Democratic leadership has repeatedly promised that the legislature would not discuss gay marriage this session. Gay-rights advocates have long believed conservative lawmakers would attempt some procedural move to force a vote on the issue in spite of Democratic opposition.

In the closing days of the 2009 legislative session, Republicans in both the House and Senate made numerous attempts to force a vote on a constitutional ban on gay marriage, including attaching it to a tax proposal and the state’s Health and Human Services budget. Democrats successfully blocked the efforts.

This would mark the first formal attempt to overturn the Court’s ruling of the 2010 legislative session.

“They can attempt to invoke Rule 60 after a bill has been filed for 18 days,” Clark said. House Joint Resolution 2001, which would amend the state’s constitution and define marriage as between one man and one woman, was filed Jan. 12 will reach the 18-day threshold Friday.

Clark said he is optimistic the effort will fail, saying Republicans will have to reach 51 votes in order to bring the bill to the House floor. There are 56 Democrats in the Iowa House and only 44 Republicans, meaning at least seven Democrats would have to support the move for the effort to succeed.

“And in theory, Democrats could just not vote,” Clark said, thus denying the GOP the majority it needs and the symbolic victory of getting Democrats on record as casting a vote on gay marriage.

State Rep. Michael Reasoner, D-Creston, sponsored the legislation banning gay marriage. He did not respond to a request for comment by The Iowa Independent.

However, Sporer says he was unaware that the term he used was considered an anti-gay slur.

On his Twitter account, Sporer called the protesters “pillow biters” who don’t live up to the legacy of British leadership.

The pillowbiters protesting the great Tony Blair aren’t fit to cumber the streets walked by either of the Churchills (John or Winston).

According to Urban Dictionary, the phrase “pillow biter” is “a slang and highly derogatory term for gay males. It was likely inspired by the notion that a male engaged in anal sex would be face-down into a pillow, biting into it.”

Sporer said he was not familiar with that definition of the phrase. He said he used the term to mean “one who cowers in their bed, chewing their pillow in the grip of mortal terror, rather than confront the intruder at the door. Put another way, it describes those who cannot choose fight over flight no matter how dire the threat or noble the cause.”

Those who take exception to his use of the term are further examples of “the thought police’s latest application of ‘Rules for Radicals’ and the suppression of competing thought,” he said.

Sporer served as chairman of the Polk County Republican Party from 2001 to 2009 and on the Republican Party of Iowa State Central Committee from 2002 to 2008. He is a regular guest on Steve Deace’s drive-time radio program and is occasionally still active in political campaigns, most recently as a public supporter of 3rd District Republican Congressional candidate Brad Zaun. He ran an unsuccessful campaign to become chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa in late 2008.

“Thank you for the opportunity to exercise my First Amendment rights so as to prevent an erroneous mis-attribution of poor motives or taste to my earlier description of the cowardly British anti-war movement,” Sporer said.

Bill Salier, who ran unsuccessfully for the right to challenge U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in 2002 and who remains an influential voice in conservative politics, said Vander Plaats had all the momentum he needed after last April’s Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. But his inability to articulate positions on other issues of importance to Iowans has surrendered that momentum to Branstad.

Bill Salier

“It’s Branstad’s race to win,” he said, adding: “You’re on the 10 yard line. Just don’t fumble the ball.”

Vander Plaats’ focus on the marriage issue has caused many voters, as well as the media, to pigeon hole him as a one-issue candidate, Salier said. It has also allowed Branstad to avoid talking about his record and instead campaign “based on nostalgia and ‘things were better back then.’”

“If he continues to do that he will be successful, but he can only do that if the other campaigns allow him to do it,” Salier said.

If Vander Plaats is going to be a threat to Branstad he is going to have to understand that the other half of the campaign still exists, Salier said, and he will have to demonstrate he has ideas about taxes, the budget and other key interests to Republican primary voters, such as “the Second Amendment and illegal immigration.”

