Marty Tirrell‘s lawyer sued him the other day — and then withdrew the suit. Steve Hamilton said in the filing in Polk County District Court that he loaned the deadbeat talk-show shouter and serial loan-defaulter $14,750 and was promised repayment by Jan. 16 of this year. “Despite many demands,” Tirrell stiffed him, the suit alleged.

Hamilton says he and Tirrell are friends “and I want that to continue but he does piss me off sometimes in not contacting me.” He added: “Quoting Forrest Gump, that is all I have to say about that.”

When Hamilton filed the suit he didn’t realize Tirrell was still in bankruptcy proceedings in federal court.

Meantime, Tirrell and his sports-talk partner, Ken Miller, are no longer on the radio. They had been on Cumulus’ KBGG, 1700 on the AM dial, but now they’re just on Mediacom cable and on the Internet. Cumulus bosses didn’t respond to a CITYVIEW query as to why Tirrell and Miller are gone, but Cumulus has a $96,000 judgment against him from an earlier business deal.

The other day, a listener tweeted:

“Did you guys get canceled?”

Miller: “We’ve decided to stay on [Mediacom] and concentrate on expanding our digital opportunities.”

Listener: “Ok good. Thought Marty might have gone to jail or something.” …

The Des Moines Register is cutting back on its coverage of the arts, basically eliminating regular previews and reviews of programs at the Des Moines Metro Opera, the Des Moines Symphony, Ballet Des Moines and the Des Moines Community Playhouse.

“Increasingly, [The Des Moines Register’s] focus is on attracting digital audience,” says Carol Hunter, the paper’s executive editor. “We track digital metrics closely for all our coverage.” And few Register readers seem to care, digitally at least, about the arts. “While realizing that arts coverage is something of a niche audience, the number of page views we have attracted for routine previews and reviews has been astonishingly low.”

Hunter says “it’s not an absolute cut-off.” She says the paper will still “cover season announcements and do short informational listings ahead of most shows…and will preview/review one or two of the most noteworthy shows, but not every one.”

Aside: Joan Bunke is rolling over in her grave. …

John Mauro, chairman of the Polk County Board of Supervisors, announced the other day he would run for re-election next year, something that was little noted and widely expected. Mauro has been a supervisor for 23 years — with a four-year break in the late 1990s — and has gotten just token opposition of late.

But there is talk that State Sen. Matt McCoy plans to take him on next year. McCoy dodged a question about it — “We are in the final weeks of a very difficult session….At this time, I am not in a position to formalize my decisions for next year. I usually like to reserve all my options and don’t usually broadcast my decisions prior to any future announcements.”

A Mauro-McCoy race could be rough. Each has long-standing ties to the south side, each is a popular vote-getter, and each could raise a lot of money in seeking the seat, which includes most of the south side, most of downtown and some of the west side. But a Mauro-McCoy race also would force Southside political captains to take sides — which many don’t want to do.

Mauro has long been a champion of the working person — he led the effort to raise the minimum wage in Polk County this year and is leading the effort to raise $10 million to make Polk County hunger-free (he’s half-way toward his goal).

McCoy has been in the Legislature for 26 years — the last 20 in the Senate — and has worked hard on education and health care and social issues. He had no opposition when he was elected in 2014, and he could be re-elected easily in 2018. Some friends of McCoy think that in the end he won’t run for Supervisor — they think 2018 will be a Democratic year and McCoy could be back in the majority in the Senate — but others say they’re sure he’ll run. …

President Donald Trump raised a record $106.7 million for the Inauguration festivities, and a sliver of that came from Iowa. According to Federal Election Commission records, John Pappajohn of Des Moines gave $10,000, Michael Clark of Coralville gave $1,000, the Kent Corporation of Muscatine gave $25,000 and something called Kumar Family Ltd., which lists a Bettendorf address, gave $1 million.

The Iowa Secretary of State lists the Kumar Family Limited Partnership as inactive and says it is based in Illinois. It’s probably a vehicle of Shalabh Kumar, an India native who became a successful industrialist in Chicago, who founded the Republican Hindu Coalition and who ran Newt Gingrich‘s presidential campaign in Scott County in 2012. The Federal Election Commission listed his residence as Bettendorf until 2013. Through AVG Automation, a company he runs, he gave about $450,000 to the Trump campaign last fall, and, according to The Hill, a Washington political newspaper, Kumar’s wife gave another $450,000.

[And then there’s this from Wikipedia: “Kumar’s son, Vikram Kumar, married England-born 2007 Miss Earth India, Pooja Chitgopekar. Their wedding was featured as NDTV Good Times Big Fat Indian Wedding on NDTV India and took place in January 2011 in New Zealand, where Pooja Chitgopekar was living with her Indian immigrant parents. Hailed as the biggest wedding in New Zealand’s history, it featured 9 helicopters forming a groom’s party…and a musical extravaganza lasting three days….” The wedding cost almost $10 million, according to a New Zealand newspaper.] …

Sen. Joni Ernst, who is up for re-election in 2020, raised $1.3 million between Jan. 1, 2015, and the end of last year, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission. She spent $949,176, with the biggest chunk — more than $220,000 — going to Holloway Consulting, an all-female consulting and fund-raising operation in Arlington, Virginia. …

A scout from NBC’s Dateline left his business card with folks in the Teachout Building in mid-April, encouraging speculation that the mysterious and unsolved death of architect Kirk Blunck might have drawn network attention.

Blunck, a pioneer in East Village development, was a good architect, a lousy businessman and a careless landlord. His life seemed divided between job commissions and job lawsuits. He died on a Sunday afternoon in January of 2016 when he fell — or was pushed — down two flights of stairs in the Teachout Building, which he owned.

Police say the investigation is open and continuing. Some close to Blunck think he was a victim of a robbery gone bad, but no arrests have been made. The Polk County Medical Examiner said the cause of death was “multiple blunt force trauma, manner undetermined.”

Blunck was 62 when he died, and he left no will. Lawyers and the family have been selling off some properties and paying some claims, but the estate proceedings remain open in Polk County District Court. In late March, the court approved a payment of $21,650 to the Ahlers & Cooney law firm, which had sued him for nonpayment of legal bills. No financial accounting of the estate is in the court records yet. ♦

The man with the golden gut

The Board of Regents picked a fight with Gary Steinke last month.

That wasn’t very smart.

The Regents supported a quest by the University of Northern Iowa to let its students be eligible for $3 million from the Iowa Tuition Grant program, a $46 million state fund that provides help to poor Iowa students attending any of 33 private colleges in the state. This year, about 12,800 Iowa undergraduates are getting the aid, which has a maximum of $5,550 and works out to an average of about $3,600.

The program has long stuck in the craw of university presidents, who periodically would grumble about it. But, always, privately. The money is far less than what the state appropriates for the universities, the presidents realized, so — at the urging of the Regents’ executive director — they kept their complaints to themselves. That director was Gary Steinke.

Steinke has great political instincts — when I was head of the Regents, Gov. Tom Vilsack told me that Steinke had a “golden gut” for politics — but he’s no longer there. So there was no one to tell the new UNI president, Mark Nook, that speaking out on the issue was a bad idea.

So he spoke out, and the Board backed him. The Legislature took up the issue. The private colleges — which are strategically placed around the state — took that as a declaration of war, and the head of the college association rallied his troops. The presidents called legislators, ginned up their alumni, mobilized their students.

The guy behind the campaign was Steinke, now the head of the Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

He lit a fire under the college presidents. “I’m personally disgusted,” the University of Dubuque president said in an email to Dubuque legislator Charles Isenhart. “I am disgusted and ashamed as well,” the Loras president told Isenhart.

Ultimately, the bill was supported by just 29 of the 100 House members and was never taken up in the Senate. Some who voted for it will never do it again. “You are entitled to a representative who does not make such mistakes or errors in judgment,” Isenhart wrote back to the presidents of three colleges in his district….I ask for your mercy, and I promise you I will not fail you like that again.”

So the idea is dead.

There’s no doubt Nook and UNI have problems. The school is built on what is now an unsustainable economic model — the school is overwhelmingly populated by Iowans, yet the tuition rules mandate that Iowa universities lose money on each Iowa undergraduate. The University of Iowa and Iowa State University offset that by profits from the higher tuition charged to nonresidents.

The solution is simple: Reallocate the state appropriations so UNI gets its share, based on the number of in-state undergraduates.

If the Regents schools want to know how to get that done, perhaps they should consult Steinke. After he calms down. ♦

— Michael Gartner

Chris Hensley, after 24 years on the Des Moines City Council, has decided not to seek re-election. Maybe it’s because she has a strong young opponent in environmental lawyer Josh Mandelbaum. Maybe it’s because 24 years is a long time.

A poor east-sider who came to represent the more affluent West Side and most of downtown, she worked full-time at the part-time job. She was at every meeting, every gathering, every ribbon-cutting. She became the best friend downtown developers ever had.

She was on the wrong side of the Waterworks fight and she ignored a conflict of interest on a housing deal, but those are over and ultimately will be forgotten. As will the fact that in 2003 she ran for mayor and lost. But along the way she and former City Manager Rick Clark worked prodigiously to transform two ugly blocks on the west side of downtown into the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, a national showpiece.

That shouldn’t be forgotten.

The Storm Lake Times

Every journalism school in the country should subscribe to the Storm Lake Times. Every journalism student should have to read it.

The twice-weekly paper is the model of what a newspaper still can be: Encyclopedic coverage of the community, from council meetings to school sports to car crashes to lost dogs. And strong editorials that put the news in perspective. The news stories and the editorials are fact-filled.

The news stories show the depth of the newspaper. The editorials show its soul.

Young reporter Tom Cullen could hold his own on The New York Times. Photographer and writer Dolores Cullen could get a job anywhere. Publisher John Cullen is a smart business guy who takes pride in the news side. And his younger brother, 59-year-old Art — father of Tom, husband of Dolores — is simply the best.

That was certified last month when he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

Art Cullen is deceptive. He is a lanky, excitable guy with undisciplined hair covering a disciplined mind, and he is as unpolished as his editorials are polished. He is full of outrage, passion and uncommon sense — and all show up in his editorials.

Outrage: “Anyone with eyes and a nose knows in his gut that Iowa has the dirtiest surface water in America.”

Passion: Sen. Charles Grassley “is nothing more than a lapdog for the Republican Establishment….He is a doddering fool who needs to go.” (Being nonpartisan, he referred to former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge as “the only woman as vulgar as Donald Trump.”)

Uncommon sense: “We elected a board of supervisors and a county attorney to direct the policies and protect the taxpayers of this county. We did not elect the Farm Bureau or any other interest group to set our course.”

He is not beloved in Storm Lake. Some folks like him. Some folks dislike him. And some folks seem to hate him. But that doesn’t bother him, and it shouldn’t. For as a wise old newspaperman once said:

“You show me a beloved editor, and I’ll show you a crappy newspaper.” ♦

— Michael Gartner

Rich Wilkey, 1940-2017

Rich Wilkey was a smart, combative and terrific city manager in the 1970s and early 1980s, a time — like now — when Des Moines blossomed.

Serving for many of those years under an equally combative mayor, Dick Olson, and a strong-willed council, he was periodically in danger of losing his job.

I was the editor of The Des Moines Register and (until its death) Tribune in those years, and we’d meet every two or three weeks for an afterwork beer and hamburger at the old Maxie’s on Ingersoll. He was always full of plans and schemes to carry them out. He was a whiz at numbers, and he was especially good at counting to four. I’d get the occasional call for help. “I’ve got only three votes for the next council meeting,” he’d say. “Could I get an editorial in the Tribune” on this or that, an editorial that might sway a fourth vote that would keep him in office.

Then, as now, the city had strong business leadership — Jim Hubbell, David Kruidenier, John Fitzgibbon, John Ruan, Bob Houser — and Wilkey knew how to marshall them to move his vision forward. Labor was a big force in those days, too, and Wilkey worked well with Don Rowen and the others.

Those, too, were the days of federal earmarks, and Neal Smith — the only one of the men I’ve mentioned (and in those days all the leaders were men) who is still alive — was the champion of sending money home.

That combination of private and public money, labor and corporate cooperation, committed leadership of locally owned businesses — and a tenacious city manager — changed Des Moines and Polk County. The Civic Center was built, the skywalk system was put in, the Ruan Building and Financial Center and Marriott hotel were built downtown, Saylorville Lake was opened, the Des Moines River was cleaned up and the Neal Smith Trail was put in, the Botanical Center was built, the Plaza condominium tower was constructed and the Polk County Convention Complex (now the Y) was opened.

Wilkey had a hand in all of that.

Then he left and in effect rescued Prairie Meadows, turning it into a nonprofit that today showers the area with money. Ultimately, he left the public eye, but he also left the base upon which today’s thriving Des Moines now stands.

Rich Wilkey died of cancer on April 22, two days after his 77th birthday. ♦

— Michael Gartner

Joy Corning wasn’t the last of the moderate Republicans politicians in the state, but she was one of the last. She was a throwback to the moderate state party that produced National Chairwoman Mary Louise Smith, that was in effect led by Bob Ray for more than a decade, and that had such terrific legislators as Art Neu and Phil Hill and John Murray and Brice Oakley and Andy Varley among others.

She was thoughtful, but not doctrinaire; kind, and never rude. She saw both sides — or maybe 12 sides — of every issue, and she always came down on the side that she thought was best for the people of Iowa. She was long an advocate for women and women’s rights, and she was loyal and generous to her alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, the town she lived in for much of her life and the town she represented in the Iowa Senate for six years before serving as Iowa’s 43rd lieutenant governor for eight.

She was a mainstream Republican — when the main stream was the middle branch. But the party left her years ago, stranding her along with Steve and Dawn Roberts and David Oman and Mike Mahaffey and a few others. She was a supporter and defender of Planned Parenthood, especially, and of early childhood education — an organization and an issue that her party has abandoned.

She was as graceful in approaching death as she was in living life. Her obituary — which she wrote — was modest, in length and in fact. She praised her three daughters and said that marrying Burt Corning “was the smartest thing I did in my life.”

Joy Corning was 84 when she died the other day. …

[Corning, a onetime teacher, might have shuddered at the last line of the nice statement issued by the current lieutenant governor, Kim Reynolds: “The entire Corning family is in Kevin and I’s thoughts and prayers.”] …

Reynolds has a lot (other than grammar) to learn as she takes over the duties of the governorship — anyone would — but one thing she needs to learn is that Attorney General Tom Miller is not her lawyer.

Miller threw a monkey wrench into the plans of Reynolds and the Republican Party when he gave an official opinion that when Terry Branstad departed for China the duties of the governorship flowed down to her as lieutenant governor — and while she acquired all the powers of a governor “she does not ascend or rise to the office of Governor” and therefore cannot appoint a new lieutenant governor since she still holds that position.

That 23-page ruling by Democrat Miller mightily irked Republican Reynolds and many others of her party. Complaining about the ruling to The Des Moines Register’s Kathie Obradovich, she said, “I don’t know what our relationship is going to be like, a little bit strained, going forward.” She added, “I mean, I had my legal counsel tell me one thing and then five minutes later he reversed from what he told me in December. So that causes some problems….”

The problem with that: Miller is not the lieutenant governor’s legal counsel. He is the chief legal officer of the state, and his duty is to prosecute or defend all matters in which the state is a party or is interested in. He must also “give an opinion in writing, when requested, upon all questions of law” raised by a legislator or state official. And that is what he did when State Sen. David Johnson, the legislature’s lone independent, asked whether Reynolds would become governor with the power to appoint her successor after Branstad stepped down.

The attorney general is no more the lawyer for Kim Reynolds than he is for David Johnson or Mike Fitzgerald or Bill Northey or any other state officer. He is elected by the people.

At the moment, Larry Johnson Jr. is the counsel to the governor and lieutenant governor. He is appointed by the governor. …

The state has agreed to hire a Washington law firm to represent the University of Iowa Hospital as it challenges a Medicare rule relating to payments for the education of medical students.” Billing rates will range from $820 per hour for lead counsel Mark Polston to $440 per hour for junior associates.” The fees and costs will be paid by the state-owned hospital.

The state, which earlier hired the Belin McCormick law firm in the lawsuit AFSCME has filed challenging the legislation that in effect strips it of most of its power, now has retained the same firm to represent it in a similar suit filed by the Iowa State Education Association. Work on that suit, by Belin lawyer Mike Reck, will be billed at $345 an hour. It’s a good bet fees in the two suits will total hundreds of thousands of dollars before the issues are decided. …

Kent Sorenson, the imprisoned Iowa legislator who illegally sold his allegiance in the 2012 presidential caucuses, has been assigned to the U.S. penitentiary in Thomson, Illinois, which is just across the Mississippi River and north of Clinton. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison by Senior Federal Judge Robert Pratt and has appealed to the 8th Circuit.  His release date is April 13, 2018. …

Cityview joins those noting with sadness the death of former House Speaker Don Avenson and with tears the death of 6-year-old Ella Vilsack. ♦

Attorney General Tom Miller‘s staff indicated to Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds or her staff weeks in advance that he was going to rule she would not have the constitutional authority to appoint her successor after she took over the Governor’s duties from Terry Branstad.

So her “surprise” at the May 1 ruling was feigned, her outrage was phony, and her behavior was all theater. Also, her facts were wrong.

Blogger Laurie Belin made that abundantly clear the other day after slogging through 3,061 pages of emails and records she received under the Iowa open records act. Finding a nugget here, a nugget there among the piles of papers, she put together a damning chronology proving that the Republican attack on Democrat Miller’s decision as a politically motivated late hit was political bullshit — bullshit repeated without question by the state’s media.

Belin’s report was one of the best pieces of Iowa political journalism in years, a story that but for her doggedness would never have seen the light. Plowing through the piles of emails, of redundant memos and of totally irrelevant stuff was “a nightmare,” she told CITYVIEW, and nothing was in chronological order.

Belin is probably the hardest-working — and perhaps the best — political reporter in the state. In the manner of the legendary I.F. Stone, she digs through files and forms and reports that are mostly ignored, analyzes data and keeps asking questions. Her blog — Bleeding Heartland — has become must reading for politicos and their followers and should be read by people who simply want to know what’s going on. (On Wednesdays, she takes a break and writes about wildflowers.)

The Miller decision was in response to a question from David Johnson, the one-time Republican and now Independent state senator from Ocheydan. In a carefully researched, well-written, seven-page letter sent to Miller on Feb. 1, the long-time legislator cited several parts of the Iowa Constitution that say that in the event of a gubernatorial vacancy the powers of the office “devolve” to the lieutenant governor.

The central question was: Does Reynolds have the power to name a new lieutenant governor? He asked for an official opinion, which he was entitled to as a legislator.

It was complicated because the Attorney General had earlier given an informal opinion that Reynolds had the power to name a new lieutenant governor. Miller — apparently prodded by Solicitor General Jeff Thompson and some other staffers — ultimately changed his mind, which took a certain amount of political courage even though the Constitution was clear. The 23-page letter to Johnson, issued May 1, was clear on the point of not naming a lieutenant governor; it was murky on the point of whether Reynolds actually becomes “governor,” but that’s irrelevant — she has the duties, and, anyway, the formal address for lieutenant governors, as well as governors, is “Governor.”

[At one point in the letter, Miller wrote: “Upon the governor’s resignation, the powers and duties of the office will devolve or fall upon the lieutenant governor — who does not ascend or rise to the office of Governor.” In the same paragraph, he says the lieutenant governor “becomes governor for all intents and purposes,” and then adds, “In other words, upon a governor’s resignation, the lieutenant governor will hold both the offices of Governor and Lieutenant Governor.”]

While the Attorney General’s office clearly was keeping the Governor’s office apprised of the direction of his thinking, Miller never provided an equal courtesy to Johnson, according to Johnson. And Belin noted something else: Drafts of the opinion letter to Johnson (which Miller’s office surprisingly included in response to freedom-of-information requests from Belin and the Republican Party of Iowa), ended: “We thank you, Senator, for your dedicated service to the State of Iowa and your keen interest in seeking clarity on these important legal issues.”

Somehow, that sentence wasn’t in the final opinion.

“I wonder whether the governor’s staffers…or perhaps Branstad and Reynolds themselves…saw those words and took offense,” Belin writes.

Johnson, who has no plans to join either party and who as an independent had no political stake in the answer to his question, has shown what “independent” means ever since quitting the party in June because he was sickened by its nomination of Donald Trump. Though still a fervent anti-abortion voter and an opponent of funding for Planned Parenthood, he regularly voted with Democrats last session on key bills on the environment, health care, taxes and some social issues.

He hasn’t said whether he will run for his fifth term in the Senate in 2018, but he is appearing in political parades in the district this summer, usually a sign that a legislator is running again. He’s popular with his constituents in the five counties he represents in conservative northwest Iowa. He has been elected to the Iowa Senate four times after serving two terms in the Iowa House, and the last two times he was elected without an opponent. He would stand a strong chance to win as an Independent in a two-person race against probable Republican candidate Zach Whiting, a staffer for Congressman Steve King. Johnson is the only Independent in the Legislature. 

Reynolds, meanwhile, stuck her thumb in the eye of Miller after his decision was announced. In an interview with Channel 13’s Dave Price, she misstated the facts and called it “unfortunate” that Miller “dropped the opinion” the day before Branstad’s hearings to be confirmed as ambassador to China. It “looks like politics,” she said.

In fact, Miller was prepared to issue the opinion a few days earlier but held off at the request of the Governor’s office, according to a Des Moines Register story at the time by Jason Noble. If it was politics, it was Republican politics.

“Why did Reynolds repeatedly give reporters the false impression that she had been counting on what Miller said in December, when Thompson went out of his way to give advance notice?” Belin wrote. She added: “Staff for Reynolds have not answered these and other questions.”

Reynolds, meanwhile, named Adam Gregg “acting lieutenant governor,” apparently giving herself the power to do so. There is nothing in the law or the Iowa Constitution that gives her that power — she could have named him “assistant to the Governor with the duties of a lieutenant governor,” lawyers say, but she went a step further.

Reynolds now refers to Gregg as “Lieutenant Governor,” which he isn’t, and she has announced that the two will run together in the gubernatorial election next year (assuming she beats Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett in the primary). She made the announcement after a victory parade, of sorts, in which she flew around the state on the private jet of Republican businessman Gary Kirke, whose casino licenses rely on the votes of the state’s Racing and Gaming Commission — whose members are appointed by the Governor.

