Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, right, visits with Cedar Rapids flood victims on the one year anniversary of the massive 2008 floods (Iowa Independent file photo).

However, while the figure may be massive it remains less than a third of the $3.6 billion in disaster recovery funds that have been promised to Iowa.

While more than 20 individual funding streams exist, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s funds have been the most utilized by Iowans. The agency’s Other Needs Assistance (ONA) funds, jointly administered by FEMA and the Iowa Department of Human Services for victims immediately following a disaster, has spent all but roughly $1 million of the $136.5 million allocated to Iowa.

More than $750 million of the total disaster recovery funds promised to Iowa remains unallocated or earmarked for specific projects or entities.

State officials involved in recovery efforts are to quick to point out that such a massive recovery will take time, and that especially mitigation projects need to be methodical and thoughtful in order to prevent future disasters. They also point to the fact that Iowa remains ahead of other natural disaster sites in the nation in terms of receiving and distributing recovery funds.

Much of the recovery effort in Iowa centers in northeastern Linn and Johnson counties, where Cedar Rapids and Iowa City were both hard-hit by June 2008 floods. Local officials in Cedar Rapids, who were displaced from their facilities by the flood, continue to debate and accept public comment regarding the future of certain structures. Until plans such as those are closer to reality, it is difficult for the Rebuild Iowa Office or other state and federal agencies to allocate funds to the projects.

According to figures from the Rebuild Iowa Office, more than 39,800 Iowans have registered with FEMA, and more than 35,000 Iowans have visited disaster recovery centers throughout the state. In addition to the 85 Iowa counties eligible for federal assistance, 77 counties are also eligible for state and public assistance.

A detailed look at the various funding streams, the amounts that have been promised/allocated to Iowa, what’s been approved for local use and the totals spent as of Dec. 4 are in the chart below:

The Iowa Legislature Web site also makes a document available for download with estimated disaster recovery funding by county.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Waterloo) took part in a congressional hearing about the future of the program Wednesday. Although Braley is hopeful that reauthorization of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act will receive bipartisan support as it has in the past, he acknowledges that the current political climate could pose a challenge.

“I have to be frank and tell you that, in light of what we saw happening over August and what we saw on the floor of the House [on Wednesday when President Obama delivered an address to a joint session of Congress], it would not surprise me if there was some partisan opposition,” Braley said by phone Thursday morning. “I’m hoping that the better angels of our nature will win over and we can have a meaningful discussion on the importance of the reauthorization.”

The Ryan White CARE Act, which funds basic care, treatment, education and support services related to HIV/AIDS, disbursed more than $2 billion to states, local governments and advocacy groups during each of the past three fiscal years. Advocates say the funding is indispensable to ensuring that patients with HIV/AIDS get the care they need.

Because distribution of funds through the program can be granted to programs that provide assistance across state boundaries, it is difficult to determine exactly how much funding makes it way directly to Iowans or Iowa-based programs. According to one estimate from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Iowa received roughly $4.5 million in assistance in fiscal year 2007:

The bulk of the money directed to Iowa goes toward helping patients access HIV/AIDS medications, promoting early intervention, and providing services in underserved areas. The 2006 reauthorization of the program required that 75 percent of the funds directed to a state under Part B are spent on core medical services (i.e., medications, ambulatory services, substance abuse treatment and behavioral health services), while the remaining 25 percent could be used for support services (i.e., respite care, outreach and medical transportation), unless the state receives a waiver.

Although no Iowans testified to Congress on the first day of hearings, Prof. Donna Sweet of the University of Kansas School of Medicine and chairwoman of the board of the American Academy of HIV Medicine in Washington, D.C., provided lawmakers an inside look at one Kansas program.

“The HIV Program KU Internal Medicine Midtown provides care and treatment to 1,246 patients as of today,” Sweet said. “Of these, 40 percent would have no coverage if it were not for the Ryan White CARE Act. We provide ongoing, comprehensive care to an ever-increasing number of patients, regardless of their ability to pay. My clinic has an average annual increase of 100 new patients a year — in Kansas, not New York or California. However, we are still working off the same number of Ryan White dollars we have received since 1999. To broadly paint the picture: In the last 10 years my clinic’s patient load has doubled, and my funding has remained the same.”

In order to keep the clinic afloat, Sweet reported that she and the staff have resorted to “Girl-Scout-styled fundraising.”

“There seems to be a commonly held belief that program cuts will only affect administrative functioning and that medical services for the sick will somehow always be available through Ryan White, or Medicaid or some other program; this is a false assumption,” she said.

If the program is not reauthorized, the Kansas facility as well as other programs throughout the nation will no longer have funds with which to operate. By Jan. 1, there would no longer be funds to provide services to 40 percent of the Kansas patients or make payroll for most staff members. In addition, there would no longer be money for case workers or for prescription assistance, a service that Sweet said is used by 80 percent of her patients.