“If he understands these issues I think he really makes a run at Branstad,” he said. “If he doesn’t, well, whether [state Rep.] Rod Roberts is in the race and they split a small percentage of the vote is inconsequential.”

Deace pointed to the Republican Party of Iowa’s fundraiser last November as another example of an opportunity lost for the Vander Plaats campaign. At the fundraiser, Branstad delivered a speech that was not well received. He read his remarks from note cards and at times stumbled over his words.

Vander Plaats spoke after the former governor but did not take the opportunity to attack him, Deace said.

“He should have put him down like a horse with a broken leg,” he said. When your opponent is down you should “drive a stake through the heart, cut the head off and stuff it with garlic.”

If Branstad’s record as governor does not come under attack in the primary it will be ammunition for Democrats in the fall. Conservatives will have to chose between the lesser of two evils, Deace said.

“The Democrats win and… the first people they’re going to blame for the loss won’t be there sell out candidate, it will be people like you and I ,” he said, adding: “Nero will blame us for the fire he started yet again.”

The legislation, Senate Joint Resolution 2001, would amend the state’s constitution to say “marriage between one man and one woman shall be the only legal union valid or recognized in this state.” In order to amend the constitution, the legislature must pass the resolution in two separate General Assemblies. The measure would then go to a public vote. If advocates of a same-sex marriage ban are unsuccessful in 2010, it would likely be 2014 at the earliest before the public would weigh in.

The resolution was sponsored by all 18 Republican members of the Iowa Senate. There are 32 Democrats.

State Sen. Merlin Bartz, R-Grafton, told the Mason City Globe-Gazette that Republicans will try everything to force a vote on the issue, but it likely won’t matter due to opposition from Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs. In an interview with The Iowa Independent, Gronstal vowed to stop the amendment at every turn and block a vote on the measure.

The joint resolution has been turned over the the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which is chaired by Grontsal.

The Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage last April in a unanimous decision. During the closing weeks of the 2009 General Assembly, Republicans attempted numerous procedural moves to force a vote on a constitutional ban on gay marriage, all of which were thwarted by Democrats.

The senator was responding to a report by the non-partisan watchdog Partnership for Public Service said that the Finance Committee’s demands for extensive tax records and audits of Treasury nominees has helped delay their Senate confirmation. Grassley is the ranking Republican on that committee.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)

The report says, “A number of reasons have been cited for the hold-up of nominees. In some instances, the Senate Finance Committee demanded extensive tax records going back many years and audits that ended up sidetracking some nominees and delaying others for Treasury posts.”

Grassley called this line of thinking “a myth,” saying the process has been the exact same since 2001 “and maybe even before that.”

“Occasionally a nominee delays giving responses to the committee’s questions, or gives responses that generate more questions,” Grassley said. “That stretches out the vetting process. But it’s a myth that the committee is asking harder questions of Obama nominees than prior administration nominees over the last nine years. The fact is, we’ve seen more and bigger tax-related problems associated with the current administration nominees than we’ve seen in the past.”

President Barack Obama’s administration has seen most of the Treasury Department’s 33 high-level nominees stalled in confirmation, including the agency’s secretary, Tim Geithner. Grassley personally held up four Treasury nominees in late December, according to D.C. newspaper The Hill.

And Grassley recently held up the confirmation of four nominees, ones for Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, assistant treasury for financial markets and deputy undersecretary for international finance. Obama’s pick for the international affairs post at Treasury, Lael Brainard, has come under scrutiny for her tax returns.

Grassley said he would allow the nominations to be considered just before the holiday break, but the full Senate, away from Washington since Christmas Eve, has yet to take them up.

Overall, the Partnership for Public Service found that out of 500 top-tier positions in the federal government, just 305 of those were filled and another 67 had been nominated and were awaiting Senate confirmation.