Two other things: Reynolds told Channel 13’s Price that Miller didn’t “need to weigh in on this,” that he “had no obligation to answer” Johnson’s letter. In fact, legislators (and state officers and county attorneys) have a right to ask for formal opinions from the Attorney General, and while the Attorney General isn’t bound to respond, the Attorney General’s website says questions about “confusion in the law itself” are among the “most appropriate questions for opinions,” clearly implying a responsibility to respond.

The other thing she said without a hint of embarrassment: “People are sick of politics.” …

Marc Krickbaum apparently will be the new U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, and Pete Deegan is expected to get the job for the Northern District.

Both were on the short lists of finalists sent to the White House by Sens. Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst, and both are being checked out by the FBI in preparation for the nomination.

Krickbaum is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Des Moines, and Deegan is chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Cedar Rapids. Krickbaum currently practices law in Illinois — Grassley’s announcement of the finalists listed him as “previously of Des Moines.”

More to the point, perhaps: Krickbaum is the son-in-law of Republican operative Doug Gross. If he is confirmed as U.S. Attorney, he will replace Acting U.S. Attorney Kevin VanderSchel, who is the son-in-law of longtime Democratic Congressman Neil Smith. Though Krickbaum lived on Waterbury Road in Des Moines for a couple of years, he apparently never registered to vote in Polk County. …

Jim Mowrer, who lost Congressional bids in the last two elections, apparently plans to run for Secretary of State next year, Iowa Democrats say…

Two talented young reporters at The Des Moines Register are leaving to go to law school at Drake. Grant Rodgers, who covers the courts, and Joel Aschbrenner, who covers business and downtown developments, both have resigned. …

Bob Donley, who resigned as executive director of the Board of Regents the other day, is getting no severance pay, though it’s pretty clear he was urged to leave when the make-up of the board changed this spring.

Donley made $338,000 with bonuses in fiscal 2015 and $287,000 in fiscal 2016. Former Regents, the Legislature and the Governor’s office simply ignored the statutory cap of $154,500 on his pay by giving him bonuses and deferred pay. He received $140,000 on July 1 from his 2015 deferred-compensation plan, according to a Regents spokesman.

On June 1 — one month after board leadership changed — Donley sent a one-sentence letter of resignation saying “I have decided to tender my resignation effective July 15, 2017.” On the same day, new Board President Mike Richards accepted the resignation, stripped him of all management responsibilities immediately, said his sole responsibility until July 15 “will be to assist with the transition at my direction,” and said he would report to Marc Braun, the board’s chief operating officer who had been increasingly in charge.

It’s likely Braun will end up with responsibility for running the office, though again salary might be a problem. He made $286,000 in fiscal 2016, more than the statutory limit for the director’s job, and this board seems to be one that pays more attention to the laws than its predecessor did. …

The United States Court of Appeals last month affirmed Judge Jim Gritzner‘s ruling granting summary judgment to two Iowa State University students who had sued four university officials after they barred a student organization from using an Iowa State trademark on a T-shirt urging the legalization of marijuana.

The university had approved the design until bureaucrats on Capitol Hill complained. Then-president Steve Leath quickly determined that Iowa politics trumped freedom of expression. If the students continue to win, the case ultimately will go to trial to determine damages. The four defendants, who include Leath and retired ISU vice president Warren Madden, could end up being personally liable for any damages, but they then could make a claim for indemnification from the state. …

Art Cullen, the Storm Lake editor who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing this spring, has signed a contract to write a book.

“One thing I’ve learned in my eight weeks of fame is of the tremendous yearning to get the pulse along these county blacktops,” he wrote the other day. “People want to know why Iowa is Iowa, believe it or not. Folks in Seattle are keenly interested in the fact that a score of languages are spoken in our schools. People in Los Angeles are interested in a new Latino outpost. People in Atlanta wonder why young people flee Iowa by the drove. People in New York are trying to understand why Iowa voted for Donald Trump. Or Steve King. I think it comes from the feeling of the air slowly being let out of the American Dream along the byways.”

The publisher, Viking, has come up with a catchy title: “Storm Lake.”

Every time Cullen speaks or writes about winning, he gives great credit to Randy Evans and the organization he heads, the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. Evans wrote the letters that pried loose some of the documents Cullen needed to buttress his editorials about the lawsuit the Des Moines Water Works filed against three counties in northwest Iowa.

The council relies on a shoestring budget and Evans’ fervor, and both have been reinforced by Cullen’s plugs — as well as by the $5,000 Cullen himself is giving after winning the $15,000 prize. (Another $5,000 of the prize money is going to Catholic Charities to help resettle refugees in Storm Lake.) About $35,000 has come in in recent weeks, in contributions ranging from $3 to $5,000. Most have come from out-of-state. The council’s annual budget is about $22,000. …

Buck Turnbull, who died the other day at age 88, was a good guy and a good sportswriter. ♦

Broccoli

From a libel suit filed against the Quad-City Times by fired Davenport administrator Craig Malin:

“Here’s the thing. The first lie I tell in my job is the end of my career. It is that simple. So I avoid telling lies like kids avoid broccoli. I’ll feed it to the dog. I’ll wipe my mouth and deftly spit it out into my napkin. I’ll stuff it in my pants pocket when mom’s not looking. No broccoli. No lies.” ♦

Your taxes at work

Item No. 1: Compressor Controls Corp. is an Urbandale company that is spending $434,000 to remodel its headquarters. The other day the state, which is struggling financially, gave it a $32,500 grant to help out. No new jobs are being created.

Item No. 2: The city council of Des Moines, which is struggling financially, voted Monday (June 26) to give the Greater Des Moines Partnership $100,000 this year, next year and the year after that. The vote was 5 to 1. Mayor Frank Cownie was absent. Councilman Skip Moore voted no. ♦

One-hundred and nine of the 1,121 employees of Polk County will make more than $100,000 in the fiscal year that started July 1, up from 102 employees in the year just ended.

Once again, the highest-paid employee will be Gregory Schmunck, the county medical examiner, who will earn $250,767. Next in line is Mark Wandro, the county manager, who will make $204,699.

Last year, Schmunk earned $245,850, Wandro $200,685.

Next on the list is County Attorney John Sarcone, who will earn $195,391 this year. Six of his assistants will take in $166,082. They are Nan Horvat, Roger Kuhle, Thomas H. Miller, Jeff Noble, Daniel Voogt and Jim Ward.

Again this year, Horvat is the highest-paid woman on the county payroll.

County Sheriff Bill McCarthy is the 10th highest-paid employee, at $162,587. His department remains the largest in the county, with 479 employees.

Sarcone and McCarthy are the highest-paid elected officials. The five county supervisors — Chairman John Mauro and Steve Van Oort, Angela Connolly, Tom Hockensmith and Bob Brownell — will make $115,438 this year, up from $112,076 last year.

County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald and Treasurer Mary Maloney will earn $115,975, and Recorder Julie Hagerty will make $115,438.

Hagerty is the highest-paid employee in the Recorder’s office, but Fitzgerald has four employees who earn more than he does, and Maloney has one.

The lowest-paid county employees: Three guys in General Services and one in the County Conservation department who will earn $34,728 this year. …

Some big taxpayers in Polk County are suing to have their new property assessments cut. It’s sort of a biennial thing.

Hy-Vee and related entities filed at least seven lawsuits on July 19 and July 20 seeking reductions in assessments totaling at least $85 million. The suits were filed in Polk County District Court after Hy-Vee was awarded some reductions — but not as much as it wanted — from the Polk County Board of Adjustment.

An example: The Ankeny store on Oralabor Road was assessed at $12,650,000 two years ago, but this year it was assessed at $13,730,000. Hy-Vee appealed to the Polk County Board of Adjustment, which cut the assessment slightly, to $13,560,000. Hy-Vee then sued the Board of Adjustment in Polk County District Court. The store, which was built in 2014, was sold by Hy-Vee to a limited partnership that year for $16,510,000, but Hy-Vee, not the partnership, is responsible for paying the taxes.

The timing of the Hy-Vee suits might seem a bit awkward: On July 21, the state Department of Economic Development awarded Hy-Vee and a subsidiary, Perishable Distributors of Iowa, “expansion tax benefits” linked to plans to build a bakery and food-kit plant and to expand a warehouse in Ankeny. Of the 210 jobs to be created, 10 are considered “high-quality,” paying at least $27.92 an hour, or about $58,000 a year. The value of the tax benefits wasn’t given in the state’s announcement or on its work sheet.

AMC, the new owner of Carmike Cinemas, has appealed the assessments of its multiplexes in Johnston and in Urbandale. The Johnston complex was assessed at about $11 million and was cut to $10.7 million by the board. AMC says the proper value is about $4 million. The Urbandale property was assessed at about $5 million and was cut to $4.6 million by the board. AMC says it should be about $2 million.

And Nationwide Insurance is appealing its assessments on several properties.

One oddity: Both Hy-Vee and AMC are using a Cedar Rapids lawyer, Thomas Wolle, to fight their Polk County assessments. …

John Doe, the student who sued Drake in a sexual-assault case, is no longer John Doe. But John Doe, the student who sued Grinnell in a sexual-assault case, is still Mr. Doe.

Both Iowa colleges asked Federal District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger to force each Mr. Doe to use his real name in his lawsuit. The result: Drake’s John Doe is now Thomas Rossley and Grinnell’s is John Doe.

The problem for Rossley: His dad had filed in effect a companion suit, saying Drake had unjustly kicked him off its Board of Trustees after his widespread complaints about the way the university handled a sexual-assault complaint against the son. The dad’s suit didn’t mention his son by name, but it was pretty easy to figure it out. Indeed, according to the court, “several news articles have been published referencing [both suits]” and naming both Rossleys. The court specifically cited a CITYVIEW article from February of this year.

“This detailed exposure and the fact the Plaintiff’s identity has not been kept confidential” undermines his request for continued anonymity, Goodgame ruled. Ruling Doe could no longer be Doe, she said, “This is not the exceptional case in which a plaintiff may proceed under a fictitious name.”

But Grinnell’s Mr. Doe does have that exceptional case. The main reason: “Unlike in the Drake case, there have been no efforts to gain publicity by any party or related party….There has been no disclosure of Plaintiff’s identity through his case or other related cases….There has been limited media coverage of the case…,” Ebinger ruled.

In other words, Doe’s dad didn’t butt in. …

Chris Godfrey’s second victory in the Iowa Supreme Court wasn’t quite the slam-dunk the media portrayed — but it was good enough that it should scare the state into settling. In January of 2012, Godfrey, the former head of the state’s Workers Compensation Board, sued Terry Branstad, Kim Reynolds and four other state officials alleging defamation, extortion, retaliation and discrimination as part of the state’s effort to get rid of him.

Then-Governor Branstad and others tried to fire him, and when that didn’t work they cut his pay. Godfrey was a Democrat with a fixed term that still had 46 months to run. He also was the only openly gay member of the Branstad administration. Somehow feeling he wasn’t wanted, he quit in 2014 to take a good job in Washington at the Department of Labor.

The case has twice gone up to the Supreme Court on specific issues. His lawyer, Roxanne Conlin, won the first, and she won a key chunk — and also lost a key chunk — of the second, which was handed down this summer. That issue was basically whether a citizen could sue state officials for money damages if the state officials violated that person’s rights to equal protection and due process under the Iowa Constitution and where there was no adequate remedy in the law.

The issue is complicated, and basically it came down to a three-to-three tie among the justices — with the alignments that have developed in the court over the past few years. Justice Brent Appel wrote a decision favoring Godfrey; David Wiggins and Daryl Hecht signed on. Justice Ed Mansfield, joined by Tom Waterman and Bruce Zager, sided with the state. That left Chief Justice Mark Cady in the middle, and his opinion thus ruled the day.

Godfrey’s allegation that he was discriminated against and harassed because he was gay won’t work, Cady said. Those claims, he said, are covered by the Iowa Civil Rights Act, where “robust” remedies exist, and that’s where a remedy lies for them.

But Cady agreed with the Appel camp that Godfrey’s allegation that his rights were violated because of partisan politics or by false claims of poor work performance were matters that should go to trial. In effect, the court said there is no statute that applies to such cases, and when that happens the Constitution itself becomes the operable law.

So now the case is back in court in Polk County, though no trial date has been set.

When the case was filed, Branstad asked that the defense be represented by lawyer George LaMarca rather than by the state Attorney General’s office, and over the years the state has paid out nearly $1 million to LaMarca. In recent months, though, the Attorney General’s office seems to have taken over the case — among other things, handling the arguments in the Supreme Court.

The state’s exposure to date is probably between $3 million and $4 million; if the case goes to trial — and whoever wins will appeal — the ultimate exposure could top $5 million. If she wins, Conlin might be entitled to her fees — it’s unclear if fees would be recoverable under the court’s newly created constitutional right of action — and those fees could by then approach $3 million. Godfrey probably will get some damages, and LaMarca will probably end up with $1.5 million or so. That is, of course, taxpayer money.

If Branstad had not cut Godfrey’s salary, the commissioner would have earned an extra $150,000 or so over the remaining 46 months of his term. So whatever it was that caused Branstad to try to get rid of Godfrey — pique or politics or pressure or prejudice — has already cost the taxpayers dearly.

Moving forward seems like a risk. Iowa juries have shown of late that harassment and discrimination can be costly. Earlier this year, a Polk County jury awarded $1.4 million to former University of Iowa administrator Jane Meyer in a lawsuit alleging retaliation and discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, and the university then agreed to pay $6.5 million to Meyer and her longtime partner, former Field Hockey Coach Tracey Griesbaum, who also had sued. The $6.5 million includes the $1.4 million verdict.

And in July, another Polk County jury awarded $2.2 million to Kristen Anderson, a staffer for Iowa Senate Republicans who had sued for discrimination and retaliation and harassment.

A person familiar with the Godfrey case says there has been no talk of settlement. ♦

‘A tragic mistake’

Alas.

Soon, there will be days each week when The Des Moines Register has no editorial. On those days, there will be no comment on whether the City Council is misguided on this or that, no opinion on whether the Board of Regents is headed off in the wrong direction, no view on whether the Governor is making the right choices.

Alas.

The newspaper, under continued economic pressures from its owners at Gannett, is cutting back — again — and in this cutback editorial writer Clark Kauffman is being moved back to the reporting staff. He won’t be replaced, leaving the page with editor Lynn Hicks and part-time writer Andie Dominick.

And no one else.

“That is an incredible, inexcusable, tragic mistake,” former editorial writer Bill Leonard says.

And that’s an understatement.

The editorial page is the soul of the newspaper. And, in the best of newspapers in the best of towns, it is the soul of the community. And the conscience. And, often, the heart. The editorial page is the place in a community where thought is pure and where punches aren’t pulled.

Need an example? Look up the Storm Lake Times, where editor Art Cullen won the Pulitzer Prize this year for well-reported, well-written, well-reasoned — and gutsy — editorials.

A consistent editorial page is a yardstick for readers. If, over the years, a reader has determined she is philosophically in tune with the paper, she can use the paper’s view to help guide her own thinking on a particular issue. If a reader has determined that he is seldom in agreement with the newspaper, he can use the newspaper’s view on an issue to bolster his own opposition to it.

Three times, Register editorial writers have won the Pulitzer Prize. The most recent, in 1955, helped change the world. That editorial, by Lauren Soth, invited Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and a Russian farm delegation to visit the U.S. Khrushchev and the delegation came to Iowa. Some say it was that visit — spurred by that editorial — that began the thaw in the U.S. Soviet relationship.

At one time, the Register had an editorial-page staff of up to 10 people — writers, editors, assistants — and it stationed an editorial writer in Washington for awhile to keep a closer eye on national issues of importance to Register readers.

Now, it is a staff of one-and-a-half.

Do not blame Register President Dave Chivers or Executive Editor Carol Hunter. The blame lies back at headquarters, which has been sucking money out of the newspaper for 30 years. Indeed, Register bosses have held out longer than most of their Gannett colleagues. The Gannett-owned Courier-Journal in Louisville, for decades a thought leader of the South under the Bingham family ownership, quit running editorials every day two years ago and dropped its op-ed page at the same time. (The Register has no op-ed page on Mondays and Saturdays but will keep the page on the other days.).

So now, Clark Kauffman, who had been writing three or four editorials a week, is headed back to the newsroom — or, as he reminds us, to what Gannett calls the “information center.” So now, there will be days when we are left to wonder: What does the newspaper think about this?

On those days, we’ll never know.

Alas.

— Michael Gartner

Michael Gartner won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing at the Ames Tribune in 1997 and is the author of “Outrage, Passion and Uncommon Sense,” a history of America as seen through editorials over the years.

School-board elections will be held in Iowa on Sept. 12. You probably won’t have to wait in line at the polls.

There are 115,103 registered voters in the Des Moines Independent School District. Two years ago, 4,984 of them voted. That’s a turnout rate of 4.3 percent. In West Des Moines, 1,093 of the 37,116 registered voters went to the polls, for a turnout rate of 2.9 percent. In Ankeny, 2,544 people voted; there were 42,977 registered voters, so the turnout rate was 5.9 percent.

Perhaps more surprising: In Des Moines, only nine of the voters were between the ages of 18 and 21, only five were between 21 and 24, and only nine more were between 24 and 30, according to Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald. The turnout of young people in the other districts was tiny, too.

No one expects the turnout to change much this year. In Des Moines, three people are running for the two at-large seats, while no one is challenging the incumbents in the two district seats that are on the ballot. In Ankeny, five people are running for the three available seats, and in West Des Moines four people are running for the three positions.

Part of the problem is that people simply don’t care, even though schools take the biggest bite of a person’s property taxes. The other part of the problem is that there’s nothing else on the ballot in a school election, so if you aren’t interested in the schools there is no other reason to go to the polls.

But that will change in 2019. Starting then, school-board and municipal elections across the state will be held together on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The Legislature passed that change this spring — over the objection of the Iowa Association of School Boards and the Iowa State Education Association. (Though the schools pride themselves on teaching civics, in fact these groups like to keep turnout down so that their members will have an inordinate influence in the balloting.)

While this will create logistics problems for election overseers — the boundaries of school districts are not contiguous with the boundaries of municipalities — this should increase turnout a bit. Turnout for municipal elections also is low, but if you put a bond issue on that ballot — and that probably will happen often — turnout would jump. …

One-hundred sixteen employees of the Des Moines Independent School District will earn more than $100,000 this year, with Superintendent Tom Ahart topping the list at $296,043.

The only others making more than $200,000 are Thomas Harper, the chief financial officer, at $209,021, and Bill Good, the chief operations officer, at $203,558.

Leslie Morris, the principal at East High School, is the highest-paid principal in Des Moines, with a salary of $143,414. Not far behind are the other high-school principals: Hoover’s Kathie Danielson ($141,472), Roosevelt’s Kevin Biggs and Lincoln’s Paul Williamson ($138,109), and North’s Ben Grabber ($121,400). Aiddy Phomvisay, the director of Central Campus, earns $134,048, and Jessica Gogery, the head of Central Academy, makes $114,847.

Rich Blonigan, who runs Scavo, the alternative school at the central campus, is paid $126,188.

Anne Sullivan, the human-resources chief, is the highest-paid woman in the system with a salary of $197,008.

The salary range for teachers this year is $42,456 to about $72,000, depending on education and length of service, and that’s for a nine-month year. They get extra pay for extra duties — overseeing journalism or music endeavors, for instance, or coaching. A high school band director gets an extra $5,589, a debate coach $4,595 and a football coach $7,895 — the most paid for any coaching.

All told, the school district has a budget for this year of $557 million, with about half being designated for “instruction.” About half of the budget comes from state aid, about a quarter from property taxes. …

Marty Tirrell and Ken Miller have split up. “I’m no longer part of MartyandMiller but excited to be going back to radio,” Miller tweeted on Aug. 22. He’s going back to KBGG, where he and Tirrell had a show until this spring. At the time, Miller tweeted that the two wanted to concentrate on their Mediacom show “and concentrate on expanding our digital operations,” but the departure might not have been their choice. Among other things, Cumulus has a $96,000 judgment against Tirrell.

Tirrell can be a heavy load to carry, with his history of losing huge judgments — and then not paying them — to ticket brokers and advertisers and employers. He has twice filed for bankruptcy. In the most recent case, the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Iowa ruled against him early this year and refused his petition to discharge his debts. He appealed, and on Sept. 6 the appellate court also ruled against him, meaning he’s still on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts. Also, the Internal Revenue Service has liens against Tirrell for nearly $50,000 for nonpayment of income taxes. He appears unfazed by all of this. His girlfriend has recently tweeted pictures indicating the two of them have been enjoying life in Boston, Saratoga, Las Vegas, Hollywood, New York and Maine, among other places. …

The full 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to take a look at the decision by three of their colleagues that upheld a federal court injunction that barred Iowa State University from stopping a student group from using an ISU logo on T-shirts that advocated for the legalization of marijuana laws and also included a cannabis leaf.

That means Judge James Gritzner can schedule a hearing to determine the extent of the damages due to Paul Gerlich and Erin Furleigh, the Iowa State students who brought the case after then-president Steve Leath censored the shirts following inquiries from Republican politicians. And the five lawyers for the pair have asked the court for $240,070 in fees for handling the appeal. They haven’t yet submitted fees for their work in district court, since they still have to argue the issue about damages. The university could end up putting out $500,000 or more. …

Leath is now president of Auburn University, and he is advertising for a “chief of staff” with the duties that are pretty similar to the duties of Miles Lackey at Iowa State. Lackey was one of the first ISU hires made by Leath. …

The Des Moines City Council the other evening voted to designate the old Trolley Loop at 49th and University a “local landmark.” That’s a victory for Earl Short, the one-man force dispensing the history of Des Moines streetcars to young people and keeping alive the memories of those streetcars for old people. The designation by the City Council means a monument of some type can be put on the site. ♦

REMEMBRANCE

Buck Turnbull was, indeed, great

Editor’s note: What follows are the remarks that Michael Gartner delivered at Buck Turnbull’s memorial service at Grace Church in Des Moines on Aug. 19.

I would like to start with a correction.

Right after Buck died, I put a line in CITYVIEW that said, “Buck Turnbull was a good guy and a good sportswriter.”