“Over the past 20 years, HIV has become a highly manageable disease with proper care and treatment,” she said.

“Without the Ryan White Program, my clinic would have never been created. Without a timely reauthorization of Ryan White, it may cease to exist. Without my clinic, my patients will not receive the care they need to manage their disease. And without that care, the disease they live with every day may unnecessarily and prematurely claim their lives.”

Braley said, despite partisan challenges and the heated health care debate before Congress, he believes that the program will ultimately be reauthorized.

“The problems that led to the passage of the Ryan White Act have not changed,” he said. “We still have significant needs in the areas of AIDS awareness and prevention, and that’s why I’m confident the bill will be reauthorized.”

After losing seats in the state House and Senate for four elections in a row and giving Democrats control of both legislative chambers and Terrace Hill for the first time in decades, Republicans hoped a victory in this rural southeastern Iowa district would be just what the doctor ordered to show they’ve finally turned things around.

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn told The Des Moines Register the campaign was “a pivotal election and could set the stage for even more victories in 2010,” and in an e-mail to supporters July 29 he called the race “our spring board to a new Republican majority in 2010.”

As is often the case in politics, though, things don’t always go according to plan.

Now that the votes have been counted and the Democrats have managed to narrowly hang on to the seat, Republicans say they always viewed the election as a long shot, and that coming close provides a moral victory the party needed.

But some quietly question the strategy employed by Republican leadership of building up expectations for the race. Others are being more public, asking whether the loss will have more impact than it deserves because of the party’s tactics.

Jeff Patch, a former press secretary for Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, said on paper the district was going to be a hard pickup for Republicans. But party officials made it a point to paint a picture that the race represented a bellwether of the party’s resurgence, creating an illusion that Burgmeier was the favorite to win.

“If the Republican Party started out saying the things they are saying now that the election is over, stressing that it is a district that was in Democratic hands for more than a decade, stressing that there is a Democratic registration advantage, I think they’d be in a better position now,” he said. “The story line now is that Republicans didn’t measure up to what their expectations were. That was an unfortunate tactical mistake that they made.”

Staking the party’s momentum to this race was not wise, Patch said, since Burgmeier was an underdog from the start.

“I think the popular sentiment going in was that this was the Republicans’ race to lose, and part of that is because the party built that storyline,” he said. “But if you look at the data of the district, it is completely the opposite.”

Democrats have held House District 90 for more than a decade and have an advantage in voter registration numbers of 7,211 to 6,427, according to figures from the Iowa Secretary of State. (Voters with no party affiliation outnumber both parties.)

Democratic Gov. Chet Culver won the district in 2006, and Barack Obama carried the district in last year’s presidential election.

Democrat Curt Hanson, right, defeated Republican Stephen Burgmeier in the special election Tuesday to represent District 90 in the Iowa House.

“This was a pretty big swing and a miss for the Republican Party of Iowa,” said Jeff Link, a veteran Democratic operative and founder of the consulting firm Link Strategies. “They should have worked quietly and made a big deal out of a surprise victory rather than raise the stakes and bring all this attention to the race and then come up short.”

Tim Albrecht, a Republican strategist and publisher of the conservative news aggregator TheBeanWalker.com, said the fact that the GOP were able to compete in a district where Republicans didn’t even field a candidate in 2008 is a step in the right direction.

“Republicans essentially turned a lock for Democrats into a competitive race,” he said. “They almost pulled off a long shot upset. It’s a sign that shows growing momentum for the GOP as they head into next year’s elections.”

Get out the vote

When looking for the foundation for the Democrats’ victory, many are pointing to early voting. The Iowa Secretary of State’s office received 1,731 absentee ballots from Democrats and only 747 from Republicans.

Giving Democrats a 1,000-vote head start on Election Day is not a good strategy for success, Patch said.

“I don’t think Republicans can win in 2010 unless they craft a strategy to overcome that problem,” he said, adding: “There is some disagreement within the party over just how important the early-voting program is. I think it is clear that it is a deficiency that Republicans need to overcome.”

The Iowa Democratic Party has heavily targeted absentee ballots in recent elections, racking up huge margins long before polls open on Election Day. By contrast, Republicans have focused on a so-called “72-hour strategy,” hoping to turn out the party faithful during the final days of an election.

In April, RPI Chair Strawn emphasized the need for his party to improve its early voting efforts, saying a focus on Election Day was no longer good enough.

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn

“We just need to make sure that Election Day isn’t just Election Day anymore,” he told a panel of journalists on IPTV’s “Iowa Press.” “It’s election 45 days, election months. We need to start our campaigns earlier.”