Lonnie Gamble, an assistant professor of sustainable living at Maharishi University of Management, demonstrates how an old satellite dish was converted to provide solar heat for toasting foods. (Photo by Beth Dalbey)

Cypress Villages, a 145-acre subdivision taking shape on organically-certified land north of Fairfield, aims to be Iowa’s first community to be completely LEED-Platinum — the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest designation.

The low-powered radio station KRUU-FM is believed to be the only one in the country to use solar energy to power its broadcast booth and signal.

And Fairfiled Mayor Ed Malloy is listed alongside big-city counterparts New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on a list of the 15 greenest mayors in the United States compiled by the Grist, a Seattle-based online provider of environmental news.

So, building a sustainable future may not seem like a big leap in a small city where living “off the grid” rates not even a raised eyebrow. But a strategic plan to institutionalize sustainable living is “blazing a trail” for other small Iowa cities, said Brian Crowe, a program manager for the Iowa Power Fund.

Fairfield, population 9,500, received an $80,000 Power Fund grant to develop its Go-Green Strategic Plan, which sets forth a broad vision of sustainability upheld by solid goals, aims and objectives its architects think will significantly lighten the city’s carbon footprint.

Impressed by a cultural predisposition to sustainable living in Fairfield, Crowe and the Power Fund board thought Fairfield could serve as a model for other cities of similar size. “There’s really no roadmap at this point,” Crowe said.

Easily duplicated strengths in Fairfield’s plan include methods to establish both baselines in areas such as carbon impact and criteria to measure success, he said. “It’s hard to manage what you don’t measure, and I was pleased to see they are looking at that.”

Crowe thinks a community-by-community response to climate change offers Iowa its best chance to become a national leader in sustainability. “If progress can be measured and quantified, and there is someone on the ground to make sure the program is implemented, it could mean a great deal for Iowa,” he said. “For the things we’re good in — biofuels development and wind development — we’re certainly among the leaders in the nation, But we’ve certainly got a long way to go when you look at energy efficiency as a whole, because a lot of the low-hanging-fruit work has been done.”

‘Big-time accountability’

The sweeping plan addressing environmental, economic and social needs envisions, among other things, wind projects, a local foods system supplying as much as 40 percent of Fairfield’s produce needs, and an already vibrant entrepreneurial spirit burgeoning with new business growth to support green technologies and services.

Support for the plan is broad and those committing to it do so strongly, said Malloy, the sparkplug behind the initiative and Fairfield’s mayor since 2001. For example, he said, the Dexter Corp., a washing machine factory with a foundry operation, offers a $1,000 cash incentive to employees purchasing hybrid vehicles. But he acknowledges that not everyone in the city believes that human activity is a contributing factor to climate change, or that humans can mitigate their influence, meaning the city’s sustainability council faces an ongoing educational hurdle.

“The focus from the beginning has been on how we can create a culture where we voluntarily do the right thing in terms of managing our resources, capturing their economic benefits and leveraging them in local commerce, in particular, foods, where we’re burning a lot of fuel to get it here, and recycling,” he said. “The bigger vision is how we build and design the community going into the future, whether in designing buildings or managing our natural resources in a way that’s more responsible.”

Scott Timm, Fairfield’s community sustainability director, who was hired in a partnership between the city and Iowa State University Extension Service, said “big-time accountability” makes the difference between a feel-good set of values and a plan with teeth.

Businesses and institutions pledging to implement the plan run the gamut from already sustainable projects like Gamble’s Abundance Eco Village to emissions-belching factories, and include elected councils and boards, schools and health-care institutions, cultural organizations, service industries and retail businesses. They’ve signed off on what they’ll do and when they’ll do it, Timm said.

Plan architects also got creative — and practical, For example, an invitation to join the new Green Business Council, made up of the town’s top CEOs, doesn’t come with an expectation for dues, but rather that the business will invest that money in sustainable practices.

Timm said Fairfield’s methodology — holding community conversations facilitated by the Institute for Decision Making at the University of Northern Iowa and involving every corner of the community — is a valuable lesson for other cities with an eye on sustainability.

