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.

Minority homeowners in Des Moines were three times as likely to receive high-cost subprime mortgage loans from Wells Fargo & Co. as white homeowners, according to research assembled by two watchdog organizations.

Despite giving itself authority over disclosure reports for legislative parties paid for by lobbyists, neither the House nor the Senate ethics committees have the power to initiate investigations into violations.
In order to open a legislative investigation, a third party must file a formal ethics complaint.
This process has come under scrutiny of late after the Iowa [...]

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 [...]

A move by the state Department of Natural Resources to cut the budget of one of its enforcement divisions by nearly a third has drawn the ire of a liberal activist group.
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) said cuts to the Animal Feeding Operations budget leave it with only 13 field officers to regulate and [...]

The path to passing the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) has been filled with a number of major obstacles, namely a deaf ear from the Democratic majority, which has killed the bill in committee twice since it took the helm two years ago. Nonetheless, a diverse group of issue-oriented activists pledge to keep pushing forward until their voices have been heard.

Sonya McCrea couldn’t explain to her five children on Saturday morning the meaning and purpose of the Iowa caucuses.

McCrea, who has never participated in the caucuses, changed that by Saturday afternoon. She was one of 60 people who attended a three-hour caucus training session organized by the Des Moines chapter of Iowa Citizens for Community [...]

A nonprofit grass-roots organization that works for community betterment will teach African-Americans how to participate in the Iowa caucuses.

“Many people are uninformed on how to caucus,” said Amber Martin, a project coordinator for the Des Moines chapter of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.

The group has targeted blacks through radio ads and fliers and hopes [...]