Almost immediately after Burgmeier was chosen to run for the seat in July, GOP operatives and interest groups like Iowans for Tax Relief and the Iowa Family Policy Center were on the ground in the district.

And yet Democrats still vastly outperformed Republicans in early voting.

Albrecht said while the disparity in absentee voting is a major concern, he is confident the party has learned its lesson and will build an effective infrastructure going forward.

“I think the Republican Party of Iowa has good, steady, savvy leadership in place,” he said. “They are going to learn from this election and going forward build a strong campaign for 2010.”

Growing the party

Another concern the party must address is expanding their voter base as a whole, Patch said. Democrats currently have a statewide voter registration lead of more than 100,000. The upcoming GOP gubernatorial primary could go a long way towards narrowing the voter registration gap, but ultimately the party must broaden their appeal to independent voters and conservative Democrats.

“The bottom line is that if they can’t win in Democratic districts that are marginally competitive, like HD90, there is no way that they can retake the majority in the legislature or retake the governorship,” he said.

And unfortunately for Republicans, the political environment in House District 90 is “actually a little bit more favorable for Republicans than the statewide environment,” Patch said. While a Democrat has held the district for 13 years, the last time the seat was open in 2002 the race was decided by only 55 votes.

Despite the loss, Patch believes the party understands its problems and will correct them before voters go to the polls in the fall of 2010.

“I don’t think anyone in the Republican Party is excited about [Tuesday’s] result,” he said. “But I think they can see the light at the end of the tunnel after huge losses in 2006 and 2008 if they can make the necessary changes.”

Albrecht said he looks at the numbers from Tuesday’s election and sees hope that the Republican Party of Iowa can compete anywhere in the state.

“Democrats should be sweating that this election was so close,” he said. “I think the party showed it will invest in its candidates, and that will help candidate recruitment and fundraising.”

At the end of the day, Link said part of the GOP’s strategic error might be that the party’s leadership began to believe their own hype.

“Maybe they started to believe their own press a little bit,” he said. “They’ve gotten a lot of attention for changing things up and being more aggressive and trying to be better as a party. Maybe they just started to buy into that too much.”

Ultimately, though, HD90 is one of 100 House districts, and even if the GOP had won it would have had little overall impact, Link said.

“I think the Republicans looked at this and wanted to make a statement,” he said. “It backfired.”

Hanson will replace former state Rep. John Whitaker (D-Hillsboro), who was appointed to a position with the USDA. The balance of power in Iowa’s lower legislative chamber remains unchanged, with Democrats holding on to a somewhat volatile 56-44 majority.

Democrat Curt Hanson, right, defeated Republican Stephen Burgmeier in the special election to represent District 90 in the Iowa House.

Tuesday’s turnout was low compared to recent presidential elections but high for a special election, with 8,046 voters casting ballots in the district, which spans Jefferson County and parts of Wapello and Van Buren counties.

The race, which lasted just over one month, focused less on issues of local importance and more on trivia.

Both campaigns released television advertisements featuring cartoons.

The National Organization for Marriage bought more than $80,000 in ads to support Burgmeier, an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage rights. Two other groups — Iowans for Tax Relief and the Iowa Family Policy Center — seemed to play a central role in the Republican’s campaign, which spent more time criticizing Gov. Chet Culver and Democratic bigwigs than talking about Hanson.

For his part, Hanson received less help from third-party groups, but he enjoyed the undivided attention of the Democrats’ statewide organization. Party volunteers descended on the district from across the state, and surrogates — including U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin — made appearances on his behalf.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Michael Kiernan was quick to release a statement after the results were in. “Democrats have been successful in the last two election cycles and tonight because we have recruited great candidates, followed through on the promises we’ve made and are governing the state responsibly,” he said.

Republicans downplayed the result, implying that they never should have won the race anyway. “While we are disappointed, the fact that Republicans nearly won a solid Culver-Obama legislative district shows that Iowans are not pleased with the status quo and one-party rule in Des Moines,” said party chair Matt Strawn.

House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha) sounded a similar note in his statement. “While we’re disappointed in the outcome of this race, it is not a surprise,” he said.

Iowa House District 90 (Source: www.legis.state.ia.us)

Hanson’s path to victory

In an election this close, almost any single factor could have made the difference.

Hanson built his margin of victory with absentee ballots and strong support in Jefferson County, where both he and Burgmeier live.

Of all 8,046 ballots cast, 4,805 came from Jefferson County. Hanson’s roughly 600-vote margin there was too much for Burgmeier to overcome, even after winning the more rural parts of Van Buren and Wapello counties that fall within the district.

