Misti Kloubec

Misti Kloubec, a Cedar Rapids resident and administrative officer in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, received the award from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder during an Oct. 21 ceremony in Washington, D.C.

“Many people in our office played critical roles in responding to the flood of 2008, but no one did more than Misti in helping our office establish effective operations at a temporary location in less than two weeks and ensuring a smooth return to our permanent office within five months,” said U.S. Attorney Matt M. Dummermuth. “Misti’s tireless efforts in finding practical and creative solutions to significant challenges in the midst of the flood and for months afterward were truly outstanding and deserving of this highest administrative support honor the department can grant.”

While presenting the award to Kloubec, Holder noted that she “carried out the important mission of the Department of Justice … with excellence and distinction.”

Culver said he has directed the Department of Revenue to provide him with “any and all options that may be implemented by executive action this calendar year.”

Additionally, he will speak with legislative leaders from both parties about fully resolving the tax issues during the 2010 session.

“The last thing our state tax laws should do is burden those who were victims of last year’s historic floods and storms, and the issue of adopting federal tax law changes to Iowa should be addressed,” Culver said in a statement.

The federal tax code was altered in 2008 to allow disaster victims to itemize all of their losses and deduct them. The Iowa Department of Revenue advised tax preparers to file as though Iowa law had changed as well, since lawmakers appeared likely to alter state taxes to mirror the change to the federal code. However, Iowa never made the change, leaving those who claimed the exemptions on their tax returns forced to return of part of the refunds they received.

State Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, vice chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s Rob Boshart that the changes were not made because it would have cost $56 million during an already difficult budget year.

Republican Rep. Christopher Rants of Sioux City, who is running for his party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2010, called on state government to give those effected by this issue “a tax amnesty from having to pay the tax collector,” since their decision was based on the “faulty advice” of the Department of Revenue.

In ceremonies in Marshalltown and Iowa City, Culver signed Senate Files 376, 477, and 474, all aimed at upgrading state infrastructure, creating jobs and flood recovery.

“Passing the legislation was the easy part,” Culver said. “Now, we must get to work creating good jobs and revitalizing our communities.”

The plan, which Culver discussed during his Condition of the State address, establishes an 11-member board within the Iowa Finance Authority to oversee payment of the bonds and ensure the projects fit into the program’s criteria, which include the number of jobs created, the project’s readiness to proceed immediately, and the project’s energy efficiency, among other things. Culver is expected to appoint six of the 11 members, although the time frame of the appointments is not clear. The other members of the board are the directors of several state departments.

The state is expected to sell bonds to pay for grants this summer, with the first grants being awarded soon after the bonds are sold. All money is required to be spent within three years.

Before the measure passed, Culver called on county, city and school officials to submit projects they believed could benefit from I-JOBS money. More than 4,000 projects were submitted, however governments will have to officially resubmit applications to be considered.

Below is a complete breakdown of the I-JOBS spending targets, according to the governor’s office:

Veterans home, community colleges and other public improvements: $285 million

·         $185 million to improve public facilities across Iowa, such as the Iowa Veterans Home, correction facilities, and our community colleges.

·         $100 million for further investments in state public infrastructure, including state parks.

Flood recovery and rebuilding: $165 million

·         $118.5 million in competitive grants available for reconstruction of local public buildings and flood control prevention in communities hit by last year’s disasters.

·         $46.5 million in grants targeted for help to Linn County, Cedar Rapids, and to rebuild fire stations in Palo, Elkader, and Charles City.

Transportation infrastructure: $115 million

·         $50 million to improve the safety of Iowa’s bridges.

·         $55 million to cities and counties to improve local roads, including many roads still damaged by last year’s natural disasters.

·         $10 million invested in airports, rail and trails.

Iowa’s universities: $115 million

·         $100 Million to rebuild 10 buildings destroyed by flooding at the University of Iowa, which will allow the use of nearly $500 Million in federal funds

·         $15 Million to build a veterinary hospital lab at Iowa State University

Environment and water quality: $80 million

·         $35 million to help construct sewers in communities under 10,000.

·         $20 million in competitive grants for communities of any size for water improvement projects.

·         $25 million to water-quality projects, including flood prevention, as well as soil conservation practices.

Housing needs: $35 million

·         $20 million invested in affordable housing for elderly, disabled, and low-income Iowans.

·         $10 million to construct or improve shelters for domestic abuse, emergencies, and the homeless.

·         $5 million to repair homes damaged by last year’s floods.

Telecommunications and renewable energy: $35 million

·         $25 million invested in improving access to technology throughout Iowa.

·         $10 million to create a revolving loan program to support alternative energy projects to support both new jobs and energy independence.

The Senate passed a $100 million bonding measure earlier this month. An amendment to the House version, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cohoon, D-Burlington, adds another $15 million to the bill for veterinary medical facilities at Iowa State University. The bill passed the House on a 52-40 vote.

Senate File 474 is the first piece of a multi-bill bonding plan that will total more than $800 million for flood recovery and infrastructure repair. Gov. Chet Culver initially rolled out a $750 million bonding plan in March. Lawmakers originally balked at the high price tag of the plan, specifically the governor’s plan to borrow $250 million for road and bridge repair.

