Stories

An ethics complaint against a lobbying group that was five months late in filing a disclosure report was dismissed Tuesday by the state Senate Ethics Committee.

While state Rep. Kerry Burt’s drunk driving arrest has garnered many headlines, there is a bigger scandal emerging from the lobbyist reception where his evening began, according to one activist organization.

Iowa has joined every other state in allowing consumers to sue companies for fraud under the state consumer protection law thanks to a bill signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Chet Culver.
State Attorney General Tom Miller has pushed for passage of the legislation for nearly a decade. The bill, House File 712, passed 95-1 in [...]

The House Ethics Committee will meet at 10 a.m. Monday to discuss Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement’s ethics complaint against state Rep. Dolores Mertz, D-Ottosen.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has filed an ethics complaint against State Rep. Dolores Mertz (D-Ottosen) on the grounds that her personal finances are too closely tied to the industry she helps to oversee as chair of the House Agriculture Committee.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) is demanding Democratic leaders in the Iowa House remove Dolores Mertz as chair of the House Agriculture Committee.
The group points to what it calls Mertz’s ties to the factory farm industry, including the fact that her son owns a 4,000-head hog factory, as motivation for House Speaker Pat Murphy, [...]

A majority of donors to candidates for state office support some kind of public financing of elections, according to a phone survey conducted for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

Members of the group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement will meet with officials from Hy-Vee Inc. tonight to demand the company’s grocery in a poor neighborhood in Des Moines not only remain open but also remain a full-service location.

A member of the state’s Environmental Protection Commission who has been labeled by critics as “pro-factory farms” has stepped down.

John Nichols is a pioneering political blogger; writer for The Nation, The Progressive and In These Times; and the associate editor of the Capitol Times in Madison, Wis. This Friday, he will be the keynote speaker at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement’s statewide convention, where he will talk about the importance of Iowans flexing their [...]