For a race that was supposed to be decided by turnout alone, both sides exceeded expectations.  It is even possible that the Burgmeier campaign met its internal vote goal, only to find that its turnout projection was too low. (Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why he had [some] volunteers waving at cars on election day rather than making phone calls or knocking on doors…)

Hanson banked a lot of votes early, allowing his campaign to focus its time and resources on a narrowing universe of voters, maximizing efficiency.

It was a textbook Iowa Democratic campaign, designed to push Hanson across the goal line with little fanfare and a lot of direct contact with voters. And it worked.

Republican Stephen Burgmeier, left, and Democrat Curt Hanson are running to replace state Rep. John Whitaker in Tuesday's special election.

Campaign headquarters for both major-party candidates – Republican Steve Burgmeier and Democrat Curt Hanson – anchor two corners of the town square. Inside, volunteers used hands-free cell phones to check in with volunteer canvassers, making sure no voter had been missed in a door-knocking campaign that seemed frantic. In a campaign that is set to last barely longer than a month, opportunity lies behind every door.

The vacancy in House District 90, which includes all or parts of Jefferson, Van Buren and Wapello counties in southeast Iowa, was created when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack tapped Hillsboro farmer John Whitaker to head the Farm Service Agency in Iowa. Whitaker was a state legislator since 2002.

House District 90 by the numbers

The district is made up of an eclectic mix of historic riverfront towns that have retained much of their 1880s look, Amish settlements, century farms that have remained in the same families for generations, and one larger town that couldn’t be more different from the rest of the district: Fairfield, the Jefferson County seat, has about 1,500 votes at stake. About one-third of the population there practices Transcendental Meditation, a relaxation technique popularized by Maharishi Mehesh Yogi, founder of the local Maharishi University of Management (M.U.M.).

Iowa House District 90 (Source: www.legis.state.ia.us)

Democrats outnumber Republicans district-wide, with 7,189 voters compared to the GOP’s 6,419. No-party voters are the largest bloc with 7,997. Those numbers, combined with significant “get out the vote” efforts from both major party campaigns, mean next week’s election could come down to the wire. And, as with almost any special election, because turnout will probably remain low, any single factor could make the difference.

“The district has been Democratic, but in a special election, anything can happen,” said Iowa Democratic Party Executive Director Norm Sterzenbach. “It comes down to who turns out.”

One indicator of turnout is absentee voting, which can offer a glimpse into each candidate’s relative strength going into election day. By that measure, things look good for the Democrats. According to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, voters had returned a total of 2,156 absentee ballots by last Thursday. 1,308 came from Democrats and only 603 came from Republicans. No-party voters mailed in only 243 ballots, a sign that both campaigns are more focused on turning out their base rather than persuading unaffiliated voters to support them.

The total number of absentee ballot requests, including ballots that have been sent to voters but not returned to county election officials, reflect a similar margin between the parties.

Although party registration does not necessarily dictate whom a voter will support, most special elections are decided by which side better turns out the base of their party, so it is a useful, if not definitive, point of data.

GOP sees opportunity among conservative Democrats

Democrats have held District 90 for the last several election cycles, but one unknown factor going into Tuesday’s election is how contentious political issues at the state and national level might filter down to the local race. Sterzenbach said that most, if not all, legislative campaigns are waged on local issues, but in a special election, “everything matters a little bit.”

The GOP may see opportunity in the fallout from this year’s Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, from President Obama’s efforts to reform health care, or from Gov. Chet Culver’s I-JOBS plan, for instance.

So far, all of the television commercials released by the Burgmeier campaign and its allies have focused scrutiny more on statewide and national issues than on Hanson himself. The National Organization for Marriage has spent more than $80,000 to promote Burgmeier’s opposition to same-sex marriage, for instance, not mentioning Hanson in their commercial at all. Iowans for Tax Relief released a television ad attacking Hanson for being in the same party as Culver and as George Soros, a billionaire businessman who has donated to liberal causes nationally, but who has not been tied to the Hanson campaign in particular. These sorts of messages may be intended mostly to rile up the Republican base, but they could also serve to shave away at the Democrats’ advantage in absentee ballots by making more conservative members of the party nervous about their candidate.

That group of voters – Democrats on paper who are social and fiscal conservatives at heart – is significant in House District 90, said Fairfield farmer Phil Gevock, who has been a Burgmeier ally in many local government disputes over the years.

“In this part of the state, you have a fair number of what you’d call old-line conservative Democrats, the Blue Dog Democrats, who are Democrats only because FDR saved their family farm,” Gevock observed. “That type of Democrat is conservative on every issue down the line, but they still register Democrat because their parents might roll over in the grave if they didn’t.”
“Of any of the Republicans who have run in this House district in the last 12 years, [Burgmeier] probably stands a better chance of getting more crossover vote than any of them,” Gevock said.