After several weeks of negotiations, Culver and Democratic legislators managed to compromise on a plan that will borrow $100 million for road and bridge repair and another $600 million for Culver’s I-JOBS plan, which includes money for housing, public works projects and flood recovery.

Legislators have indicated they would like to vote on the remaining bonding bills this weekend in order to adjourn by early next week.

UPDATE at 9:15 p.m.: The Iowa Senate passed the House version of SF474 on a vote of 31-18.

The award, given out annually by the Society of Professional Journalists for excellence in journalism, will be presented during the SPJ Convention and National Journalism Conference August 27-30 in Indianapolis, Ind.

On his blog, Gazette Editor Lyle Muller said the paper was cited for its coverage on June 13 and 14, which was “during the flood’s destructive peak and at a time when The Gazette’s downtown Cedar Rapids headquarters were at the flood zone’s edge and without power, water or sewer.”

Schumacher, in a column written for the Baptist Press, said that even though floods destroy houses, ruin offices buildings and displace families, recovery is still possible. Same-sex marriage, on the other hand, “does far more pervasive and irrecoverable damage.” Eventually, civilization is eroded and a “blasphemous message” becomes the norm.

Floodwaters erode the soil. “Gay marriage” erodes the soul. A flood impacts for a decade. “Same-sex marriage” destroys generations. A flood draws a community together. “Homosexual marriage” tears the family apart. Communities recover from floods. The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence.

(h/t to Todd Dorman)

A spokesman for Culver said the allegations fall “somewhere between nonsense and paranoia.”

One set of e-mails from June involves Culver’s then chief of staff, Patrick Dillon; then head of the Department of Management and current chief of staff Charles Krogmeier; and chief legal counsel James Larew. The subject is tax policy and ways the government could restructure tax code in response to flooding, an idea Krogmeier calls “All the more reason to avoid a special session.”

The second e-mail exchange from September shows Rebuild Iowa Office Chief of Staff Emily Hajek saying she was “relieved” no special session would be called.

The e-mails exchanges took place while Culver was saying publicly that there was still a chance a special session could be called to deal with flood recovery. Iowa Progress Project President David Kochel said he believes they show that the administration was never considering calling legislators back to Des Moines.

The e-mails “raise many new questions about the [Rebuild Iowa Office], its leadership, competence of bureaucrats, and the intentions of those who wanted to block a special session that would give relief to flood victims,” Kochel said in a press release.

Troy Price, Culver’s press secretary, said the group’s allegations don’t merit a response.

“The so-called Iowa Progress Project is nothing more than a secret political slush fund that lacks the honesty or integrity to reveal their campaign contributors,” Price said. “They are quick to make negative, dishonest, political attacks but are apparently too cowardly to reveal their true identity.”

Because IPP is organized as a nonprofit it does not have to reveal its donors and is not governed by Iowa campaign finance law.

The group shares an organizational history with American Future Fund (AFF), a conservative nonprofit that works on the national level. Iowa Progress Project was originally named Iowa Future Fund. Leadership in both organizations is made up of several former leaders of the Republican Party of Iowa and Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful Iowa Caucus campaign.

Both AFF and IPP are registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4), a section of federal tax code that exempts them from federal income taxation if they operate primarily to promote social welfare. Both organizations have been accused of violating their tax-exempt status by trying to influence elections.

“The real issue is how an organization that does nothing other than make political attacks against Gov. Culver and other Democrats can continue to flout and ignore the intent of Iowa’s campaign finance laws,” Price said.

A partially repaired home in the Lakeview District of New Orleans. Homeowners who have returned to the area have yard signs demanding an investigation into the levee breach and renouncing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for proposed property buyouts.

Pull up the palm trees and other tropical plants, and it would be fairly easy to mistake some of the hurricane-ravaged communities scattered along the Gulf Coast for flood-weary Cedar Rapids.

Like most Iowans, I don’t like to play the game of comparative misery. People hurt, whether in Iowa or along the Gulf of Mexico, whether displaced from their homes or plodding through government red tape. But it was difficult to look across the still devastated landscape of Louisiana and Texas without wondering if I would see the same scenes years from now in Iowa.

In Houston, Texas, an area hit by Hurricane Ike in September 2008, residential areas are dotted with blue rooftops. The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) moved in shortly after the storm and helped the residents by placing blue tarps on their damaged or missing roofs. Residents of these homes tell the same stories of frustration that I hear daily in Cedar Rapids. They wait for federal assistance, for home-insurance payments or for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to complete their disaster recovery.

As I looked upon the destruction still evident in Louisiana, the words of a woman I interviewed in the late 1980s came to me again: “We should be and can be a community that cares for its own.”

Parts of New Orleans and other towns along the Louisiana coastline still sit battered and beaten from the 2005 devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Many residents left and have never returned. The tattered remains of blue tarps can be seen draped in and around damaged properties. Landlords there, much like landlords in Cedar Rapids, simply shake their heads in dismay. They have found little help in repairing their properties, if they’re repairable at all. Most are resigned to the idea that they’ll sit and rot until razed by local authorities.