No, a reader commented, he was a GREAT guy and a GREAT sportswriter.

I regret the error.

Buck Turnbull wanted to be a sportswriter ever since he was a kid growing up in New Jersey. And he was destined to be a great sportswriter. I mean, with a name like Buck Turnbull you have to become a movie-western star or a Major League catcher or a sportswriter. I don’t think Buck was ever very fond of horses, unless it was to bet on them, and his arm wasn’t that great. So that left sportswriting.

And, wow, was he good. I mean great.

I met him 63 years ago, when he was a newly hired sports copy editor and I was a 15-year-old answering phones in the department and taking dictation from writers calling in their stories. After editing copy for a decade or so, Buck got his chance to become a full-time sports reporter, and if that was a big break for Buck it was an even greater break for Register readers. Those were the days when the Register sent reporters to every major sports event — so Buck covered the Kentucky Derby and bowl games and golf tournaments and nearly everything else. The stories were always fact-filled with great quotes.

And then the next morning, at coffee down at Moran’s, he’d tell the seven or eight guys assembled — it was always guys, there was no Title 9 at Moran’s — the quotes that didn’t make the paper, often because he didn’t want to take cheap shots or make someone look like a jerk unless the guy really was a jerk.

So it was at Moran’s where Buck told about asking the Iowa football player why he had dropped out of school at almost the beginning of the semester. “Well, Mr. Turnbull,” the player told Buck, “it’s like this: school has been open for two weeks — and already I’m four weeks behind.”

And then Buck would be the first of us to laugh — his laugh was a quick burst, like a cherry bomb you didn’t know was there. He was a good storyteller. No, make that, “a great storyteller.”

Then there was the time Buck wrote a factual story about Floren DiPaglia, the local golfer. Factual, but not exactly flattering. Indeed, that night, around 10 p.m., he got a call at home.

“I just want to tell you,” the anonymous caller said, “if I ever see you downtown on the street at night, alone, I’m going to break every bone in your body.”

Fortunately, Buck worked days.

Or else he asked Jay to accompany him downtown at night.

And if you don’t know who Floren DiPaglia was, you can check two sources: the list of Iowa Amateur golf champions — and the list of men arrested in New Jersey for armed robbery, auto theft and assault with intent to kill a police officer. Or check the Iowa court files on attempted bribes of Drake basketball players.

(Yes, there were days when Drake’s basketball team was so good that at least one bettor apparently tried to bribe them into shaving points. Or course, those were days long ago.)

Anyway….

Buck liked hanging out with athletes and coaches and writers and fringe players like Babe Bisignano and Pinkie George. He enjoyed the camaraderie, but it ended at the sidelines. If a coach would lie to him, he’d get furious. Once he asked a coach why he lied.

“Because you ask questions before I’m ready to answer them,” the coach told Buck.

And the questions could be tough.

Unlike a colleague or two, Buck had no towering ego. His writing was straightforward — the kind of writing that paints the picture of an event, not the kind of writing that is an egotistical self-portrait of the writer. With Buck, it was just the facts — including the facts that some coaches and athletic directors didn’t want to see in the paper.

Buck loved his alma mater, the University of Iowa — but sometimes it seemed like tough love. He wasn’t Forrest Evashevki’s favorite reporter — especially after he broke a huge story about the fight between Evy, then the athletic director, and Ray Nagel, the football coach. But he was the reporter people turned to first thing in the morning to find out what happened — for there were no tweets or Big Ten cable channels — or any cable channels — or iPads or iPhones or i-anythings. It was up to the sports writer to set the scene, to tell the story, to explain the excitement or the despair.

And nobody did that better than Buck.

Twice, his colleagues named him Iowa Sportswriter of the Year.

Buck liked covering winners — “It’s easier to write the story when the home team wins,” he said, and you can get better quotes. But he once went on a streak of covering 15 or 20 football games in which the Iowa teams lost.

And that’s the way it was for all of us here a couple of months ago when Buck Turnbull died.

The home team lost.

For Buck Turnbull was a peach.

Indeed, he was The Big Peach. ♦

Brief biographies of three good people

TOM LYNNER

Tom Lynner took over his father’s rea-estate management company, built it and then brought his two sons into the business.

But he was not just another real-estate guy in town.

For one thing, he had a Ph.D. in English Literature. (His dissertation was on Christopher Marlowe.) For another, he co-founded with Jim Autry an entirely non-real-estate venture in Des Moines — the Des Moines Poetry Festival, an annual event that ran from 1991 through 2006 and brought in poets laureate and other notable poets from around the nation.

He started his professional life as a newspaperman, a copy editor on The Des Moines Register, a job he was particularly suited for with his quick mind, his love of the language, his insatiable curiosity and his storehouse of knowledge both trivial and important.

Tom Lynner knew an awful lot about an awful lot.

He was a soft-spoken man, and a kind one. He fought cancer for the past two years, and cancer won on August 2. He was 73 when he died.

DOLORES VAN OORT

Chances are you didn’t know Dolores Van Oort.

Unless you were an Iowa Cubs fan.

Dolores was a season ticket-holder for 43 years, and not a passive or a shy one. In later years bent over and just a wisp of a woman, she would sidle up to you — if you can sidle in a walker — and tell you what had to be done to make the team better. She would tell you this in a conspiratorial way, with her hand in front of her face the way a pitcher holds his glove over his mouth when talking to the catcher so the TV camera can’t catch what he is saying.

And then she’d tell you what the big Cubs, the Chicago Cubs, needed to do. Whenever Jim Hendry was in town — he was for years the general manager of the big Cubs — he would look down from the press box and announce that “I’d better go down to sit with Dolores to find out what I’m doing wrong.” And off he’d go. And often, he’d say afterward, she was right.

She was long a nurse, and she was active in all kinds of organizations in Ankeny, but her passion — apart from her 11 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren — was the Iowa Cubs. Each year, she’d get to know the players and their wives and their babies — “I make new friends here every year,” she said — and they’d invite her to their weddings and other events. She loved them, and they loved her.

She was 89 and long widowed when she died on August 4. As she lay dying, one of her last visitors was Cubbie, the mascot, which cheered her up. Then Sam Bernabe, the Cubs general manager, slipped his World Series ring momentarily around her finger. She smiled, raised her hand as if her life was now complete. She died that night. Tucked next to her in her casket at Our Lady of Immaculate Heart Church in Ankeny was a baseball signed by this year’s team.

DICK LEVITT

Dick Levitt was scary smart and very rich, which was a great thing for Des Moines.

He grew the company founded by his grandfather and built by his father, Dial Finance, into a lending giant, sold it to what is now Wells Fargo bank, became a top executive at its Minneapolis headquarters for a few years, built up its mortgage business and moved it to Des Moines — and then watched as Wells Fargo Financial and Wells Fargo Mortgage became huge employers in his hometown.

He always had a twinkle in his eye. He liked corny jokes and beautiful art. He’d rather have lunch at the Waveland Cafe than at Wakonda Club. He didn’t spend lavishly — except on art — but he gave generously. He was fascinated by how the world worked, but he was never really active in politics. In his lifetime, he gave far less to politicians and political parties than he spent on just one of the fantastic paintings in the Fleur Drive apartment he shared with his wife, Jeanne. He had his priorities right.

He was a caring friend and a good neighbor. When a neighbor’s son was born, Levitt had a tree planted in the neighbor’s backyard — which bordered his —so all could watch as the two grew together. (And, eerily, when the boy died 17 years later, so did the tree.) He loved his eight grandchildren and periodically would ask one or another to ride with him on an Iowa-to-California drive. They’d take the measure of one another, he said. He was always pleased; he hoped they were, too.

In 2008, he and a cousin founded a new company, the Barrent Group, which continues to grow. He said he never wanted to stop working. And he didn’t, until July 30, when he dropped dead at the age of 87. ♦

Simon the Rabbit, RIP

Annette Edwards and Simon the rabbit

It was, of course, quite sad when Simon the bunny died at the hands of United Air Lines, and it was even sadder that they cremated the bunny without advising its owners. It was especially sad, too, if true, that Simon met his end by being inadvertently locked in a freezer at O’Hare Airport while awaiting a flight to meet his new owners, Mark Oman and Duke Reichardt and Steve Bruere.

That’s no way for a bunny to die.

So there is nothing happy about this sad story, reported in papers and on television after the new owners discovered they owned a dead rabbit, not a bunny who was expected to overtake his father, Darius, as the world’s biggest rabbit — Darius is roughly the size of a third-grader — and who would be a lovable prop to help raise money for the Iowa State Fair’s Blue Ribbon Foundation.

Yet that story — based on a lawsuit filed in Polk County District Court by “the Simon group” against United Air Lines — didn’t tell the half of it.

So here’s the other half: While Simon was no ordinary bunny and Darius is no ordinary rabbit, the woman who raised them is no ordinary woman. Annette Edwards lives in Stoulton, a village of 400 people in central England, and she has been raising rabbits for nearly 15 years.

It presumably is a coincidence that Edwards is a former model who appeared in Playboy Magazine, but it is no coincidence that she somewhat resembles Jessica Rabbit, or at least resembles her as much as a great-grandmother can. Jessica Rabbit, of course, was the wife of Roger Rabbit in the 1988 cartoon movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” In 2009, Jessica was voted sexiest cartoon character of all time, and at least two women have had plastic surgery to make them resemble Jessica.

One of those women is Annette Edwards.

According to an article in Britain’s Daily Mail in 2009, Edwards — then 57 — paid around $10,000 to have, in her words, “a breast uplift, a brow lift, chin implants and Botox injections.” Meantime, she went on raising rabbits and owned a succession of the world’s biggest — Roberto and Amy and Alice and then Darius.

The three Des Moines men paid $2,330, including shipping, for Simon, who was ten months old at the time and already a handsome three-feet-something long. Rabbits don’t hit their full length until they are 18 to 24 months old, so there was every expectation Simon would grow to become bigger than his daddy, Darius, who is 4-feet and 2-inches long.

According to the lawsuit, “the Simon Group intended to market and merchandise Simon, for example, by way of apparel and other products, such as hats, shirts, miniature versions, books, etc.”

But, of course, those plans died in a freezer, or somewhere, with the late Simon.

The three Des Moines area men, represented by Guy Cook, are asking for their costs, reimbursement for money Simon and Simon-related products would have earned, and for punitive damages. They are not asking for pain and suffering.

In late August, the case was moved to federal court at the request of United, presumably to have it come under a treaty called the Montreal Convention, which deals with victims of air disasters. The case has been assigned to Senior District Judge Charles Wolle.

In all likelihood, the case will be settled.

Postscript: Word from England is that Jeff, a half-brother of Simon, now is bigger than Darius. Fame is fleeting. ♦

A modest proposal

Why not take those statues of Robert E. Lee and the statue of Chief Justice Taney and just put them in the lobbies of Trump hotels around the world?

Just a thought. ♦

That Apple deal with Waukee is a whole lot richer for the town than even its biggest advocates say. Perhaps at least 10 times richer than the biggest figures being bandied about.

And it could be a whole lot sweeter for Apple than the papers and blogs and TV stations have been reporting.

But it could cost the state a lot more in development grants than state officials are saying.

And it raises a really interesting political question.

Those are the only conclusions you can come to after studying the Apple deal with Waukee and with the state of Iowa, after looking at the history of the deals the state has made with Google, Microsoft and Facebook and after querying gubernatorial candidates.

The announcements, the stories and the lunch-counter talk have centered on the facts in the late-August press release: That Apple is going to build a 400,000-square-foot data center in Waukee, that it will spend more than $1.3 billion to build the two-building center, and that over the years it will contribute up to $100 million to Waukee for a Public Improvement Fund.

And the facts provided by state and local officials: That Waukee will abate 71 percent of the property taxes Apple would ordinarily have to pay for the first 20 years and that the state will give an investment tax credit of $19,650,000 to Apple under the “high-quality jobs program” — $9,825,000 for each of the two buildings that Apple plans to build, or, put another way, for about $400,000 for each of the 50 jobs Apple plans to create.

All this was greeted by glee in Waukee, by pride in the chambers of economic-development groups and Republican state officeholders — particularly by Gov. Kim Reynolds — but by dismay in the quarters of Democratic politicians (and, oddly, by Pat Grassley, the Republican state legislator and wannabe state secretary of agriculture) and Iowans who wonder if that’s a wise use of tax incentives.

We’ll get to that political question in a minute.

But there’s more to the story.

Apple is buying around 2,000 acres in Waukee, land straddling Hickman Road on the west side of town, and it is saying privately that it hopes to build 20 — perhaps more — data centers on the site. And it has a deal with Waukee that each building will get the same abatements.

That’s a spectacular deal for Waukee. Waukee is currently getting about $20,000 a year in taxes on the land, which is taxed at the low agricultural-land rate. There is an agreement that each building will have a minimum assessed valuation of $200 million. After the rollback provided to non-agricultural property by Iowa’s tax laws, and after setting aside money to pay interest owed on outstanding bonds issued by the city, the county and the school district, and after forgiving 71 percent of the taxes that normally would be owed — after all that Waukee will collect from Apple about $1.5 million each year in property taxes on that first building. And another $1.5 million on each subsequent building.

Put another way: On just one building, the city each year will bring in 75 times the tax revenue it now is getting off all of that land. Two buildings will bring $3 million directly to the city’s coffers. Per year. Keep multiplying that out, and you get to $30 million per year for 20 buildings.

Apple already has agreed to start work on two buildings. People familiar with the plans expect it to start two new buildings every two years.

Then throw in the money for the Public Improvement Fund — $500,000 per building per year until the total hits $100 million — and you’ve got a really nice deal.

It’s true the city could have waited for other developers to come, eventually, and perhaps build equally expensive projects on that land, eventually, and perhaps have gotten even more money, eventually. But that’s a risky gamble, while the discounted Apple deal is a sure thing. It’s clearly a good deal.

For the city. (The way the deal is structured, neither Dallas County nor the school district will share directly in this property-tax take other than the money to pay interest on bonds.)

And it’s a sweet deal for Apple as well. Over the 20 years, it will save an estimated $188 million by not paying the full property-tax rate in Waukee on just the first two buildings. That money will go up about $6.5 million per year for each additional building built. And, of course, it will get the state incentives, though those can’t be calculated beyond the promised $19,650,000 for the first two buildings.

But it’s no sweet deal for the state.

The state has made an agreement with Apple for just two buildings, and it has made no promises for anything beyond those two. But if you look at the state’s history in dealing with Google and Microsoft and Facebook for the data centers they are building — you see the till is always open.

Indeed, so far those four companies have received about $130 million in tax breaks from the state — in return for 520 jobs. That’s $250,000 per job. So there’s no reason to think the current administration, if re-elected, wouldn’t continue the handing out of credits for additional Apple buildings.

Google was first to announce plans for a giant data center in Iowa, in 2007, when Chet Culver was Governor and the Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature. The center was to be in Council Bluffs, home of Senate leader Mike Gronstal, so Gronstal made sure the law was changed to allow state aid for data centers. Microsoft followed in 2008 with plans for a center in West Des Moines, and Facebook in 2013 with a proposal for Altoona.

Google now has gone to the well four times, getting more state incentives each time. The first one, in 2007, provided just $1.4 million in a sales-tax refund for a $300 million project. Since then, it has gotten awards totaling $36.6 million. (At the end of 2016, Google had about $86 billion in cash.)

Microsoft got an original award of about $2.5 million in 2008 and has received another $45 million in investment-tax credits and sales-tax refunds in four subsequent awards from the IDED. (On June 30 of this year, Microsoft had about $130 billion of cash.)

And Facebook got an original award of $18 million in 2013 and an additional $8 million earlier this year. (At the end of last year, Facebook had cash of about $30 billion.)

In fact, though, that money is just chump change for the companies. Apple has about $255 billion stuffed under the mattress, so there are lots of people outside the Governor’s office who doubt that it was the $19 million tax break that persuaded Apple to choose Iowa. Rather, they say, it was the available land, the relatively inexpensive power (which is tax-free for data centers in Iowa), the abundance of water, the ability to boast that all the power would be from renewable energy (which is important for their image) and the low possibility of natural disasters that make Iowa so attractive to the data-bank companies.

These people say the state got rolled.

They say the state — unlike Waukee — gets nothing out of the deal, and they say that if the data companies paid their full share of taxes there would be $140 million or so that could have been invested in education, or mental-health facilities or the like. They acknowledge the data centers provide hundreds of construction jobs — lifetime jobs, probably, for some — but they say you shouldn’t have to give big breaks to get construction jobs.

Now, with elections looming next year, the Apple deal has become as much a question of politics as of economic development. CITYVIEW asked this question to Republican challenger Ron Corbett and Democratic candidates Andy McGuire, John Norris, Fred Hubbell, Cathy Glasson and Nate Boulton:

If/when you are governor, and Apple comes back and tells you it is ready to break ground on buildings 3 and 4 in Waukee, another $1.4 billion deal employing another 50 (or fewer) people, and asks for another $20 million or so in tax incentives (investment tax credit or sales-tax refund), what will you say?

Their answers are in the accompanying columns. …

The state of Massachusetts has issued a warrant for the arrest of Marty Tirrell, the Des Moines sports-talk guy who owes a lot of people a lot of money. The warrant was issued June 23 and cites “larceny over $250 by false pretenses.” It contains no details, says a person at the Greenfield District of the state’s courts.

Tirrell, who has lived in Iowa for 20 years or so and is registered to vote in Polk County, apparently still has a Massachusetts driver’s license along with his Iowa license. The warrant prompted the Massachusetts department of motor vehicles to suspend his license “for an indefinite period” — until the warrant has been cleared by the court, according to the department.

As of the other day, the warrant had not been cleared, according to the court.

Larceny of more than $250 is a felony in Massachusetts punishable by up to five years in prison.

Meantime, as readers of the web version of CITYVIEW know, after CITYVIEW went to press last month the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal bankruptcy court decision denying Tirrell’s petition for bankruptcy, meaning his hundreds of thousands of dollars of debts will not be discharged. …

Your tax or tuition dollars at work: The costs are starting to roll in for that political decision former Iowa State President Steve Leath made to squelch the free speech of the students who put the cannabis leaf along with the ISU logo on T-shirts advocating the legal use of marijuana in Iowa.

The Eighth Circuit the other day awarded $178,825 in fees and expenses to a Washington law firm that represented the students and $14,434 to the Des Moines office of Faegre Baker Daniels.

Those were just the costs of the appeal. The federal district court, which ruled against Leath and ISU, has yet to set the damages — or legal fees — for the case as a whole….

The Des Moines Register has made further newsroom cuts, eliminating four jobs. Among the departing: Dan Holm, a 28-year veteran who had covered sports and news in Ankeny, where he was widely admired, and Jeff Charis-Carlson, the Iowa City-based reporter who had been covering higher education. …

Senior Federal Judge Robert Pratt fined Dico Inc. and its affiliated Titan Tire Corp. about $11 million in a long-running case brought by the federal government and involving the sale 10 years ago of contaminated buildings in a scheme to avoid cleaning up a hazardous site Dico owned in Des Moines. About half the judgment is for punitive damages.

In an earlier go-round in that case, the fine was nearly $3.1 million. Morry Taylor, one-time presidential candidate and until recently the chief executive of Titan, dismissed that award as “a big joke.”

Dico never has paid an earlier judgment against it. In 2000, in another long-running case, Judge Ron Longstaff entered a judgment for environmental cleanup costs due to groundwater contamination against Dico of $4,129,626.67. The decision was upheld by the Eighth Circuit in 2001, and it remains unsatisfied. ♦

Candidates’ views of Apple deal

Fred Hubbell
If Apple is having a good experience in Iowa because of a number of very attractive factors that drew them initially — Iowa offering a low cost of energy, a high percentage of renewable energy, safety from most natural disasters and a quality workforce, on top of an existing sales tax exemption for equipment — then they really don’t need our money to build more.
Apple is already getting a great deal because of all those factors and we should not fall over ourselves to needlessly sweeten the pot for them. I’ve been critical of Apple’s deal and others like it, because they are bad deals for Iowans. Apple is a company with $260 billion in cash reserves and certainly does not need $20 million of our taxpayers’ dollars, which could be spent on helping our small businesses grow, or staving off the severe cuts to Medicaid, mental health funding, education, law enforcement, and state worker benefits that [Gov. Kim] Reynolds is proposing to off-set her $350 million budget deficit. I’m open to having a conversation with Apple about bringing a design center and hundreds of jobs, but unequivocally I will not give them another $20 million taxpayer handout for 50 permanent jobs.

Andy McGuire
Iowa is awash in tax breaks for out-of-state corporations. The investments have not paid off. In fact, Iowa’s local governments and community schools have taken the biggest hit in lost revenues due to commercial property tax reform and tax incentives to businesses such as Apple. Reimbursements for lost revenue have never been realized and common sense will tell you that $4.6 million ($400,000 in state incentives) per job is not a good trade.
Governor Reynolds is poised to dip into Iowa’s rainy day fund to make up for mismanagement and poor decisions. Doling out more money on a wing and a prayer isn’t good business.

Cathy Glasson
I would say no. You’re a high-profit company. We’re not playing those kinds of games with Iowa taxpayers’ money anymore. Iowa has low unemployment. We have a lot of jobs — the problem is they’re not good-paying jobs. That’s why among my top priorities will be quickly raising the minimum wage to $15 and making it easier for Iowans to join unions and employee associations, to raise wages and improve the standard of living for hundreds of thousands of working people in our state. As Governor I will make sure taxpayers are getting their money’s worth by investing in areas that have a guaranteed return for hundreds of thousands of Iowans, like healthcare and education, not giving millions of dollars in tax breaks to profitable corporations that really don’t need the help.

John Norris
To continue this pattern of corporate welfare is simply unsustainable. That $20 million could help make college more affordable, could help train high school students through internships and apprenticeships and get many of our young Iowans into the workforce, could help meet needs of pre-K through 12th grade public schools, could help finance ways to make our water safe to drink and many of our lakes and rivers safe for swimming, could help provide needed mental health services in a state that has closed its two mental health hospitals without providing any meaningful alternative, and could help ease the burden on our hospitals, particularly our rural hospitals, that have been hurt by state Medicaid rulings.
Iowans are excited that Apple is part of our state. But its presence here comes with the same responsibility all Iowans have, that it pay its fair share of taxes.