If Burgmeier wins the support of many conservative Democrats, it could be because he used to be one of them. He ran for Jefferson County supervisor two times, first as a Democrat and then as an independent, before finally winning the seat as a Republican in 2000. Burgmeier says he’s always been fiscally conservative and opposed to abortion rights, so his move away from the Democratic Party didn’t represent a huge ideological shift on his part. “I felt more and more that the longer I stayed in the Democratic Party, the more of an outsider I became,” he said.

Third-party candidates unlikely to affect the outcome

Campaign yard signs have become ubiquitous in House District 90, adorning the lawns of the stately homes on either side of Iowa Highway 1, Fairfield’s main thoroughfare. Barn signs dot the surrounding farmland for miles. The two major-party candidates’ signs were designed and produced professionally, offering a stark contrast to the crude hand-painted signs promoting the candidacy of one of the other candidates in the race.

In all, two independent candidates – both from Keosauqua – are also vying for the seat in the Iowa House. Dan Cesar, representing the virtually-unknown Fourth of July party, and Douglas Philips, who was nominated by petition without a party affiliation, are making things interesting, but aren’t likely to change the election’s outcome.

Tolerance for third-party candidates runs high in House District 90, but the third- and no-party candidates are more punctuation marks on the district’s uniqueness rather than part of its political foundation. Cesar, who was incumbent Whitaker’s only opponent in the 2008 election, lost by a large, double-digit margin.

“My guess is they would probably take just a little bit of support away from [Burgmeier],” Gevock said, “but on the other hand, people who will vote for those guys probably wouldn’t have voted otherwise.”

Philips admitted in an interview that he does not expect to win Tuesday, but he said that if he can convince just one individual to take on the two-party system and expose it as broken, his candidacy will have been a success. “I think there has been an understanding, in this district at least, that the status quo two-party system is broken,” Philips said.

The rural-urban divide

Burgmeier himself thinks his chances of winning are good. Based on his reputation as an advocate for property rights and an opponent of eminent domain, he says he has earned solid support among the district’s rural residents, particularly in Van Buren County, where there are about 5,200 votes up for grabs and exactly zero traffic lights.

But in Jefferson County, a more densely populated part of the district where there are twice as many eligible voters, the stakes are higher. Burgmeier supporters know their candidate will have to do well there to win, and that could be a challenge.

Conventional wisdom dictates that to succeed in Jefferson County, a candidate must win the support from meditating members of the community, who are difficult to lump together politically because they include Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and former members the now-defunct Natural Law Party. In recent elections, to the extent that the group votes as a bloc, it seems to be based more on rural-urban lines than strictly ideological ones.

The same could be said for many other voters in Fairfield, where Burgmeier’s answers to questions related to municipal airport expansion and rural subdivision paving have angered some residents.

But Burgmeier’s supporters, who acknowledge that rural voters alone will not be enough to deliver a victory for their candidate, say he still enjoys a solid reputation for giving all groups a fair hearing, even when he sides with rural interests over municipal ones.

“He’s never shut anyone out,” Gevock said. “He’s always listened and treated people with respect.”

Of course, no one was saying that Hanson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, would do otherwise. Both Hanson and Burgmeier are well known and respected throughout the district. A retired Fairfield High School driver education teacher, Hanson taught hundreds of today’s voters to drive. Burgmeier is a three-term county supervisor and father of five who has umpired Little League for 23 years. Both are known for their honesty, fairness and accountability.

In other words, when residents of House District 90 speak of either candidate, they usually have nice things to say. But that doesn’t mean Tuesday’s election is on everyone’s mind. At Revelations, a Fairfield coffee shop, café and used book store whose sandwich and pizza menu is loaded with the locally grown produce offered at the twice-weekly farmers market up the street, chatter is as likely to be about the Beach Boys’ Labor Day concert at the Fairfield Middle School as politics. Tom Gamrath, a prominent community leader and long-time main street business owner, steers clear of the subject as best he can.

“For some people, it’s really important, but the people who run the parties are typically the ones who are really into it,” Gamrath said.

Who will get his vote?

“I’d rather not say,” Gamrath hedged. “I have to do business in this town.”

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

In late October 2007, while members of the Republican party and White House officials worked to kill an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Grassley instructed Senate Finance Committee aides to distribute positive talking points directly to Republican members of the House that Grassley believed could be persuaded to support the bill. In doing so, Grassley usurped Republican leadership in the House and took his case for the bill directly to rank-and-file Republicans. To add further insult to injury, it was reported that instead of presenting the talking points to Republican leadership, Grassley instead presented them to Democratic leadership before their distribution.