“There are common themes almost everyone can agree on,” he said. “We’re not asking everybody to go off the grid, we’re just looking for ways to tighten things up, promote healthier ways of living and conserving resources. It’s not radical New Age hippie stuff, but values everybody can buy into.”

The sustainability council is working with the Iowa Interfaith Power & Light Group (Iowa IPL), which offers a faith-based response to climate change. The three-year-old organization brings together the voices of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faith communities arguing that environmental stewardship is a spiritual concern.

It’s a smart bit of strategy, Timm said, because “if the religious communities don’t get behind this movement, we are in serious trouble.”

By following the plan relating to energy audits of government-owned buildings and schools, Timm said it’s realistic to expect Fairfield can not only offset a proposed 7 percent utility increase, but also achieve deep. Gas and electricity costs for city-owned facilities run about $500,000 annually, and saving just 30 percent of that — a realistic goal, the plan’s architects say — amounts to at least one salary for a city employee, an all important consideration during a sour economy.

“That’s the low-hanging fruit,” Timm said.

Another thing Fairfield did correctly was tap into funding streams, like the Iowa Power Fund, a state program supporting energy innovation and independence.

“If you can really work with your local city government and the utility companies and look into where there are funding options — state or federal — you can get some amazing projects moving,” Timm said. “There is some serious funding out there.”

Changing behaviors

Dubuque Sustainability Coordinator Cori Burbach said Fairfield’s strides help guide similar efforts in hers and other Iowa cities. She took part in a sustainable communities workshop Timm hosted last fall and was impressed by intricacies in Fairfield’s plan. “I was really impressed with the local foods program, and the involvement of the local school district and university,” Burbach said. “Getting local foods into the schools is really exciting.”

Both the Fairfield Community School District and Maharishi University of Management also have developed educational curricula around the principles of sustainability. The university offers what officials say is the country’s first four-year bachelor of science degree in sustainable living with some four dozen courses. Energy independence pioneer Gamble, an assistant professor for the new department, said the breadth of courses epitomize the overarching goals of Fairfield’s sustainability goals.

“The sustainable department has morphed from a biology department with six students to a sustainable living department with 90 fulltime students,” he said. “Students are involved in innovative enterprises, like a 1,000-gallon-per-day capacity biodiesel cooperative, and wind generator and solar projects.”

The building housing the department was slated for demolition, but students convinced university higher-ups to leave it standing and allow them to refurbish it using green technology.

Timm said the schools’ efforts go a long way toward institutionalizing sustainable living in Fairfield.

“My impression is that Fairfield is a community of people who want to do good things,” said Timm, whose first full day as a Fairfield resident coincided with a Labor Day concert by the Beach Boys, where Mayor Malloy proclaimed bandleader and sometime Fairfield resident Mike Love “energy czar for a day.”

“We’re finding that people want to get plugged in, and that they aren’t afraid to try something new and to find ways to change their behavior,” he said. “That’s the real key, looking at ways to change behavior.”

Beth Dalbey edited the Fairfield Ledger from 1996 to 2001. An award-winning journalist, she has also edited newspapers in Adel and Des Moines.

The good news is that, when compared with other states, Iowa has a low percentage of senior citizens who are food insecure. The bad news is that at least four percent of all elderly Iowans do not always have access to food.

States shaded in darker blue have the highest rates of food insecurity among senior Americans, 2001-2007. Overall, Iowa ranks 41st with roughly 4 percent of the state's elderly population at risk for food insecurity.

The situation is one that Tim Getty, nutrition and health promotions program coordinator for The Heritage Agency, knows all too well. His organization is one of 13 area agencies on aging in the state, created in the early 1970s as a part of the Older Americans Act, and is responsible for planning and services to a seven-county region in eastern Iowa that includes Benton, Cedar, Iowa, Cedar, Johnson, Jones, Linn and Washington counties. The Heritage Agency is an actual department within Kirkwood Community College, one of only two such collaborative programs in the nation, and offers individualized education and training as well as funding to several community-based organizations within its service area.