Ron Corbett
The Apple deal needed to have more jobs for the incentives. The state should have pushed for more than 50 jobs associated with the data center. Apple is a big company and other divisions or aspects of business should have been pursued.
All deals have to have a public benefit. In the event Apple wants to expand, and based on the purchase of acres that seems plausible, as Governor I will be open to additional incentives for future expansions. The jobs numbers need to be much higher than round one.

Note: Nate Boulton did not respond to CITYVIEW’s request. ♦

John Tapscott

One day in 1974, I ran into Harold Hughes in the Red Carpet Room of United Air Lines at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. He was in his final year in the United States Senate, and I was in my first year as executive editor of The Des Moines Register.

We chatted for a moment, and then he blurted out: “Why don’t you do something about those drunks who work for you in the newsroom?”

That took me aback, but he went on. He named a couple of names and said that, statistically, there were more.

I knew Harold Hughes usually knew what he was talking about, and I knew he particularly knew what he was talking about when it came to drunks. He had been a long-time alcoholic himself. So I asked how I should deal with these guys — they were all men — and he said, “Call John Tapscott.”

Tapscott was a former legislator, a one-time gubernatorial candidate and a long-time counselor to alcoholics. We got together. “How do I do this?” I asked. He explained that often a boss is the only person who can force an alcoholic to get treatment because the boss controls the paycheck, “and that’s the leverage.”

“Call them in,” he advised, and I can still picture the conversation 43 years later. “Tell them you know they’re a drunk. Tell them you don’t care why they drink, that you don’t care about their personal problems, that you don’t care about their family difficulties, that all you care about is getting from them a day’s work for a day’s pay — and that you’re not getting that day’s work. Don’t listen to their excuses or their denials.”

And then, he went on, tell them they have two choices: They can quit, right then, or they can go up to Methodist Hospital and check in for in-patient treatment. Tell them you’ll go with them, he said. And tell them they’ll be on the payroll the whole time — the treatment will take a month or so, he said — and tell them the job will be waiting for them when they get out. Tell them the newspaper will pay for the hospitalization.

Over the next three or four years, I had those conversations six or seven times — whenever I was convinced a reporter or editor had a serious drinking problem and I wasn’t getting a day’s work for a day’s pay. Each meeting was traumatic, for both of us, but each ended up with a trip to Methodist.

There was one failure. But the others came back — the first stop was usually to seek me out and give me a hug — and went on to generally happy and successful and sober lives. I worked with them for years, and I would see them periodically for decades.

I often wondered if they knew that John Tapscott had perhaps saved their lives.

I never mentioned it to them.

And I never thanked John.

Now, there is no chance. John Tapscott died in August of a rare heart disease. He was 87. ♦

— Michael Gartner

The sad tale of Kirk Blunck drags on.

The police have gathered all they could gather about that Sunday afternoon in January of 2016 when the often-praised and often-sued architect and landlord fell or was shoved to his death in a stairwell of the Teachout Building he owned in the East Village. The Polk County Medical Examiner said Blunck died of “multiple blunt force trauma, manner undetermined.”

But there’s apparently not enough evidence to bring charges.

And the complicated estate — with the judgments against it, with debt-laden real-estate, with unsettled lawsuits and with valuable art and an expensive home — is only a bit less complicated than it was on the day of his death.

Now his widow and children have filed a civil suit against 27-year-old Zachary Allen Gaskill, alleging what Blunck’s friends have been saying since his death: That the 62-year-old architect was murdered.

The police have never publicly named Gaskill as a suspect, but a previously undisclosed August 2016 probation-violation report says the police were questioning him in connection with the death. That probation report also says Gaskill conceded he was drinking on that day at the Americana bar on Locust Street, a mile or so west of the Teachout Building. Drinking is a violation of the parole.

The Blunck family’s suit cites no circumstances, though the talk around the East Village was that Blunck had stopped into his building and confronted a young couple who appeared to be casing the place. The family’s suit, alleging battery and negligence against the 6-foot 2-inch, 215-pound Gaskill, seeks compensation for the family’s loss — for pain and suffering, for lost earning power, for funeral expenses, for loss of consortium and the like. The estate is paying lawyer Steve Wandro and his associates up to $300 an hour to pursue the suit.

But it looks more like an effort somehow to clear the name of Blunck. For Zachary Gaskill doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who is loaded down with assets. The parole-violation report of August of 2016 notes that he still owed $12,213.25 in restitution, court costs and fines from a December 2014 conviction for three counts of attempted burglary of a nutrition store in West Des Moines. As part of a plea deal, he was given a suspended sentence of six years, was placed on probation for two years and was ordered to make restitution. His probation still had a month to go at the time of Blunck’s death. Because of the violation, the probation was continued until Dec. 10 of this year.

Gaskill also is behind on child-support payments, according to records in Polk County District Court, and his wages have been garnished. He also was convicted of burglary in 2011 and was dealt with under the state’s youthful-offender program. And in 2012 he was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia, which ended in another plea agreement.

Meantime, the estate expects to sell the Teachout Building — the site of the death — and the neighboring Hohberger Building before the end of the year, meeting a deadline established a year ago in an agreement with the city. Blunck was one of the early investors in a once-shabby East Village, and Des Moines had loaned him money to help finance the rehabilitation of those two buildings. But he was woefully behind in paying the money back.

The city had lent him $700,000 in two loans, at zero interest, in 1999, and the loans were to have been paid off by 2009. In 2010, the city declared both loans in default and put on an interest rate of 12 percent. Fourteen months ago, the city made a new deal, cutting the interest rate, getting better collateral — the loans were not personally guaranteed by Blunck — and getting an agreement that the estate would pay $1,500 monthly and seek to sell the properties by the end of this year. If the buildings aren’t sold by year-end, the interest rate goes back to 12 percent.

Loyd Ogle, a lawyer for the estate, says the estate is making the $1,500 payments and a sale is expected by year-end. Combined, the two buildings are assessed at $2,110,000. The outstanding principal owed the city is $682,500. In 1999, Blunck also took out two mortgages, totaling nearly $2 million, on the property.

Blunck’s business dealings were a mess. He ignored bills, ran up debts, didn’t pay his lawyers or the property taxes on his $715,000 home on Waterbury Road. He let an apartment building he owned in Sherman Hill become all but a slum.

The estate has been selling off properties and slowly settling some claims. In August, it paid $4,260 to Bank of America on a credit-card claim, and in July it paid $17,330 to Drake Roofing. But apart from the money he owes the city, at least two large claims still seem to be pending: $557,214 from Rolling Hills Bank and Trust of Atlantic and $171,125 from the Jeffrey Tyler family of Des Moines.

A final accounting for the estate has not been filed. …

Circulation of the print edition of The Des Moines Sunday Register is about to cross 100,000 — in the wrong direction. In the first quarter of this year — the latest period for which audited figures are available — print circulation of the Sunday paper averaged 105,371, down 14 percent from the 122,508 of a year earlier.

It has been close to 100 years since the circulation was that low. It peaked at 553,000 in 1951.

The number of digital subscribers has been rising, but it’s still relatively insignificant. In the latest quarter, 3,631 persons bought the digital version that is a replica of the print version — that is, it contains all the ads. That’s up from 2,582 a year earlier. The Register also has 4,995 subscribers to a “non-replica” digital edition, which carries fewer ads (and thus produces less revenue).

Print circulation of the Daily Register in the latest quarter averaged 59,365, down 11 percent from the 66,700 of a year before. Counting replica digital subscriptions as well as print, circulation in the latest quarter was 65,476, down from 71,829 a year before. There were another 6,882 “non-replica” digital subscribers in the latest quarter; there is no available year-ago figure.

In the Register’s main market — Polk, Dallas, Warren and Story counties — Sunday print circulation dropped to 61,173 from 69,703 a year before. Monday-through-Friday print circulation fell to 37,894 from 41,608 a year earlier.
Ten years ago, the Sunday circulation of the Register was 233,229, the daily circulation 146,050.

In 1925, the Sunday circulation was 146,751. Two years earlier, the newspaper proclaimed in an ad that “The Sunday Register has a larger circulation than any newspaper in the world published in a city the size of Des Moines.” …

Few people — especially young people — bothered to vote in the Sept. 12 school board election in Des Moines, according to Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald. There are 12,816 registered voters in Des Moines between the ages of 18 and 24. One-hundred-seven of them voted. There are 28,348 registered voters between 25 and 34; of those, 685 voted.

The other demographics: Ages 35 to 49 — 29,181 registered voters, 1,277 ballots cast; ages 50 to 64 — 29,728 registered voters, 1,473 ballots cast; ages 65 and older — 23,479 registered voters, 2,045 ballots cast.

The percentage turnout ranged from 0.83 percent among the youngest voters to 8.71 percent among the oldest. …

Matt Whittaker, who in previously lives has been a football star and a U.S. attorney and an unsuccessful political candidate and a CNN legal commentator, is the new chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. …

Heather Ryan, the outspoken and combative candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress from the Third District, has sued Polk County Democratic Chair Sean Bagniewski in small claims court. She alleges Bagniewski committed libel and slander in “spreading falsehoods in an attempt to damage [Ryan’s] political campaign, perception of party loyalty and personal reputation.” She wants $5,000. …

Eddie Mauro, who also is seeking the Democratic nomination, sent an email the other day noting that he had more cash on hand than any of his party opponents. He said he had $161,889.06, more than the $147,651.61 of Theresa Greenfield and the $104,642.67 of Cindy Axne. Well, yes, but there’s more to the story: Mauro’s total includes $100,000 that he loaned to himself. Neither Greenfield nor Axne reported any loans.

Seven Democrats are seeking the right to run against Republican incumbent David Young, who raised about $620,000 in the first nine months of this year and who has about $600,000 on hand.♦

A shame and a sham

Everyone who cares has known for months that Mark Braun was going to be the new executive director of the Board of Regents.

He had in effect been doing the job for more than a year. He was the guy the new leadership of the Regents wanted to replace Bob Donley, who disappeared shortly after the new board leadership came in. The Regents like him, the universities like him, and legislators like him. And he wanted the job.

He was a shoo-in.

And yet the board appointed a search committee. According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, 42 persons applied. The committee narrowed the field to five. Then — in secret — it sent just one name to the full board.

And then the board met in secret.

The whole process was a waste of time and money and a dirty trick to pull on 41 other people. And the secret meeting was probably illegal. According to a Regents document, the session was closed “to evaluate the professional competency of Mark Braun,” and the document noted he had requested the secret meeting.

But you can’t meet in secret to evaluate an employee unless the employee requests it — as Braun did — and unless someone determines that meeting in the open would cause “needless and irreparable injury to that individual’s reputation.” No one made that claim, which would have been ridiculous.

At any rate, Braun is the new executive director of the Regents. One of his early tasks might be to caution his bosses against sham searches. Another might be to give them copies of the Iowa Open Meetings Law.

— Michael Gartner

Oh, my

Wendy Wintersteen is the new president of Iowa State University.

Wendy Wintersteen as Dean of Agriculture at Iowa State is the person who didn’t rise up to defend the university’s Aldo Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, which the legislature has all but killed.

Wendy Wintersteen is the person who signed her name to the “memorandum of understanding” that would have barred scholars at the Harkin Institute from using the papers of Sen. Tom Harkin — longtime chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee — for agriculture research. It was that memo suppressing academic freedom that drove Harkin to walk away from his alma mater and set up the unfettered — and now highly successful — Harkin Institute at Drake.

Wendy Wintersteen stood by — silently and approvingly — when former Gov. Terry Branstad said Iowa State should speak with “one voice” and have “one mission” when it comes to agriculture, a preposterous statement in a state where agriculture has many voices and many missions.

Wendy Wintersteen is on the board of the Agribusiness Association of Iowa along with representatives of Monsanto, of the Koch Brothers, of DuPont Pioneer. The Agribusiness Association of Iowa funded the fight against the Des Moines Water Works, which sued drainage districts in three northern Iowa counties to force them to control the nitrates they were pouring into the water that ended up in Des Moines. It’s a powerful vehicle for Big Ag.

Wendy Wintersteen, through her ties to the Agribusiness Association, has thumbed her nose at the very idea of open records — despite the Iowa Open Records law.

Wendy Wintersteen speaks with one voice — the voice of the Farm Bureau and of Big Ag.

Wendy Wintersteen is the wrong person to be president of Iowa State University.

— Michael Gartner

The race between Josh Mandelbaum and Mike Kiernan for the Third Ward council seat was the most expensive in the history of Des Moines.

Mandelbaum, an environmental lawyer, had raised $188,240 with still nearly a week to go before the Nov. 7 election, which he won with 56 percent of the vote. Kiernan, a stay-at-home dad and former member of the council who got 34 percent of the vote, raised $112,265 — including $17,000 in loans he made to himself, according to records at the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. And it’s likely that each candidate raised additional money in the week before the election, for the race was predicted to be closer than it actually turned out. Those final money figures won’t be public until Jan. 19.

The job pays $26,000 a year.

The combined total of more than $300,000 dwarfs the previous high, the at-large race between Skip Moore and Chris Diebel four years ago. In that race, Diebel raised about $75,000 in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Moore, who raised around $35,000.

And the $300,000 this year doesn’t include any money raised by Abshir Omar, who got 9.38 percent of the vote but hasn’t filed a financial report.

The two largest contributors not related to a candidate were Bill Knapp and Jim Cownie, each of whom gave $7,500 to Kiernan, who also got big checks from other real-estate developers. Jim Conlin and the Iowa Realtors PAC each was in for $5,000, Mike Whalen contributed $3,500 and Jack Hatch $2,500. (But Hatch also gave $1,000 to Mandelbaum, and Conlin’s wife, Roxanne, gave $2,500 to Mandelbaum.) Architect Mike Simonson gave $5,000.

Mandelbaum’s family members — his father, mother, brother and aunt — contributed around $20,000. And the Nixon Lauridsen family — Lauridsen; his ex-wife, Nancy; his daughter, Christine Sand; and her husband, Rob Sand — gave a total of $15,000. Rob Sand, who recently resigned as an assistant attorney general to run for state auditor, was a roommate of Mandelbaum in law school at the University of Iowa.

Mandelbaum also picked up big checks from traditional Democratic givers: Fred Hubbell, Bob Riley, Michael Gartner and Fred Weitz each gave $5,000, as did three labor political action committees.

The race brought out a lot of voters. The turnout for the city as a whole was 14.37 percent of the registered voters, according to Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald, but the turnout in the Third Ward was 24.22 percent, far higher than usual for a city election. The Third Ward is basically the city’s southwest quadrant, which includes the Sherman Hill, South of Grand and downtown neighborhoods. The seat has been held by Christine Hensley for 24 years. Mandelbaum announced he would run against her; she subsequently decided to retire, and Kieran then got into the race.

Mandelbaum worked harder than Kiernan — Mandelbaum was constantly out knocking on doors — but it was believed Kiernan had a better absentee-vote program. In the end, though, the absentees were about even — 670 for Kiernan and 630 for Mandelbaum.

The victory launches what could be a long political career for Mandelbaum. It wouldn’t be a bad bet that Mandelbaum or his friend Sand or their friend Joseph Jones will end up as Governor or United States Senator at some point, especially if Sand is elected state auditor.

Jones, a one-time staffer for Tom Harkin, later the senior vice president for governmental relations at the Greater Des Moines Partnership, and now the executive director of the Harkin Institute at Drake, was elected to the Windsor Heights City Council last month, and it’s doubtful that that was his life’s goal. All three are bright and well-connected. Jones is 40, Mandelbaum 38 and Sand 35.

[The Windsor Heights race was hotly contested, with nine candidates seeking three seats. The main issue was sidewalks — build more or let people walk on the lawns or in the streets — and the turnout was 42.19 percent. Jones is a pro-sidewalk guy, and that faction kept control of the five-person council. But the new mayor, Dave Burgess, is in the anti-sidewalk camp, and he controls the agenda.] …

Unless you read Starting Line, a Democratic blog, or the Cedar Rapids Gazette, you probably didn’t see a poll ranking the seven Democrats seeking the party’s gubernatorial nomination. If your name is Andy McGuire or John Norris, it’s probably best you didn’t see it.

The poll was commissioned by Starting Line and conducted by 20/20 Insight of Atlanta, a legitimate but not very well-regarded polling firm. (Nate Silver, who ranks pollsters, gives it a C-; in contrast, he gives Selzer and Co., which runs the Register’s Iowa Poll, an A+.) It was taken Nov. 8 to Nov. 10, and it queried 762 Democrats who expected to vote in the June 5 primary. It was conducted through automated phone dialing but weighted for demographic purposes.

Right or wrong, it shows retired businessman Fred Hubbell with a big lead in name recognition, in “favorability” and in the race itself. And it shows what those who have been following the race have long believed: The seven-person field is evolving into a two-person race — with labor-lawyer Nate Boulton the challenger with the best shot against Hubbell.

The results: Hubbell is favored by 22 percent, Boulton by 13, Cathy Glasson by 6, Norris by 5, McGuire by 3, Jon Neiderbach by 2 and Ross Wilburn by 1 percent of the respondents.

On name “favorability,” Hubbell was at 50 percent, Boulton at 31, McGuire at 21, Norris at 19, Glasson at 13 and Neiderbach at 9. Wilburn didn’t show up on the list. A full 64 percent of the respondents had never heard of Glasson, 59 percent of Neiderbach, 57 percent of Norris, 48 percent of McGuire and 44 percent of Boulton. Only 24 percent of the respondents had never heard of Hubbell — who has the added advantage of having a major Des Moines street, a downtown building, a school and a large real-estate company all bearing his family name.

Financial reports don’t have to be filed until Jan. 19, but it’s widely believed Hubbell is significantly ahead in raising money, too. …

Attorney Roxanne Conlin has streamlined the case her client Chris Godfrey has filed against the state and several of its former officials. The suit, about to enter its sixth year, alleges Gov. Terry Branstad and others tried to fire him as head of the Iowa Workers’ Compensation Board and, when that didn’t work, they cut his pay. Godfrey was a Democrat with a fixed term that still had 46 months to run. He also was the only openly gay member of the Branstad administration. The suit alleges extortion, retaliation, defamation and discrimination.

Charges remain against all defendants acting in their official capacity, but allegations alleging wrongdoing in their individual capacities have been dropped against now-governor Kim Reynolds, former head of Workforce Development Teresa Wahlert, and former Communications Director Tim Albrecht. The major allegations against the state remain, too. Branstad, former chief of staff Jeff Boeyink and former Legal Counsel to the Governor Brenna Findley still face charges in their individual as well as their official capacities.

The case has twice been to the Iowa Supreme Court on narrow issues, and still no trial date has been set. Another conference of parties is scheduled for Dec. 18, and a trial now is likely sometime next year. The case now is in the courtroom of Polk County District Judge Brad McCall.

So far, the state has paid about $1 million to George LaMarca’s law firm, which it hired at the request of Branstad because of a perceived conflict involving the Attorney General’s office. But lately, the state seems to have taken over most of the legal work, and LaMarca’s bills have been declining. If Godfrey wins, the state will probably end up paying Conlin’s bills, too. If the case goes to trial, the taxpayers may end up paying out close to $3 million in fees.
The case itself is about $150,000 — the amount Godfrey’s salary was cut for the 46 months that were remaining in his term. …

Another high-stakes case is also working its way through Polk County District Court. In June, Doug Ommen, the state insurance director, sued the founders of the failed CoOportunity Health and its Seattle-based auditing firm alleging, among other things, that Steve Ringlee, Dave Lyons and Cliff Gold wrongfully took money out of the company.

Lyons is a former Iowa insurance commissioner, Gold a former executive at Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and Ringlee an accountant and Internet entrepreneur with a spotty record.

CoOportunity was set up as a nonprofit health-insurance company under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in 2013 by Ringlee, Lyons and Gold, who became the three top officers of the company. It was financed through more than $100 million in loans from the federal government. Ultimately, it insured around 114,000 Iowans and Nebraskans — more than 10 times what the auditors had projected — and it was in trouble almost from Day One. Claims costs far exceeded the projections of the auditors, and the company lost $163 million in its first year. It was liquidated in 2015.

Ommen is the liquidator, whose job is to protect whatever assets remain for claimants, creditors and the public.
The suit alleges that “even when it became clear the company was going down, the founders received bonuses.” It says Lyons received $546,074 in pay from 2012 through 2014, Ringlee $672,267 over four years and Gold $650,696. The three men “knew, recklessly disregarded, or negligently disregarded the financial condition of the company when they approved and accepted compensation increases and bonus/incentive payments” in the fall of 2014, the suit says.

It calls the compensation “inappropriate and excessive.”

The suit alleges malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty and negligent misrepresentation against the auditors and breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and fraud against the founders. It asks for unspecified but “consequential” and “exemplary” damages.

No trial date has been set. A hearing has been scheduled for Dec. 8 in the courtroom of Jeanie Vaudt. …

Marty Tirrell’s bankruptcy case was officially closed on Oct. 31 by the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The court refused to discharge his debts, so he still is on the hook for several hundred thousands of dollars. 