“It makes no sense to negotiate with members who are trying to kill the bill,” Grassley explained on the Senate floor when describing his actions in relation to SCHIP. He went on to call Republican criticisms of the legislation “a very sad mischaracterization of the bill.”

While Grassley has not forthrightly asserted his attentions toward current health care reform is to “kill the bill,” other members of his party have not been so timid.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is rumored to be considering a presidential run, said, “The Republicans should kill the bill. It’s a bad idea.”

U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, of Michigan and the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said that if the “health care bill wasn’t dead before, it should be now.”

Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina, infamously told opponents of reform on a July conference call that “if we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo — it will break him.”

Grassley, who perhaps understands Congressional chess matches better than most, hasn’t gone that far. Instead he has called for the process to be slowed and reassessed, and for the opportunity for more Republicans to have input on the bill.

“It’s not about getting a lot of Republicans. It’s about getting a lot of Democrats and Republicans,” Grassley said. “We ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes.”

Facing an election that might be the most tenuous he’s seen in years and threatened with a partisan primary, Grassley further emphasized this point by saying that he would not vote for a bill that lacks significant Republican support.

What Grassley has omitted from his numerous public comments is how he will overcome what he understood to be true years ago: It makes no sense to negotiate with members who only seek to kill the bill.

Or, as U.S. Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) said, “If they refuse to compromise, then who’s killing the bill?”

U.S. Border Patrol agent Gabriel Pacheco walks back to his vehicle along the border fence with its concertino wire topping it Monday Nov. 17, 2008 in San Diego. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

The idea of deporting illegal immigrants who are also hardened criminals wouldn’t seem like a controversial idea. So when David Venturella, Executive Director of the Secure Communities Program at Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified to Congress in April, he proudly announced the expansion of his program as part of a “comprehensive effort to increase national security and community safety by identifying, processing, and removing deportable criminal aliens.”

But while there’s strong support for deporting dangerous criminals, federal programs such as this one are extending far beyond that goal and detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants for such minor infractions as running a stop sign or carrying an open container of alcohol.

The Secure Communities program, highlighted in a Washington Post story this week, started as a pilot program by President Bush last year. It requires local police to check the immigration status of everyone booked into a local jail. When suspects are fingerprinted, their identifying information is immediately sent to ICE to determine the suspect’s immigration status. (ICE maintains fingerprint data on all individuals who’ve had contact with immigration authorities.) Undocumented immigrants (and even some immigrants who are legal residents) can eventually be deported after their criminal cases are resolved and any sentence is served. If fingerprints from all 14 million suspects booked into local jails each year were screened this way, DHS estimates, about 1.4 million immigrants would be deemed “criminal aliens” and deportable. By contrast, only 117,000 “criminal immigrants” were deported last year.

But the large numbers of immigrants that could be swept up in the program’s snare is causing serious concern among immigrants’ advocates. Although ICE says its goal is to deport the most serious offenders, under the program, identifying information on all suspects arrested for any sort of alleged crimes will be immediately sent to ICE. If the person shows up in an ICE database as an undocumented immigrant, ICE can place a retainer on the individual — meaning they could begin deportation proceedings against him. So an undocumented immigrant wrongly arrested for a traffic violation could be deported under the Secure Communities initiative as easily as could a convicted felon.

Few statistics are available on who is being targeted and deported under the program so far, since it only began in a few communities last October. But since then, the program has been operating in local facilities that have booked 288,000 people, said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for ICE. Of those, almost 3,000 have been “aliens arrested for or convicted of Level 1 offenses,” said Rocha. A Level 1 offense is a crime that carries a sentence of more than a year in prison, such as murder, robbery, rape or drug crimes. “But we’ve lodged detainers on more than 6000,” said Rocha. So about half of the offenders to be deported were either charged with or found guilty of relatively minor offenses. (Rocha said he did not know how many of the 6000 were categorized as Level 2, and how many were Level 3.)

“It’s deceptively benign,” said Joan Friedland, Immigration Policy Director at the National Immigration Law Center, talking about the Secure Communities program. Friedland and others are particularly concerned because other federal programs aimed at seizing and deporting criminal aliens, such as the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws, have led to charges of racial profiling and, according to the General Accountability Office, deportation of undocumented immigrants picked up for such minor infractions as speeding, carrying an open container of alcohol, and urinating in public. Local police also worry, as a report released this week from the Police Foundation points out, that the program deters undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes and cooperating with local investigations.

Particularly brazen sheriffs in communities with high anti-immigrant sentiment — such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff known for marching illegal immigrants past news cameras in leg irons and prison underwear — appear to be taking advantage of the law to try to rid their counties of as many immigrants as possible. Arpaio is now under federal investigation for racial profiling and other potential civil rights violations.