While outsiders can often identify predominantly poorer sections of a city, there is no mistaking the poverty-line boundaries in New Orleans. Neighborhoods with money have rebuilt. Poverty-stricken areas sit abandoned like ghost towns while life buzzes around them.

In the more affluent parts of Louisiana, the roads have been repaired. In the poorer sections, exit and entrance ramps to the interstate remain closed. Concrete barriers have been placed along the shoulders of bridges, serving as long-term substitutes for missing guardrails. Shanty houses, never the sturdiest of structures, have again sprung up in a landscape that resembles the aftermath of a prairie fire. Birds rest on broken tree trunks, the only remaining evidence of the area’s flora and fauna.

The Lakeview District, a working-class neighborhood next to the 17th Street Canal, was perhaps the most shocking — and the most similar to the damage I left at home. I expected this neighborhood of primarily blue-collar workers and ranch-style homes to be recovered. In short, it wasn’t. There were some renovated properties, and quite a few Realtor signs at the curbsides, but others sat like those in Cedar Rapids — gutted and abandoned.

A man I spoke with at a gas station in New Orleans told me that a recent newspaper report said many of the renovated properties have regained the value they held before the disaster, but those that sit with damage continue to decline in value. Those mostly unaffected by the storms saw a nearly immediate value hike but have now settled back into their pre-disaster values. He added that while fuel costs now hover around the national average, rents in the city have remained well above what they once were. It was a situation, he mused, that further frustrated landlords, who can’t rent abandoned properties they’ve been unable to repair.

As we exited New Orleans, I was content to bide my time in bumper-to-bumper traffic. My eyes had filled with tears and I cried not only for those who lost their lives, homes and businesses in natural disasters but, selfishly, for myself and my own community. I had been searching the Gulf Coast for hope. I wanted to carry its recovery back with me to Iowa. Instead, I found the same story of social class divisions and sadness that has already emerged back home.

People in the Midwest have said that we shouldn’t cry for those in Louisiana, that they “chose to live there” and that “New Orleans is just a bowl that filled with water.” I wondered if those back home who uttered such phrases would be shocked to know that some people there, while wishing us well with our recovery, also believe we brought the floods on ourselves by clearing land for farming and creating excess water runoff into our rivers.

Few Gulf Coast survivors are actually interested in the blame game. Those relocated to Houston and Dallas miss the lives they left behind. Like residents and business owners here, they continue to go through the motions, but it’s only half-hearted living. One woman said it is difficult to live a full life when a piece of you remains elsewhere, likely swept away in a storm by floodwaters.

Our nation has not cared for its own — not the people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, and not the people of Iowa and Illinois. Gov. Chet Culver argues that the federal government, which faced more than 30 national disasters in 2008, cannot provide for all of its citizens’ needs. Iowa will need to generate its own help, he says.

But driving along the Gulf Coast, I’m inclined to believe that if the nation had stood up for people hurt by the hurricanes years ago, we might have nurtured a stronger national conscience. Instead, we looked upon those without electricity, without shelter and without shoes and demanded they pull themselves out of the muck by their own nonexistent bootstraps. We should cry for the people of New Orleans who remain displaced and unable to repair their homes.

We should cry for them because, short of an uprising, they are us.

Local leadership is non-existent, Buttry contends, and Gov. Chet Culver and legislative leaders proved they are not much better when they decided not to call a special legislative session shortly after the flooding.

They feared that making state money available would mess up our chances for federal aid. Or maybe a swift state response, accompanied by strong leadership demanding a swift federal response, would have underscored the urgency of the problem.

Instead, nearly eight months after the floods, the Legislature last week approved less than 1 percent of the need.

Culver today signed a $56 million flood relief package. In a press release last week, Culver said more than $1.5 billion in state and federal aid has gone towards rebuilding Iowa since last summer. Officials estimate the total damage from the summer flooding and tornadoes at $8 billion to $10 billion.

Buttry also takes issue with Iowa’s senate delegation.

Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley have more than a half-century of experience combined in the U.S. Senate. What good is that experience if they can’t deliver better federal aid more swiftly than they have following the worst natural disaster in their state’s history?

The bill calls for $24 million for housing assistance, $10 million for individual assistance administered by the Department of Human Services and $22 million for community disaster grants administered by the Department of Management.

Gov. Chet Culver had originally requested $43 million to be used from the emergency fund. He also requested $2 million for the Rebuild Iowa Office, money that was not included in the bill. It does, however, allow for the Rebuild Iowa Office to create a 14-member council to help coordinate state agencies. The budget of the office will be debated later in the session, legislators said.

Despite this, Culver said he is pleased with the legislation as it stands and hopes the Senate will pass it quickly.

“Though months have passed since the storms of 2008, many Iowans are still feeling the effects,” the governor said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the Senate to pass disaster relief legislation, which will help communities rebuild stronger and safer, and move our state further down the road to recovery.”

The Senate will debate the bill Wednesday.

In the Senate, a measure that would expedite the process of putting a local option sales tax on the ballot for flood damaged areas was passed on a 32-18 party line vote. Republicans argued that rushing the measure into force would effectively preclude efforts to organize opposition to the higher tax.