Merry Christmas

Twelve drummers drumming…

…for a parade of politicians: Austin Frerick, a 27-year-old with grit and brains and ideas…and Neal Smith, a 97-year-old with grit and brains and ideas (and a newly renewed driver’s license)… and lawyer Josh Mandelbaum, who’s smart and tireless and now is a City Councilman…and Council winner Connie Boesen, too…and Councilwoman Renee Hardman, who pulled an upset in West Des Moines…. For Rob Sand, who wants to be state auditor…and Abshir Omar, who is impressive. …

Eleven pipers piping…

…for Emily Pontius and Sharon Malhiero and Anjie Shutts and Roxanne Conlin and Terry Combs and Kimberly Stamatelos and Amanda Jansen and all those other women following in the footsteps of Iowa’s Belle Mansfield, America’s first female lawyer, and Bea Smith, who broke ground in Des Moines…and for Judges Mary Tabor and Stephanie Rose and Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger and, of course, Magistrate Celeste Bremer…and Iowa’s Mona Houck, a First Amendment lawyer who fights for the good guys in New York. …

Ten lords a-leaping…

…and then stuffing the ball for Niko Medved, the new Drake basketball coach, and his boss, new Athletic Director Brian Hardin…And, of course, for women’s…and if they want to know anything about Drake, they just need to walk over and ask Paul Morrison, still working at age 100…And, of course, for women’s coach Jennie Baranczyk, whose teams deserve bigger crowds (and for her brother-in-law, banker Terry McGuire, too)…for former athletic director Sandy Hatfield Clubb, now back in Arizona…and the new folks owning and running the Bucs…and Todd Frederickson and the people at the Iowa Wild…and Ryan Grant, new to the Iowa Wolves but not to Des Moines…and all those surprising athletes at Grand View, especially the wrestlers and volleyball players…and athletic director Troy Plummer, of course…and to former pitcher Don Wengert and Katie and Robbie, especially. …               

Nine ladies dancing…

…on the restored Jackson Street Bridge in thanks to Carl Voss, who saved it, and Paula Feltner and Mike C. Gartner and Vicki Facto and Mike Rehm and Troy Hansen…and, especially, to Mell Meredith, who bought in from the beginning, and Musco’s generous Joe Crookham, who turned the beautiful bridge into a piece of art by lighting it (as a gift to the city)…and, of course, to Parks Director Ben Page, who was always there as a guide through the bureaucracy…and Matt McCoy, who helped secure a big state grant…and the county supervisors, who chipped in handsomely…and the city council members who gave the green light to the green bridge…for the amazing Mirza Kudic, who captured the bridge in a spectacular photograph…and, naturally, to the families and companies who gave the money to make it happen. …

Eight maids a-milking…

…for bloggers Laura Belin and Pay Rynard…reporters Kathy Bolten and Tommy Birch…editor Carol Hunter and publisher David Chivers…publisher Connie Wimer (and Frank Fogarty)…photographers Christopher Gannon and Chris Donahue (who will sell you a Subaru after he takes your picture)…and Dave and Randy Witke, two great editors…for pr guys Josh Lehman and John McCarroll…for a quartet of Jeffs: Hunter and Fleming and Chelesvig and Russell…for two former broadcasters with great voices: federal judge Jim Gritzner and Supervisor Steve Van Oort…and for Celeste Tilton and Shane Goodman and everyone else at CITYVIEW. …

Seven swans a-swimming…

…for Governor and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds (legally, she is both)…and independent legislator David Johnson, who asked for the Attorney General’s opinion about whether she is governor or lieutenant governor…and Attorney General-for-life Tom Miller, who determined Reynolds is both…and new Supreme Court administrator Todd Nuccio (and welcome to Iowa) and the retiring administrator, David Boyd (and Nancy Boyd, too)…and, while we’re at the court, for Steve Davis, too…for retired Justice Bob Allbee and Jenny Johnson Allbee (Roosevelt High, Class of 1956)…and welcome back to Iowa, Christopher and Melissa Pratt (and little Henry as well). …

Six geese a-laying…

…no, wait, no goose eggs allowed on the scoreboard. At least not for the home team and season-ticket holders Pat Brown and Joe Hall and fans-of-the-year Rosemary and George Ellwanger…and lawyer Gary Dickey and artist Dwight James and the Fontaninis, Tom and Cheryl…and fisherman Guy Cook and Cyndi…and legislator Marti Anderson and justices David Wiggins and Mark Cady (and Marsha Wiggins and Becky Cady)…and Rose Vasquez and Bob and Rose Mary Pratt…and Sue and Audrey, who need no last names…and Danny and Colleen Homan and Tyler Steinke in his front-row seat, of course. …

Five golden rings…

…for Christine Hensley, who worked so long and so hard for the city, and Skip Moore, who did the same…and Windsor Heights councilman-elect Joseph Jones, who knows everyone…and Zachary and Mackenzie and Christopher and Maggie, the world’s greatest grandkids…and all those courteous people at Keck Parking at the airport…and, for that matter, Bill Keck, too (Roosevelt High School, Class of 1956)…and Ben Bruns, who should run for office…for the always-cheerful Shelby Cravens and her mom and dad in Utah…to Beth Giudicessi, once again the employee of the year, and runner-up Nick Bernabe…to Hugo Giudicessi, too, and his grandma Cheryl. …

Four collie birds…

…for Izaah Knox and Wayne Ford at Urban Dreams…and Toby O’Berry at the homeless youth drop-in center downtown…and E.J. Giovannitti, who cares about the mentally ill…and so do Anne Starr and everyone else at Orchard Place…for everyone who volunteers at the Bidwell-Riverside Center on Hartford Ave. (and now would be a good time to send a check or take over those clothes you never wear or have outgrown)…and Tim Shanahan, who provides shelter for moms and kids at Hawthorn Hill….

Three French hens…

…for Pulitzer Prize winner Art Cullen of Storm Lake, whose forthcoming book about Storm Lake will have the catchy title “Storm Lake”…and Nix Lauridsen and Gary Kirke, newly inducted into the Iowa Business Hall of Fame…for Scott Sailor, who is sort of retiring, and his dad, Bill, in Albia…for Gary Palmer at Prairie Meadows and Gary Slater at the State Fair…for Grace Mauro and her husband…for Janet Peterson and her friends in mourning who founded Count the Kicks — and for all those healthy babies saved by those kick-counting moms. …

Two turtle doves….

…for labor’s Mark Cooper, a good guy…for Matt and Stephanie Sinovic and their new baby…for Robert Warren, who keeps bringing great entertainment to Hoyt Sherman Place…for former Mayor Pat Dorrian and former Councilman Archie Brooks, who can tell stories about the good old days…for Ben and Pat Allen, who so ably filled in at Iowa State…and to Dan Miller, who is loved by everyone. …

And a partridge in a pear tree…

…in memory of Paul Morrison, a lovely (and 100-year-old) man…and of Don Avenson and Cal Hultman, good guys and good politicians…and one-time city manager Rich Wilkey, who knew where the levers were…and the murdered Stephen Kim…and Joy Corning and Willie Glanton, pioneers who cared…and Buck Turnbull, one of the greats…and Noah (as in Noah’s Ark) Lacona and Marilyn (“Mrs. Snookie,” as in Snookies Malt Shop) Graves…and the talented Ron Shoop…And Dolores and Darlene Van Oort, mother and daughter-in-law…and Nick Tormey, who led an interesting life…and Verle Burgason of Ames, a gentleman…and Dick Levitt, who changed this city…and Stacey Henderson and Bruce Campbell and Sam Kalanov and Orville Crowley and Dave Noble…and the garrulous Dick Thornton…and AFSCME’s Deb Duncan…and Win Kelley and Ann Karras…for Sophie Vlassis, great teacher and good citizen…and Chuck Corwin, who sincerely cared…and John Tapscott, who saved lives…for scholar Tom Lynner…and Don Nickerson… and Hawkeye fan and nice guy Tim Darrah… and young Dallon Morris, who was buried in his Miracle League uniform…especially for little Ella Vilsack…and, always, for the first Christopher. 

Resembling the boy who killed his parents and then asked the court for leniency because he was an orphan, former legislator Kent Sorenson had asked the Federal Court of Appeals to reduce his 15-month sentence for political crimes connected to the 2012 presidential political campaign by giving him credit for the work he performed for one of the campaigns.

Without laughing, the appellate judges turned him down the other day.

Sorenson, who overcame what could best be called a checkered past to become a state senator and darling of the evangelical right, in effect sold his allegiance in the campaign to Ron Paul after first backing Michele Bachmann. That involved two felonies — willfully causing false reports of federal campaign expenditures and falsifying records intending to obstruct justice in relation to a federal investigation.

He pleaded guilty, and Senior Federal District Judge Robert Pratt sentenced him to those 15 months in federal prison. Sorenson “had damaged the political morale of his constituency, of all Iowans, and of all Americans,” Pratt wrote. He quoted Justice Louis Brandeis as noting that the deviant acts of the corrupt public official are of course horrific, “but a hundred times worse is the demoralization of our people which results.”

At the time, his lawyer said Sorenson “would take it like a man” and not appeal. He then appealed.

He appealed on three counts. Two alleged that Pratt calculated the sentence incorrectly and the third alleged Pratt should have given him that credit for his political work. The three-judge appellate panel didn’t buy any of Sorenson’s arguments.

Sorenson, now 45 years old, is at the federal prison in Thomson, Illinois. He is scheduled to be released April 13 of 2018. …

The man who Kirk Blunck’s family says killed the architect has not bothered to respond to the family’s civil lawsuit alleging wrongful death, among other things. The family has asked for a default judgment, and Judge Scott Rosenberg has set a hearing on that motion for Jan. 11.

Blunck fell or was pushed to his death in a stairwell of the Teachout Building he owned in the East Village on a Sunday afternoon in January of 2016. The police have considered the death suspicious, and they have questioned Zachary Allen Gaskill, a 27-year-old who at the time was on probation for an attempted robbery in West Des Moines. Gaskill told police he had been drinking in downtown Des Moines that day, but nothing more. No charges were ever filed.

The civil suit alleges battery and negligence and asserts that Gaskill killed Blunck. Gaskill never responded, so the family now is seeking the default judgment. If Rosenberg grants the judgment, the impact on everyone will be minimal. Gaskill doesn’t appear to have any assets, and a civil default judgment would have no bearing on any possible criminal case.

Meantime, a large claim against the estate has been settled. Rolling Hills Bank and Trust told the court it has been paid the $557,214.64 it was owed. And the court has given permission to the estate to hire the Statler Law Firm to fight a $171,124.97 claim from Jeffrey and Mary Lou Tyler, who say Blunck botched a construction job on their house on Forest Drive. …

That lawsuit filed by Heather Ryan against the Polk County Democrats and County Chair Sean Bagniewski was dismissed on Dec. 15 by Magistrate Don Williams. She alleged Bagniewski committed libel and slander in “spreading falsehoods in an attempt to damage [her] political campaign, perception of party loyalty and personal reputation.” After submitting a witness list of 92 people, including four Congress members and seven state legislators, she called two witnesses, neither of whom cited any defamatory statements by Bagniewski and the party. The court then dismissed the case and ordered her to pay all costs.

Ryan is seeking the Democratic nomination to run against Republican Congressman David Young. She has no chance to get the nomination. …

Your tax and tuition dollars at work:

The Board of Regents the other day approved the granting of sabbaticals to 124 faculty members at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. The sabbaticals — which the universities call “professional development assignments” — generally allow the teachers to take off one semester at full pay. Anyone can apply, regardless of years of service.

Here are some of the projects from University of Iowa teachers:

Roxanna Curto, an associate professor of French and Italian, will work on her book, “Sporting Identities: Global Sports and National Cultures in French and Francophone Literature.” “This study examines aspects of physical culture — such as exercise, leisure and sports — in literature written in French from Europe, the Caribbean, Africa and North America, including texts about soccer in France and Africa, hockey in Canada, the Tour de France, Senegalese wrestling and the Olympic games.” The work will illustrate “how sports competitions are often used as allegories for cultural contact and conflict, for the aesthetics of writing and literature, and for the construction of national identities in opposition to other social formations, in order to show the fundamental role of sports in post-colonial body politics, nation-building, and the creation of collective imaginaries.”

Gregory Hand, an associate professor of music, will look into Southern German historic organs “and their impact on modern Organ Pedagogy.” He will go to Germany to “inspect, document, and give concerts on five historic organs in Southern Germany that demonstrate a surprising synthesis of Baroque and Romantic elements.” These elements, “long thought incompatible by modern scholars, prove a historic relationship between these two eras, and represent a paradigm shift in our understanding of the vast organ repertoire composed by German organists.”

Brenda Longfellow, associate professor of art and art history, “will undertake field research at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in Italy, where she will analyze the architectural and decorative remains of tombs that were either built by women or given to women as posthumous civic honors by the town council. She will then write up her results, which will be published as a chapter in her book titled Women in Public in Ancient Pompeii.”

Waltraud Maierhofer, a professor of German, will conduct research for a book analyzing nontraditional family structures and reproductive choices in recent German fiction and film.\

Kenneth Mobily, professor of health and human physiology, will “investigate one of the founders of the Playground Association of America (1906), Joseph Lee, who subsequently went on to serve 27 years as president of the association. Although Lee was motivated by a genuine concern for the welfare of immigrant children, he was also active in limiting immigration as a member of the Immigration Restriction League (1894). One purpose of this research is to discover how and if Lee came to terms with this apparent contradiction.”

Thomas Oates, associate professor of American studies, plans a project entitled “Selling Streetball: Playground Culture, Commerce, and Racialized Space.” This examines “the growing prominence of a distinctive subgenre of basketball often called ‘streetball.’ ‘Streetball’ is characterized by a fast-paced, spectacular style, highlighted by verbal and physical duels between contestants, and is strongly associated with the black urban ghetto. While scholars have examined how the musical genre of hip-hop and cinematic narratives from Boyz in the Hood (1991) to Straight Outta Compton (2016) have shaped dominant ideas about urban black space, they have not directed the same attention to the role of sport. This project addresses that gap by tracing the emergence and commercialization of streetball from the 1960s through the present, focusing on how media narratives confirm, contest, and complicate dominant understandings of the black ghetto.”

Maya Steinitz, a professor of law, will write “Law and the Self: An Imaginary Exchange of Letters between H.L.A. Hart and G.H. Mead.” This “will take the form of a fictional debate between two titans of 20th century philosophy — the social philosopher George Herbert Mead and the legal philosopher Herbert Hart.”
Travis Vogan, associate professor of journalism, will do research for his book, “The Boxing Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History.” The book “will offer the first history of the boxing film and will use the genre to consider the controversial sport’s relationship to United States media culture from 1895-2015.”

A couple of projects from teachers at the University of Northern Iowa:

Thomas Connors, associate professor of history, will look into “The Politics of Pantheons: How Nations Harness the Power of their Dead.” He hopes to “produce a book manuscript on national pantheons around the world. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the study will examine places where the nation’s great are buried together in a temple or park designed to impress visitors, encourage patriotism, and provide a sacred space for state ceremonies.” The work “will offer a transnational perspective on an unexplored global phenomenon found in Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim cultures as well as in the service of republics, kingdoms, dictatorships, and communist states on five continents.”

Grant Tracey, a professor of languages and literature, will work on “Shot, Reverse-Shot,” the fourth Hayden Fuller crime novel. It will be set in Montréal in 1966. “The novel will feature a corrupt film director, a sleazy exploitation producer, several actors, a renegade motorcycle gang (The Northern Arrows), First Nations peoples, and a murder on a film set.” The novel “will be a hybrid of melodramatic entertainment (the world is full of irrational chaos that cannot be explained away) and psychological realism (Hayden coming to terms with his past and his own resulting sexual dysfunction).”

And from Iowa State:

Eric Brown, associate professor, apparel, events and hospitality management, “will examine the role of public speaking and communication on self-confidence and career success within hospitality management industries.”

Stacey Weber-Feve, associate professor of world languages and culture, proposes “to complete a book project, Restaging Comedy: Comic Play and Performance in Women’s Contemporary Cinema in France, the first of its kind to explore a specialized examination of women’s roles in the evolution of French cinematic comedy.” …

Meantime, the 100 instructors who recently completed sabbaticals have reported in. A sampling:

The work of Mary Cohen of the University of Iowa “resulted in three publications, four original songs…and progress toward a book about music-making in U.S. prisons.”

Denise Filios of Iowa wrote two chapters of her book “about stories of the conquest of Iberia in ninth-century Arabic and Latin historical writing….Her analysis highlights the vast shared cultural patrimony that informs the contradictory accounts of Muslim Andalusian and Christian Asturian writers….”

Mark Levine “spent a year immersed in reading and writing poetry.”

Donald McLeese “made significant progress” on his memoir, “Trudging Toward Serenity: A Memoir of Recovery from High-Functioning Alcoholism.” “Through six years of sobriety, McLeese has achieved a clearer perspective on the line distinguishing habit from addiction and has found a richness in a life without alcohol he had never anticipated.”

Jelena Bogdanovic of Iowa State completed her book, “Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.”

Emily Machen of UNI revised and reorganized her book that “explored the place of women in religious communities in early twentieth-century France.” …

The three most expensive home sales in Polk County in 2017 — or at least through Dec. 15 — were in the Glen Oaks section of West Des Moines.

A 4,000-square-foot, five-year-old ranch-style home on 2.3 acres at 1747 Glenleven Terrace sold for $1,890,000. Records at the office of the county assessor list the buyer as the Brenda Annett Revocable Trust and the sellers as Anthony and Katherine Dahmen.

A 5,700-square-foot house on nearly two acres at 5725 Red Bud Way sold for $1,625,000. The buyer was Jessica Clark, the seller George Cataldo.

And a 5,000-square-foot home on 1.2 acres at 1723 Glenleven Terrace sold for $1,600,000. The buyer was Christina Havanan, the seller Kimberley Development.

In all, 20 homes sold for $1 million or more in the county, but only one was in Des Moines. That was a five-bedroom Tudor home on one acre at 5315 Waterbury Road. The house, built in 1924, was sold for $1 million by Neal Logan to Michael Wood and Michael Flesher.

A 3,400-square-foot brick home at 8 Foster Drive sold for $975,000 during the year. The house, built in 1925 and on slightly less than an acre, was sold to Jonathan Swanson by Alan Zuckert. …

Those father-and-son lawsuits by the Rossley family against Drake University are continuing to wend their way through federal district court. Tom Rossley, the father, sued the university after it kicked him off the board of trustees for, in effect, arguing too strenuously over the way the university treated his son in a sexual-assault investigation. The son, Thomas Rossley III — formerly known in court papers as John Doe — also sued, alleging discrimination and violation of his Constitutional right to due process, among other things.

Drake has twice moved to dismiss parts of the father’s suit, and the other day Federal District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger granted part of the university’s motion. Rossley can go forward with parts of his claim that the university retaliated against him for complaining about his son’s treatment, Ebinger ruled, but she narrowed the case considerably.

In November, lawyers for the son asked Federal Magistrate Stephen Jackson for a 60-day extension of time, and Drake opposed it, saying the Rossley lawyers have been dawdling. The magistrate agreed with Drake, and all eventually settled on a 30-day extension.

Both suits grew out of an encounter on Oct. 9, 2015, when young Rossley and a female student acquaintance who is not named in the lawsuits engaged in oral sex in his car outside a fraternity and then may or may not have had intercourse in the fraternity house. Both students had been drinking heavily, the suit says. The woman ultimately told university officials she had been assaulted, and after an investigation, Rossley — a junior — was expelled in February of 2016.

The elder Rossley, a Drake trustee for 23 years until he was voted off the board in July of 2016, argued to his fellow trustees and to Drake officials that the investigative process was flawed, that in fact his son was assaulted by the female, not the other way around. The suit alleges the investigative process is skewed to favor females.

A jury trial in young Rossley’s case is scheduled for Nov. 18 of this year. No trial date has been set in the father’s case. …

The November election was the last time for a stand-alone municipal election. In 2019, city and school elections will be held jointly. Some final numbers:

According to County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald, the turnout of 33,141 in the various elections was the highest since 2003. There were record turnouts in Polk City (592 voters), Urbandale (3,138) and Windsor Heights (1,548). The Des Moines turnout of 16,758 was the highest since 2003, when there was a strongly contested mayoral race between Frank Cownie and Christine Hensley. The West Des Moines turnout, of 4,508, also was the highest since 2003. …

Have you noticed how the days are getting longer? On Dec. 31, the day was 40 seconds longer than it was on Dec. 21. By mid-June there will be six hours two minutes more daylight than there was in mid-December. 

Matt McCoy isn’t talking, but friends say he almost certainly will leave the Iowa Senate and run against John Mauro for Mauro’s seat on the Polk County Board of Supervisors. Both are popular Democrats with deep followings, especially on the south side of town. A McCoy-Mauro race could complicate South Side politics for years to come, pitting family members and neighbors against one another.

And if that’s not enough stirring of the pot, there’s talk that former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Jack Hatch is thinking of taking on Tony Bisignano, who holds the south-side state senate seat Hatch gave up to run for governor four years ago. Hatch didn’t respond to an email. Both are Democrats.

Each of those races could get personal.

If McCoy runs, he has to go public soon, but he’s been pretty coy about it so far. He has held fund-raisers, leaving the impression they were for a re-election run, but he has ducked CITYVIEW’s questions about which race he was raising funds for. But Mauro, who has been a supervisor for 24 years, has been quietly raising money in case McCoy challenges him.

The district includes most of the south side as well as the Sherman Hill, downtown and South of Grand areas. 

Mauro, 76, goes into the race with $91,760 in his campaign account, and he could raise a lot more. Though he’s seen as an old-fashioned, south-side politician who makes sure his constituents have jobs and food and shelter, he is well-thought-of by some wealthy businessmen as well. He is particularly close to Bill Knapp and Jim Cownie, both of whom can write big checks.

McCoy, 51, who has been in the Legislature since 1993, also is well-liked in his district. He listed himself as a senate candidate in the most-recent campaign-disclosure statement, but that’s apparently of little significance. He has $34,000 in cash on hand, but he probably could raise a lot more between now and the June 5 primary. His supporters praise his work on mental-health issues, in particular, and, like Mauro, he listens to his constituents. 

Neither Mauro nor McCoy had primary or general-election opponents four years ago. 

These days, it’s more lucrative, more fun and more powerful being a Democratic supervisor than a Democrat in the State Senate. Supervisors earn $115,000 a year; senators $25,000. Democrats control the five-member county board but, at the moment at least, are in the minority in the 50-member Iowa Senate. The county is nimble in dealing with issues while the state is plodding, and the county is flush while the state is strapped. 

Two years ago, McCoy said he planned to run for supervisor this year, assuming Mauro wouldn’t run again. But as CITYVIEW noted at the time, “Mauro always runs again.” At the time, McCoy said he admired Mauro — “an excellent supervisor, a mentor and, more importantly, a friend.” Look for that quote in Mauro ads this year.

If McCoy leaves the Senate, there’s talk that State Representative Jo Oldson will run for his seat. Others probably will, too. She ducked a question from Cityview asking about her plans.

“I really wish none of this was happening,” a long-time south-side politician says. “This is not good.” …

Bill Knapp last year gave $347,000 to politicians and political causes in Iowa. Harry Bookey gave $126,450. Fred Weitz gave $60,300. Art Coppola gave $151,247. John Ruan gave $49,800.

