Stories

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, [...]

[Commentary] Click here to read Part 1 of this series. 
 
There is no free lunch. Let's face it, any sweeping reforms in how Iowa controls use of agricultural land for livestock production — such as the reforms suggested in the firsttwo articles in this series — are going to cost the taxpayers money. And Iowa's counties [...]

[Commentary] To read Part 1 of this series, click here.
When it's done correctly, zoning solves problems. But if we screw it up, we could bring a whole host of new problems upon ourselves — like costly lawsuits that Iowa's counties simply cannot afford.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how agricultural zoning should [...]

[Commentary] Local control…
You've undoubtedly heard those two words a lot lately in Iowa. You've seen them displayed on bumpers stickers and painted on protest banners.
Local control — yep, here in Iowa, we've been hearing about local control for years. Lots of people throw the phrase around. Local control is good. We need it. If we [...]