Immigrant advocates worry that the Secure Communities program could cause even more problems because 287(g) at least trains local officials on using the immigration laws and targeting dangerous criminals. The Secure Communities initiative, by contrast, has no safeguards to prevent its abuse by local authorities or to ensure that ICE focuses on deporting felons or other serious or repeat offenders rather than those arrested for minor infractions or as a pretense.

“Because of how other programs have operated you’d think you’d want something in place when this one starts to prevent its abuse,” said Friedland. Yet, as Rocha confirmed, the program has no regulations that govern how ICE or local authorities are supposed to implement it.
“The problem with Secure Communities,” said Marty Rosenbluth, an immigration lawyer with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina, “is there’s no way that we know of to be able to track it. There’s no accountability, there’s no reporting procedures, there’s no way to document in any systematic fashion who’s getting into deportation proceedings because of Secure Communities.” Secure Communities is now operating in 12 communities in North Carolina, and 48 nationwide. DHS plans to expand it to all local law enforcement agencies by the end of 2012.

“Under 287(g) in North Carolina, most people deported have been picked up for driving-related offenses. With Secure Communities, since the identification process is when people are booked, not when they’re convicted, our fear is that the same pattern will duplicate itself,” said Rosenbluth.

Indeed, Ivan Ortiz, an ICE spokesman, told the North Carolina News & Observer when asked about the program: “If the person ran a light, then we need to prioritize our work, and we may not be able to send an agent to the local jail to get them,” Ortiz said. “But I guarantee you, we will catch up to them later.”

Rocha, the ICE spokesman in Washington, confirmed that. “The goal of this plan is to identify and remove all criminal aliens in jails and prisons.” he said. Although the focus will first be “on those who present the greatest risk to public safety and national security,” ICE will also deport other lower-level criminals “as resources permit.”

Immigration lawyers worry that in fact, the low-level criminals will be the bulk of the program’s victims. “Based on my personal experience with 287(g),” says Rosenbluth, “I find it very unlikely that if someone is arrested on a driving-related offense, that if ICE has the capacity to pick that person up, that ICE will just leave them.”

The other problem is that due to flawed databases, the program can ensnare people who are in the United States legally, including U.S. citizens. “I had a client who was in a local jail for three months on an immigration detainer,” said Rosenbluth. “It took me three months to prove he was a U.S. citizen and couldn’t be deported,” he said.

Unlike in criminal court, immigrants don’t have the right to have an attorney represent them in immigration proceedings. So if someone is acquitted of a crime but shows up in a database as being in the United States illegally, he can be deported even if he’s here legally, simply because he can’t prove his legal status and doesn’t have the right to a lawyer who can help him.

“Once Secure Communities hits, particularly in rural areas where there there are very few lawyers, it’s going to be devastating,” said Rosenbluth, who said he’s one of only two immigration lawyers in North Carolina devoted full-time to representing immigrants in deportation proceedings. “People are going to get picked up at a traffic stop, fingerprinted and identified as undocumented even though they have a right to be here.”

What’s more, the program can target people who are innocent, too. “It applies when anyone is fingerprinted by a cooperating law enforcement agent,” said Tom Barry, who directs the TransBorder Project of the Americas at the Center for International Policy. “So if someone is booked for driving without a license and indeed they had a license,” if they’re undocumented, it applies to them, too.

Even people who are legal residents in the United States can be eligible for deportation under the program if they’re arrested and in the past had been convicted of a crime. “It may have been two decades ago,” said Barry. “So people who are longstanding members of a community and legal residents can be deported.”

Ultimately, the determination is made by the ICE officer and whether ICE has room to detain the person. “It depends if they have enough beds, rather than if the person is a dangerous criminal,” said Barry.

According to David Venturella, the Secure Communities program director, between October 2008 and the end of February of this year, ICE has processed “more than 117,000 fingerprint submissions under the program, which resulted in the identification of over 12,000 criminal aliens.” Of those, 862 “have been identified as dangerous criminals,” or Level 1 offenders — which includes nonviolent drug crimes. Even if 862 is a significant number of criminals who can now potentially be deported, that’s only seven percent of the total number of immigrants the program has identified as eligible for deportation. What will happen to the 93 percent of aliens — both legal and illegal — who were arrested for minor infractions remains to be seen.

Daphne Eviatar covers legal affairs for the Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

The group also found that young, highly educated people in same-sex relationships were 2.5 times more likely to move to Massachusetts now that same-sex marriage is legal.

In April, the same organization found that Iowa’s economy stood to gain even more than northeastern states that have legalized same-sex marriage since Iowa has no nearby competitors for same-sex couples who want to marry. The group found that Iowa businesses could see $160 million in new wedding and tourism spending over the next three years, totaling an extra $5.3 million per year in tax revenue.