But the biggest contributor to a politician in the past 13 months has been the Service Employees International Union, whose affiliates wrote checks for close to $1.2 million — and all of them to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cathy Glasson of Iowa City, the favorite of Iowans who supported Bernie Sanders in the last presidential election. (And since the filing deadline, the union reportedly has thrown in another $500,000.)

Indeed, it was a record non-election year for money-raising in Iowa politics, and this year will probably set a record for a state-election year. Wealthy Iowans are pouring money into the gubernatorial race, mainly for Gov. Kim Reynolds and Democrat Fred Hubbell, who now appears to be in a three-way race for the nomination with Glasson and Nate Boulton.          

Former Democratic Party chair Andy McGuire seems to be running primarily a self-funded campaign, and that can take her only so far. John Norris’ campaign hasn’t gotten off the ground, raising only about a tenth of what Hubbell has raised.

If no Democrat gets 35 percent in the June 5 primary, the nomination will be decided by the state at a convention on June 16. So the candidates are running two campaigns: one aimed at the general primary voter, another aimed at the folks who attend party caucuses March 24 and could end up with a vote at the state convention. It’s an expensive way to do business.

Hubbell, 66, a successful businessman from a storied Iowa family, has never run for office, but he has turned out to be a straight-talking candidate whose straight talk is appealing enough to put him ahead in private polls. And his relentlessness in raising money — from wealthy old friends and not-so-wealthy new followers — has put him in the lead in the money race, too. What he lacks in emotion on the stump he more than makes up for in energy and, his followers say, vision.

As of the Jan. 19 fund-reporting deadline, he had raised $3,053,257.53 and spent a bit more than $1.8 million. He enters the second lap with $1.2 million on hand. The payroll for his staff has been climbing, and now is about $80,000 a month, state records indicate.

Hubbell is his own biggest contributor, putting in $190,000 so far. Bill Knapp has added $160,000, and Art Coppola — a Des Moines native who is chairman of the Santa Monica-based Macerich Cos. — has contributed a bit more than $150,000. Coppola rarely contributes to Iowa politicians, but Hubbell has been the lead director of Macerich. Two of Coppola’s brothers have added $57,500 to Hubbell’s campaign.

Hubbell’s three siblings, Jim and Rusty and Michael, each have put in $40,000, and more than a score of relatives — children, cousins, in-laws, former in-laws, relatives of former in-laws — also have chipped in. Other big givers to Hubbell: Harry Bookey, $112,500, Fred Weitz, $41,600; Bob Riley, $39,500, brothers Tim Urban and Tom Urban, $25,000 each. Republican Jim Cownie gave Hubbell $25,000.

John Ruan gave Hubbell $10,000, but he also gave $10,000 to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, Republican gubernatorial challenger Ron Corbett, and Republican Senate leader Bill Dix. 

Boulton, a state senator from Des Moines, led the Democrats’ efforts in the last legislature to stop the Republicans from castrating unions representing public employees — labor was crushed in that fight — and now the unions are thanking him. He has huge support from labor — other than the Service Employees — and received $145,000 from the Great Plains Laborers PAC and a $100,000 check from AFSCME, whose head, Danny Homan, is a vocal Boulton supporter. At year-end, Boulton had $481,375 cash on hand.

Knapp’s granddaughter, Sable Knapp, made a dozen contributions to Glasson, giving $106,250 in all. Sable Knapp, the daughter of Knapp’s late son, Roger, lives in Portland, Maine. Her only previous political contribution to an Iowa candidate was $100 given to a school-board candidate in 2015. On the federal level, she supported Bernie Sanders with gifts of less than $1,000. (Her younger sister, Montana, who lives in Colorado, has given $5,400 to Abby Finkenhauer’s campaign for Congress in Iowa’s first district.) Glasson has about $730,000 in the bank.

Reynolds, who inherited the governorship when Terry Branstad went off to be ambassador to China, has received five very big checks: The Republican Governors’ Association gave her $1,250,000 in December, Debra Hansen of West Des Moines gave her $175,000 and Michael Hansen gave $100,000.  She also got $100,000 checks from Sheri Horner of West Des Moines and David and Penny North of Bellevue.

The Governor started the year with $1,084,979 on hand, raised another $3,744,046, spent $688,845 and ended the period with $4,140,180 in the bank.  But so far, no contributions from Terry or Chris Branstad. Perhaps the mails are slow from China.

Reynolds’ Republican challenger, Cedar Rapids Mayor and former House Speaker Ron Corbett, raised $844,637 during the year, ending up with cash on hand of $578,897. Corbett received one $100,000 check — from Dyan Smith of Cedar Rapids — but Ruan’s check for $10,000 was the only check of that size from anyone in the Des Moines area. …

The decision about where to put the new Federal courthouse in Des Moines is inching along, at best. The federal building-builders, the judges, the city fathers and mothers and the business leaders can’t seem to agree on a site, though the money has been set aside by Congress. 

The General Services Administration now is said to be investigating five or six sites. City officials prefer a site on the east bank of the Des Moines River, near the current courthouse, but the feds like the site of the old YMCA on the west side of the river. Both those are still under consideration, CITYVIEW is told, though neither likes the other’s site. Another four or so sites are being seriously considered, mainly along Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, and there now is talk about yet another site somewhere not far from Principal Park. 

Judges and city officials met again on the issue in mid-January, but no progress was made. …

Business note: The Des Moines Register, which is consumed by news of store openings at the new Altoona outlet mall, has ignored the news that a major Des Moines insurance company just doubled in size.

American Enterprise Group, which grew out of Watson Powell’s old American Republic companies, has just signed a deal to purchase Great Western Insurance Co., a family-owned, Utah-based company that sells funeral-expense insurance to those folks who like to plan ahead. 

The acquisition will lift AEG’s assets to more than $2 billion from about $1 billion now. At the end of 2016, Great Western had assets of about $1.2 billion, AEG of slightly more than $1 billion. American Enterprise had net income of about $36 million in 2016; Great Western had a surplus of about $75 million. 

Great Western’s business is similar to that of West Des Moines-based Homesteaders Life, which is about twice the size of Great Western. American Enterprise and Homesteaders announced in 2009 that they were merging, but that deal eventually fell through. 

Hope

The young people of this state have no better friend than Chief Justice Mark Cady.

Cady gave his annual State of the Judiciary speech to the Legislature last month, and he noted the work of Iowa’s 47 special courts — for the mentally ill, for veterans, for drug users — and about how they keep people out of jail, saving lives and saving money. He noted, too, that it’s a struggle — for the court system. 

Compared with just a year ago, he told Legislators, “there are fewer judges, fewer court reporters, fewer case schedulers and fewer juvenile court officers.”

The facts are clear, and he didn’t belabor the issue. 

Instead, he devoted much of his speech to Iowa courts’ special efforts to help troubled youngsters, to hold them accountable — but to keep them out of the formal court system. 

“While some children need to face the full force of the court system, we have learned most do not,” he said. “Most children only need a process of justice that best assures their potential will be discovered and achieved. This is what the process of justice must be for all of Iowa’s children.”

He noted that last year Iowa diverted more than 10,000 children from the formal court system, and he described a Polk County program “exclusively devoted to the unique challenge teenage girls face” — girls “in need of a process that sees them as too good to lose.” 

All of the girls “committed criminal acts. All have turned to drugs. Some are mothers. Yet, they are all still children who, too many times, looked back for support that was not there.” The program is working. In the past year, 17 girls enrolled in the program. Six have graduated.

Facing a future that no longer is bleak, the graduates sent notes to Cady.

“You rock,” one said.

Indeed. 

— Michael Gartner

Hy-Vee’s decision to quit putting weekly advertising inserts into newspapers is another blow to Iowa’s newspapers — and it’s a particular hit at the 75 or so small dailies and weekly papers where grocery-store ads are an economic lifeline.

“It’s big money,” says the publisher of one small daily, but he thinks it will hit the weeklies the hardest. Another publisher says it will cost small daily papers upwards of $100,000 a year.

Hy-Vee decided late last year to abandon the inserts in favor of direct-mail. They sent small-magazine-sized booklets, and starting in March they will be sending through the mail what was their traditional weekly newspaper ad “filled with Hot Deals and Fuel Saver discounts.”

“We made the switch…to keep up with how our customers get their information and for their added convenience,” a Hy-Vee spokesperson says. The company “is still making adjustments,” she added.

Update: Hy-Vee has changed its mind, at least partially. Several small newspapers say they have received notice that the weekly inserts will resume starting with the week of March 12.

The company won’t disclose how much it was spending with newspapers, but it has been a big number. The inserts probably cost from a nickel to 15 or 20 cents per paper, so a 10,000-circulation newspaper that charged 15 cents per insert would lose $78,000 over the course of a year. That’s significant.

Local store managers still will have some ad-spending discretion, Hy-Vee says, and that will soften the blow in some towns. Doug Burns, an owner of the paper in Carroll, says Hy-Vee will continue to buy a front-page “wrap,” for instance.

Many of Iowa’s small dailies — the ones with circulations of 5,000 to 12,000 or so — have escaped the drastic cuts and circulation drops that have hit big papers like The Des Moines Register. Many have a pre-tax profit margin of upwards of 20 percent, but the Hy-Vee decision “won’t make it any easier going forward,” says one small-town publisher. “It’s just one more thing that will continue the decline of newspapers.”

The blow comes at the same time that the number of auto dealers — car ads have been another source of steady ads for small papers — is declining.

In 2007, there were 369 franchised new-car dealers in Iowa; by 2013, there were 325, and now there are just 291, according to the Iowa Automobile Dealers Association. And many of those closings have been in small towns. Not long ago, for instance, Schallau Motor Company in Van Horne and Grovert Motor Company in Newhall — family businesses that had been open for more than 100 years — were purchased and combined into one dealership in Newhall.

And those dealerships that remain in small towns are spending more and more on online advertising and less and less on newspapers, says one publisher. …

If you drive a Maserati at night, it’s best to have your taillights on. And if you’ve had a couple of drinks, it’s even a better idea to have your taillights on. And if you’re driving a Maserati at night and your taillights aren’t on and you’ve had a couple of drinks, it’s really a good idea not to be swerving on the road.

But if you’re doing all those things — or allegedly doing all those things — and a policeman stops you, it’s debatable whether you should hand him a printed card that your lawyer once gave you that says: “Dear Officer, By handing you this card, I hereby invoke my constitutional and statutory rights under [the U.S. and Iowa constitutions]. I will not answer questions; I will not consent to a search of my person, property or affects; and if I am not in custody I hereby request to go on about my business and demand to be released immediately….”

If you do all those things, you might end up in the Story County jail, which is where Des Moines restaurateur Bruce Gerleman ended up the evening of Sept. 23. After being pulled over on Highway 30 by an Ames policeman, Gerleman was charged with a first offense of drunk driving, and on Sept. 26, his lawyer, Robert Rehkemper of West Des Moines, entered a plea of not guilty for him in Story County District Court. The trial has been delayed, at Rehkemper’s request, and most recently was scheduled for Feb. 27, after CITYVIEW went to press.

Update: After evidence was presented at the jury trial on Feb.27, Gerleman’s lawyer moved for a directed verdict. Story County District Associate Judge Seven Van Marel granted it and dismissed the case, assessing all costs against the state.

But the Iowa Department of Transportation, seeing the arrest record, on Dec. 20 suspended the driver’s license of Gerleman. He appealed, and on Jan. 24 the DOT affirmed the decision, revoking Gerleman’s license as of Feb. 4. The revocation is for a year, and for the first three months he will not be eligible for a temporary, restricted license.
On Feb. 1, the 66-year-old Gerleman went back to court — this time to Polk County District Court — and sued the DOT, petitioning for judicial review of the decision revoking the license. The suit says the decision to revoke was “unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious or an abuse of discretion.” The suit says Gerleman wasn’t given an opportunity to call his lawyer before declining to take a blood-alcohol test — which he seemed to decline by presenting the card given him by his lawyer.

After handing over the card, Gerleman did try several times to call his lawyer and to call a colleague — before he orally declined to take a blood test — but he couldn’t get through to either, according to court records. Several hours later, in the Story County jail, he did consent to a blood-alcohol test, which showed “he was not intoxicated and he was allowed to bond out of jail,” according to court records. But the Ames police report says that after he was pulled over he failed the field sobriety tests, which he alleges he was coerced into performing, and that he had bloodshot and watery eyes and smelled of alcohol.

Gerleman told police he had had a couple of drinks at Jethro’s BBQ in Ames, one of several central-Iowa restaurants he runs. …

You can’t make this stuff up, but it all comes from documents filed in the Iowa Supreme Court:

In April of 2015, a 21-year-old guy named Michael Kelso-Christy set up a Facebook account under the name of Slater Poe, who had been a high-school classmate in Albia. Under that ruse, he then began an online conversation with a woman who also was a classmate. One thing led to another, and they agreed that he would go over to her house and have sex.

To make it more interesting, apparently (and to conceal his true identity), Kelso-Christy suggested to the woman that they have the sex while she was blindfolded and restrained, and she agreed. So she blindfolded herself (there is some question whether she put on the handcuffs or Kelso-Christy put them on her) and awaited “Poe’s” arrival. Kelso-Christy showed up, they had “an intimate encounter” while she was blindfolded and handcuffed, and then he left.

But “she became suspicious when he left abruptly after the sexual encounter,” according to court documents, and the next day she called the real Slater Poe, who said he hadn’t been at her house. She went to the police, and through a phone number and a fingerprint on a condom wrapper in the woman’s bedroom, they identified and arrested Kelso-Christy.

At the trial in Marion County District Court, Kelso-Christy said the sex was consensual — that it was not sex abuse because it was not accomplished by force or against the will of the woman — and that the fact that he wasn’t who he said he was was immaterial. And his lawyer argued that “Iowa law does not punish the fraudulent inducement of sex as sexual abuse.” In a non-jury trial, he was convicted of burglary in the second-degree. (The burglary charge stems from entering the house without permission. Both sides had agreed that if he were found guilty he would be sentenced to 10 years “with all the collateral consequences of a sex crime.”)

The Iowa Court of Appeals agreed with the Marion County court, and the Iowa Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Arguments were made on Jan. 17. No decision has been handed down yet. …

Rumors in the newspaper industry are that Gannett is eliminating the job of publisher and president at its newspapers, a rumor that doesn’t bode well for the journalism career of Register president David Chivers. The talk is that he’s looking for a job in town.

“As I’m sure you can appreciate, I won’t comment on rumors,” Chivers told CITYVIEW the other day. “I will say that (like you) I love Des Moines, am thoroughly enjoying the role that I’ve been afforded in the community in which I was born and raised, and hope to stay here for a long time.”

Meantime, his predecessor, Laura Hollingsworth, who left Des Moines to become publisher of the Tennessean in Nashville, left that job on Feb. 2. She was not replaced. …

From an article in the New York Times about Italian real-estate:

“Scandinavians, particularly Norwegians, are probably the largest group of foreign buyers in Piedmont at the moment, brokers said. Other European buyers include the Dutch, Swiss, Germans and Belgians.

“Since Brexit, Britain’s decision to leave the E.U., there have been fewer British buyers, Mr. Edwards said.

“In recent years, however, there has been increased interest from North American buyers, said Ms. Smith-Aichbichler, who attributed it to the purchase of ‘desirable vineyard estates, plus a holiday property near Barolo,’ by the American businessman Kyle Krause, president and chief executive of Krause Holdings, Inc. “This has had a knock-on effect, bringing in many new investors.” …

Jim Duncan, CITYVIEW’s Renaissance Man, now is the co-host of “Kitchen Insider” on Saturday mornings at 10 o’clock on KFMG radio. …

CITYVIEW joins those in mourning Bob Burnett. Burnett was a big, garrulous man with a big heart and a hearty laugh. He spent 40 years at Meredith Corp. — the final 13 as chief executive — and guided it to record success. He worked equally tirelessly to make Des Moines a good place to live and work. Bob Burnett died on Feb. 7 at age 90. 

Don Forsling

There was a time, a generation or so ago, when Iowans woke up to the quirky humor and eclectic tastes of Don Forsling. He ran the “Morning Report” on WOI radio — a one-man show in which listeners quickly learned to expect the unexpected. There is nothing like it today.

He was a funny man, droll and deadpan on and off the air, and he had a touch of the cynic in him. If you listened regularly, as thousands of Iowans did, you got the feeling he was talking just to you — finding the odd news item that would amuse, the bizarre fact that would amaze.

He liked saloon singers, and many Iowans first heard Wesla Whitfield and Marilyn VerPlanck and Diana Krall and Nancy La Mott on his show. He was nutty about trains, and on vacations he would ride off on his motorcycle to photograph them. (He was a first-rate photographer.)

He would put all those things together — the odd news item, the bizarre fact, the sad torch song, with an aside about locomotives — into a show that you built your own morning around. You got up a little earlier, perhaps, or left for work a little later so you could hear more of Don Forsling.

He was raised in Sioux City and educated at the University of Iowa, and he then spent 40 years at WOI — including stints as general manager and program director. He and his colleague, the wonderful Doug Brown, made WOI a station of distinction and a jewel for Iowa State University, which then owned it.

More important to the wider world, Forsling was one of the people who helped get National Public Radio off the ground in 1970. He was an early board member and always a champion of NPR.

Forsling, who died on Feb. 6 at age 80, retired from WOI 12 years ago. In recent years, he began to lose his memory. A couple of years ago, former Lt. Gov. Art Neu and I stopped by to see him in a care facility — he would hate that term — where he was staying. He had changed very little. I asked him whether he listened to the radio these days, and he said he didn’t.

But, he said, he did watch television news. “I watch Fox News,” he said, and then, knowing my politics, he added:
“But don’t worry. I forget it right away.” 

— Michael Gartner

Is there a better name anywhere than that of the current husband of one of the former wives of ousted White House aide Rob Porter?
Skiffington Holderness. 

In France, the “me too” movement is called #balancetonporc, or “expose your pig.” 

Two of his children and a colleague recall Register editorial writer, the “intellectual leader of state,” who died March 11 at age 93

Gil Cranberg may have been the smartest person ever to enter the Register and Tribune building.

And — luckily for Iowans — he stayed for 33 years.

In the first 26 years, he wrote editorials for the morning and Sunday Register and the evening Tribune. In the next seven years, he not only wrote editorials but also guided those pages and the 10 or so men and women working on them. He kept the papers on a steady course of arguing for civil rights and human rights, for openness of government and justice for all, and for the blessings of liberty.

In those 33 years — from 1949 to 1982 —  he enlightened us and persuaded us. Sometimes he moved us to action, sometimes to outrage, sometimes to tears. His research was so thorough, his thinking was so sound, and his writing was so clear that you’d read his editorials and say, “Of course.”

Of course that’s the situation.

Of course that’s the solution.

And why hadn’t I seen it that way before?

When he became boss, he broadened the editorial and op-ed pages, making them livelier and more thought-provoking. He ran poetry. He excerpted articles from medical journals. He ran learned — and deftly summarized — articles from law reviews. He ran essays that came in over the transom if they met his high standards of reporting and writing. (One such essay was from a young American living in England. It was the first piece anyone in America had published by Thomas Friedman, who went on to win Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction books and for commentary at the New York Times.) 

His thirst for information was insatiable, his quest for knowledge unquenchable. He never stopped reading, he never stopped thinking. He felt this compulsion to find the truth and then to share it with Iowans. 

In that era, the Register was still a state-wide newspaper. Its news pages gave all Iowans a thorough and common source of information. Its editorial pages gave a consistent interpretation of that news. So Gil became, by the power of the paper and the power of his mind, the intellectual leader of the state. 

He always gave both sides of an argument before his surgical excision of one side. “Acknowledging ‘the other side’ signals readers that you took it into account and thus makes your argument more convincing,” Cranberg wrote to a New York Times editor who didn’t think an editorial should give both sides. That sense of fairness always guided him.

Gil never took anyone’s word for anything without first checking it out. He read the documents, the court cases, the journals, the testimony. And, often, he produced devastating proof that the conventional wisdom might have been conventional, but it certainly wasn’t wisdom.

He became an expert in libel law — not because he ever was sued for libel but rather because he believed so strongly in a free press and in fairness for the wronged. One of his fact-based conclusions: The wronged person is often right, and often he just wants to air his complaint to the editor. If editors would simply listen to that person, rather than shoo him away, the person would feel satisfied. If editors kissed him off, the chances increased that he’d file a lawsuit. Editors who followed Gil’s advice saved their companies a lot of money in legal fees — and perhaps libel judgments.

He practiced what he preached. It wasn’t enough just to argue for civil rights; he fought for them for six years as a member of the national board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union. It wasn’t enough to argue for compassion and professional care of disadvantaged young people; he served on the boards of the Des Moines Child Guidance Center (now Orchard Place) and Iowa Children’s and Family Services. It wasn’t enough to oppose awful wars; he served on the board of the Iowa Peace Institute. It wasn’t enough to believe it was wrong to throw poor folks in jail while they awaited trial; he worked with Dan Johnston on an innovative bail-reform project.

In print and in life, he was a champion of the hopeless, the helpless and the hapless.

He left the newspaper in 1982 as he saw change coming, and he turned to teaching and writing for others. His essays popped up everywhere — from The New York Times to USA Today to CITYVIEW — and he earned a new following among students at the University of Iowa. Readers still relied on him; students revered him.

Gil was married for 58 years to Norma Ansher Cranberg, a speech pathologist. She died in 2009 at age 85. He was devastated. Gil was a combat veteran from World War II, and he was in the Veterans Administration medical system — which he championed. When Norma died, a VA social worker stopped by to see him. 

She asked how he was. Devastated, he said. They’d spent their adult lives together, he explained, and he was in deep grief. The worried social worker pressed him, asking if he had thought of committing suicide. Although he never seriously considered it, he had to acknowledge that, yes, the thought had crossed his mind to just drive into the garage and close the door.

The social worker was alarmed. She continued to worry about him and to stay in contact. Not too long afterward, he moved to Florida (where he continued to write, and where he led a happy and productive life). A few months after that, she called him to ask how he was doing, to ask if there were any problems.

He was doing OK, he said, but, yes, there was a problem. “The garages down here don’t have doors,” he said.

Gil Cranberg had a sense of humor, too. 