Information provided within a recent state-by-state report on hunger risk is bittersweet, Getty said.

“Overall, of course, I was pleased that Iowa’s percentage is low [in contrast to some other states] — but even having 1 percent of our elderly population at risk of hunger is too much,” he said.

Each day in Cedar Rapids proper, community-based organizations aided by The Heritage Agency provide 775 meals to Iowa seniors. The national report, which was sponsored by the Meals on Wheels Association of America, indicates that roughly four percent of 583,374 elderly Iowans, or 23,335 individuals throughout the state, aren’t always so fortunate. In addition, while African Americans comprise a mere 5.93 percent of the state’s total elderly population, they amount to 17.76 percent of the segment most apt to be food insecure.

“The figures have historically fluctuated,” Getty said, “but over the past two years there has been a steady increase in the number of seniors being served by meals programs.”

While situations like the historic 2008 floods in eastern Iowa and the current economic recession have definitely resulted in additional risks to already vulnerable individuals, hunger risk for elderly populations were found across traditional socio-economic boundaries identified by federal poverty levels.

“As our 2008 report documented, low income is but one of many determinants of hunger risk,” wrote study co-authors Dr. James P. Ziliak, of the University of Kentucky, and Dr. Craig Gundersen, of the University of Illinois (formerly of Iowa State University).

The researchers discovered that the most food insecure seniors in the nation resided in southern states, and further scrutiny of that particular population produced certain demographic characteristics that are associated with a greater likelihood of food insecurity. For instance, being African American, Hispanic, poor, a younger senior citizen, disabled, unemployed, caring for a grandchild or a high school drop out were all additional risk factors identified within the populations most at risk for hunger.

Based solely on the percentage of Iowa’s at-risk elderly population, the single most determining factor for food insecurity is care of a grandchild, with roughly 24 percent of those at risk doing so either with or without the child’s parent being present. Other prominent risk characteristics for Iowa include a disability (18.27 percent), being African American (17.76 percent), being divorced or separated from a spouse (15.17 percent), renting living space (13.45 percent) or never being married (11.41 percent).

In contrast with national statistics that show rural residents more apt to be at risk than urban residents, Iowa’s rural elderly are significantly less likely to be at risk for hunger.

“Rural residents in Iowa tend to take care of their own,” Getty agreed. “We tend to make sure our neighbors are okay and take care of them.”

But that actually brings up the most pressing aspects of Iowa’s relatively low hunger risk for the elderly population: growth and stability. According to a national profile of older Americans published by the U.S. Administration on Aging, Iowa is among the top nine states in the country for per capita percentage of residents age 65 and above. Although the overall growth of the older population was slowed during the 1990s because of the relatively small number of babies born during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the older population nationally, and in Iowa, is expected to burgeon between 2010 and 2030 when the “baby boom” generation reaches age 65.

The population 65 and over will increase from 35 million in 2000 to 40 million in 2010 (a 15 percent increase) and then to 55 million in 2020 (a 36 percent increase for that decade). By 2030, there will be about 72.1 million older persons, almost twice their number in 2007.

Just like local food banks, which are being heavily impacted by the economic downturn, Iowa’s food programs for the elderly are also in need of helping hands and donations. According to Getty, the community-based programs that The Heritage Agency serves need “everything” — donations, cooks, drivers and a host of other volunteers.

“One of the biggest things we can do is just draw attention to these programs,” Getty said. “Of course, funding is always needed — there are budget cuts and other realities that we all understand — but reports like this really help to bring awareness so there can be an open discussion within the community. That way everyone knows that this is a problem, and that there are agencies that are trying to combat it, and then individuals can possibly donate or volunteer.”

Readers in the seven-county area served by The Heritage Agency can contact Getty if they are interested in learning more. Those who reside in other Iowa counties should contact the agency on aging that serves their specific region.