Once the nation’s largest supplier of kosher meat and an economic boon to northeastern Iowa, Agriprocessors’ failure is now threatening to saddle the town of Postville with obligations to repay a federal loan. Documents filed this week in a New York bankruptcy court reveal that if the company doesn’t resume payments on a 20-year U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) loan the city took on its behalf to build a sewage-treatment plant, the city could likely owe the more than $4 million in debt that remains. Agriprocessors had been paying nearly $25,000 per month on the loan, but is now more than $100,000 behind on payments.

The treatment plant, constructed several years ago as part of a settlement of environmental complaints against Agriprocessors, was paid for with a $3.3 million federal grant and the USDA loan.  Although the company has returned to limited poultry production under the supervision of bankruptcy trustee Joseph Sarachek, and possible buyers are under consideration, Agriprocessors remains unable to meet even its current monthly obligations.

Sen. Charles Grassley hopes the Department of Agriculture won't try to collect a loan payment from the town of Postville next month.

Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said in his weekly conference call that he hopes the Agriculture Department will not demand payment immediately.

Noting that “you can’t get blood out of a turnip,” Grassley indicated he would be willing to go to bat for Postville, but not at the risk of having taxpayers pick up the tab for the potential buyers — individuals Grassley believes would reap direct benefits from the facility.

Grassley said Postville should not be unduly worried about the upcoming payment that is due in January.

“I don’t think they have to be worried about it because I think the USDA is — without making any decisions — just doesn’t have to push anything in January against Postville,” he said. “Now, whether the people at the USDA feel the same way that I’ve told you about this, I can’t say at this point.”

Sen. Tom Harkin has intervened on behalf of producers and auction barns that have not been paid for livestock sold to Agriprocessors.

In a letter released Dec. 1, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin began correspondence with Ed Schafer, the U.S. secretary of agriculture, on behalf of producers and auction barns that have not been paid for livestock sold to Agriprocessors.

According to the letter, Harkin, as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, received “numerous calls” from interested parties.

“These producers and auction barns are already in most instances operating at a loss due to low market prices, and if they go unpaid for their livestock or poultry, their own prospects for remaining in business are greatly reduced,” Harkin wrote.

Harkin urged the USDA to enforce the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which provides payment protection to these entities.

“It has become apparent that the USDA has allowed this company to operate insolvent, causing further financial injury to producers and auction barns [and] jeopardizing their own operations,” Harkin said in a prepared statement. “USDA should step up its actions immediately and make clear that unpaid sellers of livestock and poultry receive what they are owed, as the law requires, and not be tangled up for perhaps a long time in bankruptcy court proceedings.”

The letter closed with a request for the USDA to hold public hearings in Iowa so that the producers and auction houses could know their rights and learn how to become involved in the bankruptcy proceedings, if necessary.

While there were some Iowa auction houses who were still allowing Agriprocesssors to purchase livestock as usual, others moved the company to a “cash-only” basis within weeks of the massive May 12 immigration raid. In his letter to the USDA, Harkin admitted that he does not know how many producers or auction houses have been affected by non-payment.

Marvin Waterhouse, manager of Manchester Livestock Auction, told Iowa Independent this summer that he had decided to move Agriprocessors, which had typically been a slow-paying client before the raid, to cash-only status.

“I informed them that they would need to pay up front,” Waterhouse said. “It was nothing against them personally, it’s just that I need to protect my business. If something else were to happen, I simply couldn’t afford to be left holding an unpaid bill.”

Waterhouse explained that businesses come to the auction and make purchases. Although some companies arrive with checkbook in hand, most are invoiced the same day as the sale and pay within 24 to 48 hours. It was not unusual, he said, for Agriprocessors to purchase $100,000 of livestock during an auction.

Agriprocessors, facing a $35 million lawsuit from First Bank Capital Investments, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early November. The plant’s former chief executive, Sholom Rubashkin, remains in federal custody pending a trial on a host of bank fraud and immigration-related charges. In total, seven members of plant management are facing federal charges.

Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge traveled to Postville last week and faced uncomfortable scrutiny from local residents for not visiting the community in the wake of a May immigration raid that saw roughly half of the plant’s employees detained, criminally convicted and deported. The purpose of Judge’s visit was to announce a $700,000 state aid package for former workers and the assignment of three AmeriCorps volunteers to the community.

Dubow made the comments at the UBS Investment Bank 36th Annual Global Media Conference in New York City. Any future layoffs would be determined by the health of the economy next year.

“We are always going to size to the revenue that is there,” Dubow said, adding that decisions will be made market-by-market. “We’re going to have to see where and how the economy reacts next year.”

The company recently cut 10 percent from its newspaper payroll, including 82 jobs in Iowa.