EULOGY FOR GILBERT CRANBERG

By Lee Cranberg

My father was blessed with work he loved, and his work was writing about the world. He began a career in journalism in 1949 as an editorial writer for The Des Moines Register and Tribune. Editorial writing is a position that many journalists aspire to, and he remained an editorial writer at the R&T for 33 years, the last seven as Editor of the Editorial Page. The R&T gave its editorial writers much leeway, allowing them to specialize on domains of interest and to speak their minds. (Dad’s bailiwick was jurisprudence, including the criminal-justice system.) As a close family friend often said, Dad was paid to think. Then he put his thoughts on paper, and they were read by the community.      

Sometimes they even changed the community. After all, Des Moines was the proverbial small pond and the R&T were the jointly owned and staffed monopoly newspapers in town. Dad was acquainted with the leaders and shapers of the community and they with him; and he had some ideas worth implementing. For example, when he saw how an arrested acquaintance was released pending trial without bail because the man had friends who could offer him work and vouch that he would not skip town, my father editorialized that all defendants with proven ties to the community who were not flight risks should be given similar consideration. He helped create a pilot no-bail program in Polk County (Des Moines) that became a national model. He was invited to attend the signing by President Lyndon Johnson of the national bail-reform act in the 1960s.

After 33 years of writing editorials, in 1982 he adroitly made the transition from newspapers to academe when he retired from the R&T and became the George Gallup Professor of Journalism at the University of Iowa. Once again, he was paid to think, but now more deeply and assiduously on a particular topic. He co-authored two books, one on libel law and the other on a signal transformation in American journalism, the rise of the publicly traded newspaper corporation. (The other modern-day scourge to newspapers, the rise of the Internet, was yet to come.)

He had been lucky. He had had a fulfilling career as a newspaper man during the glory days of newspapers. Then, when the newspaper business evolved, he researched and wrote about it from an academic perch.

In late life he had yet another professional transformation. Keeping up with the times, he became a blogger. He was on the roster of writers for the Nieman Watchdog, the blog of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. Later he founded his own blog, TruthBlog.us, which published posts by him and a group of former colleagues. He made blog posts approximately a couple times per month until age 91, when the ravages of age finally stilled his keyboard after 66 years.

In closing, I want to say one word about my father’s personality. That word would be unflappable. Very little would upset him (except perhaps injustice done to others). It was an attitude he learned in the infantry in World War II. Comrades would come and go — some transferred, others killed — and there he cultivated the habit of adapting as necessary, without fuss. He took things as they came and looked forward to the future. In the worst of storms, he would always find that patch of sky unseen by others where it was clearing. 

EULOGY FOR GILBERT CRANBERG

By Marcia Cranberg Wolff

I consider Dad to have been both an independent, honest and creative thinker; and simultaneously quietly courageous.  He came by these qualities both through experience and inheritance.  

A seminal formative experience was the education he received as a member of one of the earliest classes at the renowned Bronx High School of Science.  There he was taught the scientific method — how to get and dispassionately evaluate the facts, a hallmark of his later professional life.   

But the habit of independence in thought may also have been in his blood. His own father, Hyman Cranberg, fled his Jewish Russian ghetto as a teenager to make a new life in New York. Most uncommonly, while my grandfather began life in the New World in the garment industry, he decided that he preferred to engage in professional endeavors, and he beat the odds to become a civil engineer. He was employed by the City of New York, where among other projects he helped design the 6th Avenue Subway Line. One of my father’s early memories was of attending a dedication ceremony for a new water-treatment plant his father had helped design. The improbable New York City Department of Sanitation Band performed, and before my father’s very eyes Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dramatically imbibed a glass of water purified by the facility Hyman Cranberg helped create.

After participating in the World War II landings on Leyte and Okinawa as a mortarman in the infantry, Dad returned home and like so many of his fellow vets, took advantage of the GI Bill to get an education. But hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific jungles wasn’t adventure enough. So he decided to postpone settling down to job and family and instead traveled to destinations under siege, attending college at a Hungarian university just after the Iron Curtain descended over that country, and writing as a stringer for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications from Franco’s Spain. He also enrolled for further studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. 

Dad’s clear-eyed vision, independence and professional courage can be seen time and again in his many projects, conducted both from his perch at The Des Moines Register and Tribune, later in academia at the University of Iowa, and later still in retirement (so-called), writing independently for numerous publications and his blog. He thought for himself and quietly plugged away on matters of national consequence from his little office in Des Moines, Iowa. And because he was so smart and pragmatic and had such good judgment and did his homework, he was very often right in challenging prevailing orthodoxy. Over and over. Here are some examples:  

Iraq Invasion. He was almost alone among journalists in immediately questioning the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. From the first day that Colin Powell sought to justify the war in a much-touted speech before the UN, Dad dug up many of the primary intelligence documents upon which Powell relied, concluded Bush’s and Powell’s justifications were unsupported by the evidence they cited, and persisted with multiple pieces. He kept writing letters to Colin Powell himself, questioning his characterization of the facts, and got stonewalled. (That non-correspondence resulted in Dad’s Washington Post piece entitled “Colin Powell and Me.”) Disturbingly, the mainstream media overwhelmingly supported the war and missed the boat. One of Dad’s pieces at the time surveyed the editorial pages of dozens of U.S. newspapers a day or two after Powell’s speech.  They were convinced of the need for war.  He kept at it. Ultimately, of course, far too late, we all realized we’d been had. The press by and large botched it, but Dad didn’t.  Dad got the evidence, Dad thought for himself from the get-go, Dad persisted when it was unpopular to do so, and Dad was right.  

Whitewater. To this day the media casually refer to the Bill Clinton “scandals,” enumerating a list that always includes Whitewater. In the Clinton years, the mainstream press could be quite critical of Clinton and assumed Whitewater was a thing. Dad got the documents, read through them, amassed the evidence instead of repeating bromides, wrote many pieces, ran them by Clinton’s lawyer David Kendall to be sure he had his facts right, and repeated his mantra “follow the money” to show there was no there there. And he was right. Whitewater was a big fat nothingburger. And not many journalists thought for themselves on this.

Libel. His creative proposals for an alternative to traditional libel litigation gave the press less power in battling libel claims made against them than did the existing system. So the media and the media lawyers were leery about his proposals for reform. But he was right. He was sensitive to the fact that the balance that had been struck by the courts between protecting the press and allowing those who had been defamed to have some redress left the latter in some cases with virtually no recourse, and required the press to spend a lot of time and money in litigation even when they successfully defended against libel claims. So he came up with a pragmatic idea for allowing libel plaintiffs to show where mistakes had been made without sacrificing important First Amendment press protections. Dad persisted, he was creative and he was right. He even co-authored a book on the subject. He found courage in knowing that University of Iowa Law Professor Randall Bezanson agreed with him, and they worked closely together on this project. 

U.S. Supreme Court. Dad found multiple instances where Supreme Court Justices sat on cases in which they had financial interests, or where the rules allowed them to shroud certain votes in secrecy when there was no public interest for doing so. While initially the Washington Post and New York Times Supreme Court reporters failed to join his crusade, he persisted. He wrote each Justice and asked them to explain themselves. Some answered, and none of the answers was satisfactory. He wrote and wrote about these matters of concern. As a nonagenarian a couple of years ago, he wrote the Justices again, pointing out that antediluvian court traditions unnecessarily hid certain consequential votes from the public. Justice Scalia answered, and his answer was nonsense; Dad wrote another piece pointing that out. Ultimately, the Supreme Court adopted a new rule that addressed some of what Dad had been complaining about. He was right, and they addressed it. He was really brave to persist. He once asked me to look up the personal papers of a few then-deceased Justices at the Library of Congress. There were many memos and a fair amount of worried conversation among the Justices about this Iowa journalist who kept pestering them, including strategies for how to deal with his questions and fend him off. Dad was right, and he was brave.

Iowa Caucuses. Dad wrote a piece for The New York Times in 1987 entitled “The Iowa Caucuses Have No Clothes.” I know Iowans like their first-in-the-nation caucus status, but Dad’s piece questioned whether according Iowa voters such outsized influence made sense. He pointed out that not only are Iowa voters not representative of voters in the nation as a whole, but that activist caucus-goers, willing to spend hours in neighbors’ homes on a frigid winter evening, are not even necessarily representative of Iowa voters. He got a certain amount of pushback on that one. But NBC’s “Today Show” came calling, and Dad had the chance to espouse his heresy on national TV. 

To me, one definition of courage might be quiet persistence. Dad had this in spades. And it was leavened with a nature of integrity, modesty, sweetness and an absolutely great sense of humor. It was always interesting and great fun living with Dad. I am proud of my father, and being his daughter has been a supreme gift. 

The estate of Kirk Blunck has paid off two long-delinquent loans the city provided to help Blunck rehabilitate two buildings in the East Village. That leaves just one claim remaining against the estate of the architect and developer who died under puzzling circumstances in one of his buildings on a Sunday afternoon of January 2016, leaving a trail of claims and lawsuits and messy finances and assorted rumors.

With the encouragement of the city, Blunck was a pioneer developer of the East Village, seeing its potential long before other developers did. In 1999, the city lent him $700,000 at very favorable terms to help him rehabilitate the Teachout Building at 500 E. Locust and the Hohberger Building at 504 E. Locust. The loans were subordinate to mortgages at Iowa State Bank and were not personally guaranteed by Blunck, and the city declared both in default in April of 2010. The amount grew as interest mounted.

The estate lawyers renegotiated the deal, providing some security and getting a lower interest rate in return for a promise to pay off by the end of 2017. Filings in the Polk County Recorder’s office show they met the deadline. The city says the final payment was for $920,276.85 and was made on Dec. 1. The debts were released that day.

Blunck’s death at age 62 remains a mystery. Friends and the police believe he fell or was shoved to his death in a stairwell of the Teachout Building, perhaps after confronting a young couple who appeared to be casing the place. The Polk County coroner said the death was caused by “multiple blunt force trauma, manner undetermined.”

The family believes he was murdered by Zachary Allen Gaskill, a convicted would-be burglar who was on probation at the time. (And who has been in and out of jail since for violating his probation.) The police questioned Gaskill, but no charges were brought. Not satisfied with the lack of charges, the family sued Gaskill for wrongful death, seeking $6,250,000 in damages. Gaskill, now 27 years old, never answered the charges and never showed up in court, so Judge Samantha Gronewald entered a default judgment for the entire amount. Unless Gaskill wins the lottery, the Bluncks’ chances of recovery are nonexistent.

The city’s claim against Blunck was just part of an outpouring of claims and lawsuits against the estate from vendors, associates, banks, credit-card companies and his own lawyers, totaling millions of dollars. The only remaining claim is from the Jeffrey Tyler family, who hired Blunck to be general contractor and architect for work on their home at 2814 Forest Drive in Des Moines. The Tylers say they paid Blunck more than $625,000, and they say he botched the job. In June of 2016, they sued the estate for “not less than $250,000.”

A trial is set for Aug. 13 in Polk County District Court.

People in the real-estate industry say the Bluncks received some offers for their East Village buildings, but they say that the family is keeping the properties for now and that one of Blunck’s daughters, Kaitlin, is overseeing them. …

Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi has left the Senate because of ill health, and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has decided not to run for re-election. That means that come January Chuck Grassley will be the ranking Republican in the Senate. That’s a powerful post, and if the Republicans maintain control after the November elections, Grassley will in all likelihood be named president pro tempore of the Senate, which in recent history has gone to the ranking member of the majority party. And that means he’d be third in line for the Presidency — right after the vice president and the Speaker of the House.

The only Iowan to be president pro tem was Albert Cummins, a Republican who held the post from 1919 to March 6, 1925. Cummins was born in Pennsylvania, moved around a bit and ended up practicing law in Des Moines in 1878. (Thus, Cummins Parkway.) There was much political fighting in the Iowa Republican Party of that era, and Cummins’ faction — the so-called Insurgent Faction — ended up in control.

Cummins was elected governor of Iowa in 1901 and served three two-year terms. He argued for more regulation and more taxation of the railroads — which had immense power — and for more regulation of industry in general. Today, with his belief in prison reform and arguments against child labor and for pure-food laws, he would be a Democrat.

In 1908, the Iowa Legislature appointed him to the U.S. Senate following the death of another political giant, William Allison (thus Allison, Iowa, the county seat of Butler County). He was elected in 1909, 1914 and 1920. He was immensely powerful. Iowans supported him for president in 1912, when he ended up backing Theodore Roosevelt’s third-party effort, and he sought the presidency again in 1916, finishing fifth among 12 men seeking the Republican nomination at the party convention.

For two years, from 1923 until 1925, he was in effect the acting vice president after Calvin Coolidge ascended to the presidency upon the death of Cummins’ friend Warren Harding. (In those days, the Senate President Pro Tem was second in line to the presidency, ahead of the Speaker of the House, and a vacancy in the vice-presidency wasn’t filled until the next general election.)

Cummins died in office on July of 1926, not long after he had been defeated in a Republican primary by Smith Brookhart. …

In January, Grassley will be the second-ranking Senator, behind only Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Leahy took his seat in January of 1975, Grassley in January of 1981. Grassley is currently the 14th longest-serving Senator in U.S. history, and if he serves the remaining four years of his term he will be the ninth longest. …

And the (dead)beat goes on: The Iowa Department of Human Services has notified Marty Tirrell that he owes $14,462 in back child support. …

If at first… A guy took the Iowa bar exam in February for the sixth time. And passed. But the two folks taking it for the fifth time and the person trying for the fourth time all failed again. So next time you hire a lawyer, you might want to ask how many times he, or she, took the bar. …

A 14-room house at 321 37th St. in Des Moines just sold for $1.1 million, matching the highest price for a single-family home sale in Des Moines in nearly four years. The stucco house, which sits on one acre and was built in 1910, was purchased by the Macfee Family Trust from Michael Reynal. Polk County records indicate Reynal bought the house in 2006 for $660,000. It is assessed at $712,400. …

Kristian Day, who writes the Couch Surfing column and other occasional pieces for CITYVIEW, produced a 3-minute horror film with a handful of Iowa crew members in one day while in Los Angeles. “Bath Bomb” was released on Friday, April 13 by CryptTV and can be seen at http://bit.ly/2qv2V74. Brace yourself. …

CITYVIEW joins those congratulating Andie Dominick of The Des Moines Register for winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. The award follows last year’s award to Storm Lake’s Art Cullen, keeping the prize in Iowa for a second year.

And, while we’re at it, shame on the Iowa Senate Republicans for refusing to bring to the floor a resolution honoring Cullen. But a politician in Ireland, hearing of the snub, has seen to it that Ireland will honor the Storm Lake editor and his Irish family. “Although his own state will not recognize him,” the Irish legislator says, “an entire nation does, and they are of our nation.”

(The Iowa Legislature has found time, though, to honor the Graceland basketball team, University of Iowa wrestler Spencer Lee, Iowa Women’s History Month, retiring Senate employee Theresa Kehoe, National Boy Scout Day, Tim O’Connell (“a native of Zwingle, Iowa…and the first Iowan to win the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Bareback Riding World Championship”), the 175th anniversary of Iowa Wesleyan University, Canada Day, University of Iowa wrestler Cory Clark, the Drake women’s basketball team, the Grand View University wrestling team, the Iowa Pork Congress — a resolution introduced by Representatives Fry, Moore and Bacon — National Speech and Debate Education Day, the 50th anniversary of the Illowa Council of the Boy Scouts, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives, Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease Awareness Month, the Hoover Uncommon Public Service Award winner, John Wayne Day and the Southwestern Community College men’s basketball team. Among others.)

The House of Representatives also has passed a resolution this session coming out foursquare for the incandescent light bulb. …

And CITYVIEW notes with particular sadness the death of Donna Red Wing, a fighter for equality and civility and peace, an advocate for gays and lesbians and transgender people, and a protector of the poor and the abused and the downtrodden. She was 67 when she died of lung cancer on April 17. 

Dan Miller

Michael Gartner was one of the speakers at the memorial service for Dan Miller on April 7. Here are his remarks.

A year or so ago, when Dan could still mouth words and whisper a bit, he asked me, haltingly, if I would speak at his funeral.

I said I wanted to think about it.

His eyebrows kind of arched, like “C’mon, it’s my funeral, for God’s sake. Don’t screw with me.”

“I will,” I told him, “if I can think of anything good to say about you.”

“And right now,” I said, “I can’t.”

He laughed — God knows how, but he could laugh or smile, in a way, until almost the day he died — but the truth is this:

You could rack your brain and not think of anything bad to say about Dan Miller.

You could take a poll and not find anyone who could find a flaw with Dan Miller.

You could offer a prize and still not find anyone who didn’t like Dan Miller.

He was a lovely man.

He was smart…and funny…and quick…and caring. He could tease…and be teased. He was great fun to be with. And he was ever-so creative with the language.

But besides being all that — and being a great husband to Diane, and a proud father of Maya, and a true friend to all of us — there is this:

He held this state together.

I don’t think most people realize that.

Dan ran Iowa Public Television at a time when the state was fragmenting: The state-wide newspaper was pulling back, the one-issue voices were multiplying. More and more people were screaming, fewer and fewer people were listening. Discussion had turned into cacophony, debate into confrontation. And more and more things were happening — good things and bad things — that none of us knew about.

He realized he ran about the only remaining institution that could hold us together as Iowans — that could give us all a set of facts and a sense of purpose. That could inform us and inspire us.

He set out to ensure that Iowa Public Television would rise to the moment — and he succeeded. He re-imagined it — as a network with many channels, one for news, one for kids, and the like. He figured out the programming, he figured out the technology, he figured out the money, and he figured out the politics.

Then he did it. Single-mindedly, and almost single-handedly.

He found the funds — yet preserved the independence to investigate and report.

He amplified Iowa’s voices in the hopes of provoking thought, encouraging dissent and fostering consensus.

And all the while, he enshrined variety and entertainment as part of the public television mix.

And he made it look easy. I submit that no one else could have done that. No one had the news judgment, the technological knowledge and the political instincts that he put together for the people of Iowa. He almost always got what he wanted from a Legislature that rarely gave anyone what he, or she, wanted.

His logic was so sound and his vision was so clear — and his manner so low-key, his charm so irresistible, his persistence so unshakeable, his smile so genuine — that no one ever said no. He was also very stubborn.

So we, and our children, and our grandchildren are in his debt.

The disease that struck Dan those many years ago is an especially cruel and unforgiving one. It robbed him of his ability to walk, and then to talk. But while it stole from him his body, it let him keep his brain — that wonderful brain that ensured the state would always be informed and his friends would always be amused.

For that, I am eternally thankful.

Dan might have made us cry these past few years. But he also made us smile.

I’d like to say two other things:

First, two of the bravest people I’ve met in recent years are Dan Miller and Diane Graham.

Not necessarily in that order.

Second, Mayo Clinic wanted Dan’s brain. Of course, so did I.

But I would have settled for the hair. 

— Michael Gartner

The budget cuts and pay freezes at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University have some big exceptions: Athletic budgets aren’t touched, and coaches will continue to get very big raises.

After a lot of back and forth, legislators in their wisdom cut $40.9 million from the general university appropriations for this fiscal year, compared with a year earlier.

Ten years ago, in fiscal 2009, state appropriations to the Regents system for general operating funds totaled $592.5 million, about $120 million more than the $472.7 million the schools ended up with for this fiscal year. That’s a 20 percent drop. That’s one reason tuition has risen more than 35 percent in those 10 years.

Ten years ago, the athletic department budgets at the three universities totaled $119.7 million. This year, the total is $207.3 million. That’s a 73 percent increase. The increase has been driven by huge TV contracts and bowl payouts, and — with the exception of an annual $2 million contribution to the university general fund instituted last year by new University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld — the departments have been able to find ways to spend or squirrel away within the departments every extra dollar raised. (And, in the case of the University of Iowa, to pay off $6.5 million in judgments to women who were discriminated against.)

The 2009 athletic figures include injections of around $9 million in general university funds; the 2018 figures have no general funds at Iowa and Iowa State — those athletic departments have become, by their accounting, self-supporting. (Though there has never been any offer to return to the universities the millions and millions of dollars that subsidized the departments before the era of big television contracts and bowl receipts.) The 2018 figure for UNI does include about $4.5 million of general university support.

“The athletic departments are independent entities,” the Regents say.

The Regents treat athletics the way they treat the residence and food operations, as something apart from the universities and their academic mission. It is, in their eyes, a business.

And so it is that the coaches get richer and richer while clerks and professors and secretaries and lab assistants face tiny raises, or none at all.

It’s not that the coaches and their assistants are standing in any bread lines.

Kirk Ferentz, the head football coach at the University of Iowa, will receive $2,570,000 in base pay in the coming year — a number that goes up $100,000 each year until the contract expires in 2026. He’ll receive “supplemental compensation” of $1,480,000, another $650,000 as a “longevity incentive,” $500,000 for any season in which the team wins eight or more games, a $10,000 “discretionary fund,” two cars, 35 hours worth of time in a private jet for personal use and another 50 hours for business use, and a skybox at the stadium for his personal use.

He’ll also get incentives ranging from $125,000 for being a top-25 team to $1,500,000 for being national champion, $100,000 to $250,000 for winning a Big Ten division or the Big Ten championship, $100,000 to $375,000 for getting a bowl invitation and an extra $50,000 for winning the Rose Bowl, another $50,000 for being Big Ten Coach of the Year and $100,000 for being a National Coach of the Year and $100,000 if the team achieves “a graduation success rate” of 80 percent.

(A “graduation success rate” is not the same as a graduation rate. The “success rate” is a figure conjured up by the NCAA to make graduation rates look better. In the most recent year, for instance, athletes in all sports at Iowa had a graduation success rate of 90 and a graduation rate — as calculated by federal standards — of 77. Football was the only sport at Iowa that fell below the 80 percent “success” threshold, hitting 76 in the most recent year.)

Last year, Coach Ferentz earned $5,075,000, according to state figures. He could walk away with $7,085,000 this year if he has a national championship team. And that’s not counting the value of 35 hours of private jet time (probably at least $150,000), the cost of the suite (around $60,000) and the value of two new cars (probably $80,000 to $100,000).

And if the budget gets a little tight at the Ferentz household, the coach is free to make outside deals for endorsements and the like.

Assistant coaches fare almost as well. While the average faculty raise for last fiscal year was 2.6 percent and the average for non-bargaining employees was 2.5 percent, Ferentz’s contract guarantees annual raises of at least 8 percent for 12 coaches who work for him after any year in which the team wins at least seven games and the “graduation success rate” is at least 67.5 percent. The raises can be up to 20 percent depending on the team’s final ranking in the polls.

The base salary for assistants Chris Doyle and Phil Parker is $675,000 this year. Brian Ferentz is paid $625,000, Ken O’Keefe $540,000, Reese Morgan $460,000 and Seth Wallace $400,000. Four others earn between $270,00 and $335,000.

The average salary for a full professor at the University of Iowa is $138,414. For an associate professor it is $95,336, for an assistant professor $87,958. …

A nasty food fight in the East Village was settled in court the other day.

The Continental, a restaurant on East Locust, sued the company that owns Eatery A, a restaurant on Ingersoll, alleging that the Eatery A people were trying to evict The Continental so Eatery A could open its own restaurant at the site.

The lawsuit, filed in Polk County District Court on May 9, alleged that Eatery A — under its corporate name of C.H.L. Development — purchased the East Locust property last fall, a property where The Continental is operating under a lease that runs to June 30, 2020, with a five-year option to renew.

Since the purchase, the lawsuit alleged, “defendant has created a hostile atmosphere through harassment and threats with the intent of forcing the Continental to vacate the property.” The suit alleged that C.H.L. regularly sent threatening letters, locked The Continental out of the basement (where it needed access to clear the grease trap, spray for pests and reach the electrical panels and plumbing equipment). The suit further alleged that C.H.L. destroyed the patio Continental used for outdoor dining and did a bunch of other not-nice stuff.

The lawsuit alleged malicious interference with business, sought injunctions against C.H.L. and asked for punitive damages.

And then it was all over. On May 25, Jason Simon, the owner of C.H.L., e-mailed that “the matter with The Continental is a non-starter….It has been resolved.” On May 29, lawyers for The Continental filed a one-sentence document with the court dismissing the lawsuit. Neither Simon nor lawyers for The Continental answered questions about how it was resolved. …

David Chivers, the Des Moines North graduate who came back to town a few years ago to become president and publisher of The Register, resigned on June 10. Gannett is eliminating the jobs of president and publisher at its newspapers, and Chivers was one of the last to go. Chivers, who knows a lot about the digital world, hopes to stay in Des Moines. His departure leaves the paper with an organization chart that looks like a maze, with no local boss and with department heads reporting to folks in suburban Washington or Cincinnati or Springfield, Missouri, or Louisville, among other places. …

Rick Green, the one-time editor of The Des Moines Register who moved on to Cincinnati and then Bergen County in New Jersey, now is editor of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, and part of his new job is overseeing the news operation of the Register. That’s probably a good thing, since he knows the town and the paper after living here for four years or so.

Register executive editor Carol Hunter formerly reported to Amalie Nash, a Gannett regional editor who also is a former Register editor. Now, Green reports to Nash, who was just promoted to executive editor for local news at all 109 Gannett dailies (though not USA Today). …

United Airlines is dropping its nonstop Des Moines-to-Newark service this fall….

Kent Sorenson, the one-time legislator who sold his allegiance in the 2012 Republican caucus battle to Ron Paul after first backing Michele Bachmann and subsequently became inmate No. 15000-030 at the federal prison in Thomson, Illinois, was released on April 13 and now is under supervised parole in Iowa.

Sorenson, once a rising star with Iowa’s evangelical right, was sentenced to 15 months by Senior Federal Judge Robert Pratt after the Warren County legislator was found to have willfully filed false reports of federal campaign expenditures and to have falsified records to obstruct justice in relation to a federal investigation.

At the time, his lawyer said Sorenson “would take it like a man” and not appeal. He then appealed to the 8th Circuit, which upheld the sentence handed down by Pratt.

The other day, too, the 8th Circuit upheld the convictions of Jesse Benton, John Frederick Tate and Dmitri Kesari, officials with Ron Paul’s campaign who bought Sorenson’s allegiance. Kesari was sentenced to three months in prison, and the other two were sentenced to two years of probation by Federal District Judge John Jarvey. …

Look for some lawsuits to be filed by women alleging harassment by ousted Iowa Finance Authority Director Dave Jamison, local lawyers say. At least a couple of women are “lawyering up,” one lawyer says. Meantime, two investigations of the IFA are under way: For $350 an hour, the state has hired Des Moines lawyer Mark Weinhardt to look into the conduct of Jamison, and State Auditor Mary Mosiman is looking into the IFA’s finances. 

Nate Boulton

How many things did Nate Boulton do wrong?

Let’s start with the ass-grabbing and frotteurism. Repugnant.

Then the decision to run for governor in the age of #metoo. Risky.

Then the campaign for governor in which he raised more than $1.5 million from true believers — particularly those in the labor movement he championed — who had no idea he was a harasser. Selfish.

Then the denial to Dave Price on Channel 13 that there was anything in his background — accusations or allegations about sexual harassment — that could cause a political problem. Deceitful.

Then the statement that harassment in a social setting is less awful than harassment at work. Delusional.

Then the defense that he has long been a defender of women’s rights. Pathetic.

Nate Boulton was right to leave the race. And he was wrong to have entered it. 

— Michael Gartner

David Johnson

David Johnson, the lone Independent in the Iowa legislature, has decided not to seek reelection from his senate district in a northwest chunk of the state.

That is too bad.

Johnson — a conservative Republican who morphed into a moderate Republican and then (save his strong anti-abortion views) a liberal Independent — has been a voice for common sense and for civility in a Legislature not always known for either.

He served 20 years in the Legislature — two terms in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate — and was a strong advocate for conserving our natural resources and our cherished values. A onetime farmhand, he knew the value of our land; a onetime country newspaperman, he knew the blessings of our liberties.

It’s a shame he’s leaving, but it was great that he was there. 

— Michael Gartner

The FBI is asking questions about Marty Tirrell. An agent has contacted several people and is asking about “anything and everything,” according to one person who was questioned.

The FBI regional office in Omaha wouldn’t comment, but generally when the agency starts asking about someone it’s not good news for that someone.

The once-popular sports-talk radio shouter has been sued at least 20 times in state and federal court by people alleging they were scammed by him — that he failed to pay for blocks of sports tickets he bought, that he failed to pay back borrowed money, that he failed to pay for air time he bought, or that he failed to make alimony payments, among other things. He owes back taxes to the federal government, has garnishments against his earnings, and the state of Massachusetts has issued a warrant for his arrest.

The suers include ticket-brokers in New York and Chicago, a broadcaster in Texas, an ex-wife in Massachusetts and a score or so of local businesses and former friends. At one point, he was sued by his own lawyer. He sought protection from his debts under the federal bankruptcy act, but his petition was so full of holes that the judge rejected it.

The judgments against him total well over $2 million. Others, including some prominent Des Moines businessmen, are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars by him but haven’t bothered to sue, either because they are embarrassed by their gullibility or because they know he has few assets.

Often, the 58-year-old Tirrell hasn’t deigned to reply or to show up in court when he is sued. The latest no-show was in a suit filed in Polk County District Court in March by Joseph Ferin and Justin Loutsch of Des Moines. In court papers, they said he owes them $11,238 for advertising that never aired because his radio show was canceled. But they said he told them he would credit that money as a down-payment for a dozen seats he could get them in a suite at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for Super Bowl 52 between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots on Feb. 4 of this year. He said they would have to come up with another $9,000 to flesh out the down-payment, so they did.

According to the lawsuit, he also told them that for $12,000 they could buy as souvenirs 12 barstools used in that suite. They agreed to that deal and paid him the $12,000. Later, he told them he could resell those stools to someone for $22,800, if they’d take a credit card. Again, they agreed. They took the credit card, and they paid Tirrell the $5,000 he asked for as his share of the profits.

They also then paid him the $8,456 remaining for the tickets, the lawsuit says.

And then:

The credit-card company rejected the charge. And Tirrell never delivered the Super Bowl tickets.

The two men sued for breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation.

In June, Senior Polk County District Judge Donna Paulsen entered a default judgment against Tirrell and awarded Ferin and Loutsch damages of $45,694 and attorney’s fees of $1,435.00.

Earlier this year, Polk County District Judge Eliza Ovrom entered a $1,071,327.43 default judgment against Tirrell, which has not previously been reported. This time, Tirrell actually went to court — he showed up late and without a lawyer — and testified, admitting that he owed most of the money claimed by plaintiff Jason Whitinger of Waterloo.

Whitinger testified that over several years he and his business “advanced large sums to defendants, which were never repaid,” according to the judgment. Some of the money was to be used to purchase blocks of tickets to sporting events, which Tirrell said would be resold so he could pay Whitinger back. In addition, some of the money was to be used to invest in radio and television stations, according to the lawsuit. But, again, Tirrell apparently used the money for other purposes.

In her ruling, Ovrom noted that “Tirrell was not a credible witness based on demeanor and inconsistencies within his testimony.”

Meantime, Tirrell is without a commercial outlet for his daily sports-talk show. For years, he and broadcast partner Ken Miller had bounced from station to station, but that partnership finally broke up last year, and Miller continues alone. Terrell then had a one-man show on a local Mediacom channel, but that, too, is gone now. His lone outlet now appears to be the Internet.

A Mediacom spokesperson says it was a joint decision by Tirrell and Mediacom to “suspend” the show. In the past when Tirrell has left a station it usually was because he wasn’t paying the money he owed the station. (Tirrell buys a block of time on a station — for $30,000 to $40,000 a month — and then recoups that by selling advertising.) At least one broadcast group sued him, but, like all the other folks who have sued him, it won a judgment but collected nothing. …

The first thing Gov. Kim Reynolds said after Fred Hubbell won the democratic nomination to oppose her was that “he has no idea what it’s like not to be rich.”

But apparently it’s only certain millionaires she disdains. A check with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board shows she has taken donations from at least 38 millionaires from around the country.

Her Iowa contributors include:

John Pappajohn, $10,000; Nixon Lauridsen, $25,000 (and another $10,000 from his son Walter); Denny Elwell, $100,000; Michael Gerdin, $10,000; Kent Gage, $35,000; Dan Rupprecht, $55,000; Dale Andringa, $30,000; Denny Albaugh, $35,000; John Gleason, $25,000; Ron Holden, $25,000; Roger Underwood, $10,000, and Bruce Rastetter, $25,000.

John Catsimatidis, a billionaire who owns a large grocery chain in New York as well as a real-estate and aviation company (and who was a large donor to Bill Clinton), contributed $45,000, and Henry Tippie, the Austin, Texas, businessman for whom the University of Iowa business school is named, added $25,000. Rex Sinquefield, a Missouri investor and foe of the income tax, gave Reynolds $50,000.

It’s unclear whether before accepting the money Reynolds asked if the giver was born rich. …

Statistician Nate Silver once again has rated America’s pollsters. He looked at hundreds of polling operations and ranked them based on historical accuracy and methodology. Seven of the pollsters received an A+. One of those — as usual — was Selzer & Co., the Des Moines firm that is owned by Ann Selzer and that runs the Iowa Poll, among others. Silver analyzed 43 Selzer polls.

The Iowa State University polling operation received a B for three polls it conducted, Loras College a B-minus for its 18 polls and the University of Iowa a C-plus for its three polls. 

Excerpt

From “Fascism, a Warning,” a new book by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:
“Mussolini demanded and was given authority to do just about whatever he wanted….He knew that citizens were fed up with a bureaucracy that seemed to grow bigger and less efficient each year….He initiated a campaign to drenare la palude (‘drain the swamp’).…” 

Public Servants

For most folks, a public servant is the woman making $45,000 a year at the desk in city hall. Or the legislator earning $25,000 at the Iowa Capitol. Or maybe the teacher making $50,000 a year while dealing with a roomful of seventh-graders.

But to Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard, a public servant is also an athletic director making several hundred thousand dollars a year. Or so it seems.

When Kansas University fired its athletic director, Sheahon Zenger, earlier this year, it distressed Pollard. “I feel for Sheahon — he’s a colleague,” Pollard told The Des Moines Register. “It reinforces how tough it is to be a public servant.”

Indeed. Zenger was making $700,000 a year. He received a payout of $1.4 million when he was fired. Pollard makes a bit over $700,000 a year, making him the 25th highest-paid public servant in the state. He also gets a car and $165,000 a year in deferred compensation. 

John Mauro

A Des Moines Register reporter wrote the other day that Polk County Supervisor John Mauro’s “brand of politics” is “politics for your pals.”

Well, yes.

If your pals are the hungry or the homeless or the helpless.

Or if your pal is a woman whose son just got out of prison and needs a job sweeping floors. Or if your pal is a family living in their car and needs a roof over their heads. Or if your pal is a dad whose little girl doesn’t have the clothes she needs to go to school.

Those are his pals. And he takes care of them.

He doesn’t have much use for the downtown business crowd lining up for city handouts when they move their businesses six blocks — though one of his close friends is the very rich Bill Knapp (and no two people could live more different lifestyles) — and he’s not crazy about sitting through meetings, even if he is running them. He doesn’t like microphones and television cameras, and he’s not particularly charming when he’s in front of them. He doesn’t toot his own horn.

He’s not the kind of proud politician who takes his grandsons to watch him at a ribbon-cutting; instead, he takes them over to the Bidwell Riverside Food Pantry so they can understand how lucky they are and how unlucky others are — and how they have a responsibility to help as they grow up.

After 24 years as a Polk County Supervisor, he was wiped out in the June Democratic primary by State Senator Matt McCoy. They both knew it was coming — McCoy understands the new politics, Mauro the old. That’s not a bad thing for Mauro — at 77 he deserves more time watching his grandsons play sports or helping his three sons in their successful insurance and finance and senior-housing businesses. He’ll be just fine.

But it’s a bad thing for the county. It’s not bad that McCoy won, but it’s bad that Mauro lost. Mauro made the two best deals for taxpayers that ever have been made in Polk County. He was instrumental in saving Prairie Meadows racetrack and casino and in negotiating the contract that now provides the county with about $26 million a year.
And after seeing the bad deal that others at the county made in accepting Vision Iowa funds to help build the arena and convention complex, he asked to renegotiate the deal. The new deal freed up state money that was in escrow to ensure that no property-tax money would be used for the project, but it still guaranteed that no property-tax money would be used. (The original deal was made when he was out of office.) Then, he negotiated with Global Spectrum the management deal that now brings the county more than $2 million a year. He did that after some local business leaders tried to convince the county that they could manage the place if the county would simply give them $5 million a year to do it.

And it’s a bad thing for the county’s hungry. Appalled at what he was seeing and hearing, three years ago Mauro decided Polk County should be “hunger-free.” He set out to raise $10 million, to find ways to keep food pantries open during hours when the hungry were off work, to relocate some onto bus routes so the hungry could travel there, and to make sure the pantries and pantry trucks (which he launched) were well-stocked. He has raised about $6 million so far — it’s surprising to see who has turned him down — but it’s unclear who will carry on.

Talk to Mauro about the hungry, and it’s clear he wears his heart on his sleeve (a sleeve that might clash with his sport coat because he’s colorblind). And that heart beats — first and foremost — for his family and his South Side constituents, for the Italian immigrants and their families who settled there, for the Catholic Church (though he has no problem with gay marriage and a lot of other issues the church struggles with), and for the taxpayers of Polk County.

He sees nothing wrong with the deal the five supervisors made in 2012 and 2013 to funnel $844,000 in county money to a front corporation that gave it to the Catholic schools so they could invest it in technology — a deal that is just now, before the coming elections, being noticed though it was done openly and unanimously at the time. The money was part of the annual distribution the county gets from Prairie Meadows, and the deal was approved by the county’s lawyer and by the county attorney.

The Register and Herb Strentz and others think the deal smells, that it jumped the Constitutional wall that separates church from state. At the very least, it raises questions. But those are questions for the lawyers — and perhaps the Bishop — not for the supervisors. Mauro thinks it’s the duty of government to help kids — he notes repeatedly that it was blessed by the lawyers — and he’s dismayed by the criticism for what he views as a caring and legal vote done in a public meeting.

But Mauro knows how to deal with controversies. In 1998, fellow south-sider Gene Phillips defeated incumbent Mauro by 88 votes for the seat he now holds — he won it back from Phillips in 2002. The election was riddled with accusations, and ultimately both candidates were called before a federal grand jury. The issue revolved around absentee ballots, whether Phillips’ operatives forged signatures and whether Mauro’s workers illegally gathered the ballots.

Mauro was questioned vigorously in the jury room. At the end, he asked if he could say something to the jury. The prosecutor agreed.

“Look,” Mauro told the jurors, “you don’t cheat to lose. When you cheat, you win.”

No charges were brought. 

— Michael Gartner

On April 16 of last year, 55-year-old Mark Evans was riding his bike on the side path of MLK Parkway when he crashed at the southeast corner of 16th Street. Two days later, 63-year-old Bob Foss did the same thing. Both bikers were badly injured.

Both men were familiar with the widely used bike path. What they weren’t familiar with was a new curb — six inches high and unmarked — that the city built across what most bikers believed to be the path, a curb that replaced a gradual ramp, and a curb that sent both bikers to the ground. The curb barred bikers from cycling in a straight line across the intersection, which they had been doing since MLK and its adjoining path were built 15 or so years ago, and it forced them to angle off the path and then cross 16th Street.

The city says the curb was added to make the intersection safer for bikers. Bikers say, huh?

In fact, Evans and Foss said more than “huh.” A year ago, Evans sued. Last month, Foss did, too. The suits, in Polk County District Court, say the redesign of the intersection didn’t meet engineering or design or safety standards. A five-day jury trial has been set for Dec. 3 in Evans’s suit. No date has yet been set for Foss’s suit.

Evans’s suit says he sustained “injuries to his head, right shoulder, and ribs.” Foss’s says he “suffered severe temporary and permanent injuries.” He broke his collarbone and two ribs, among other things. Both bikers were wearing helmets.

Bikers were puzzled when the curb was added, and at least two others besides Evans and Foss took nasty spills there. But the city basically ignored early complaints.

Bikers then took matters into their own hands. On Sunday, July 2, someone — someone who rides bikes a lot — painted the curb with a glow-in-the-dark yellow paint. And someone, presumably that same someone, glued three toilet plungers to the top of the newly painted curb as a further warning to cyclists. Three days later, the plungers were removed, presumably by the city.

In mid-August, the city then put an expensive bench and a trash can at the corner, but it kept the curb. To some, the bench and trash can simply were additional hazards.

Earlier this year, the city redesigned the intersection again. This time, they took out the bench and the trash can and the curb and put a ramp back in, letting bikers take a clear, straight shot across 16th.

Still, the city blames the bikers for the accidents. In its reply to Evans’s lawsuit, the city says Evans failed to “use due and reasonable care,” failed “to maintain a proper and adequate lookout,” failed “to maintain adequate control,” neglected “to monitor the condition of the roadways,” and failed to observe “general standards of care.”

So, to date: the city has torn out a ramp and put in a curbing, has put in a bench and a trash bin, has removed the bench and the bin, has torn out the curbing and put a ramp back in. And has been sued twice. Two bikers have been seriously hurt, two others less seriously so. And someone bought a can of yellow paint and three toilet plungers. …

If you are Democrat Fred Hubbell and you are running for Governor, you might want to ask Republican Kim Reynolds:

Do you believe “life begins at conception?”

Do you believe the state should ban gay marriage?

Do you support allowing prayer in public schools?

Do you believe teachers should be able to carry guns in schools?

Do you oppose civil-rights protections for gay and bisexual people?

Do you believe that babies born in the U.S. to non-citizens of the U.S. should be deemed as non-citizens?

Do you oppose subsidies of all kinds?

Do you believe all public-sector unions should be eliminated?

Do you oppose traffic cameras?

Do you support repeal of Obamacare?

Do you support repeal of the income tax and replacing it with a flat tax or a consumption tax?

Do you support the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Security Agency, the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, the Bureau of Land Management and the Arms, Tobacco and Firearms agency?…

And if you are Reynolds, you might want to ask Hubbell:

Do you believe in starting a federal jobs program similar to the Depression-era Works Progress Administration?

Do you support restoring protections of public-sector unions?

Do you believe a “living wage” should supplant a “minimum wage?”

Do you believe in local control of minimum wages?

Do you believe credit unions should get to keep their tax breaks?

Do you believe all public schools should have sex-education classes that include discussions of gay sex?

Do you believe prisoners should be allowed to vote?

Do you believe in all-gender restrooms?

Do you believe the United States should admit 100,000 Syrian refugees every year?

Those are planks in the state party platforms adopted this summer. They are the official positions of the parties, so it’s fair game to ask the candidates if they support those positions. No one will, though. 

A GOP message for Grassley?

Iowa’s Republicans love Chuck Grassley. He has been in the United States Senate since 1981, and he is always re-elected easily. Iowa Republicans like his aw-shucks manner, his power on the Judiciary Committee, and his eagle eye in finding government waste.

And yet….

And yet the state Republican platform approved this summer by the delegates to the state convention takes a couple of swipes at him.

It calls for “term limits for elected officials, appointed officials, and judges.”

And it calls for “repeal of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Second things first:

The 17th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913, established the direct election of United States Senators. Until then, the Senators — as mandated by the Constitution — were chosen by their state legislatures. The idea was that, if legislatures appointed senators, the balance of power between state legislatures and the federal government might be a bit more even.

Repeal is a goofy idea, but it’s been on the agenda of some on the far right for several years. If it had been in effect, Grassley would have been a one-termer. Democrats controlled both houses of the Iowa Legislature in 1986, when Grassley first stood for re-election.

Perhaps someone should have reminded the delegates that the beloved Bob Ray served five terms as governor, that Terry Branstad served five-and-a-half, and that Grassley is in his seventh six-year term in the Senate.

Of course, the platform doesn’t say what the limit on terms should be. Maybe the delegates were thinking of, say, eight. 

Donald Kaul

When Don Kaul took over his Des Moines Register column in 1965, his bosses were at a meeting in New York. So he sent them a wire:

“Am talk of the town,” it said. “Demand immediate raise.”

He wasn’t yet the talk of the town, but he was on his way. His column replaced a gossipy, chatty column by Harlan Miller — “shaved while musing…,” “mused while shaving…” — and he rather quickly turned it into a daily commentary on everything from the city council to war in Vietnam.

Kaul, who died of cancer on July 22 at age 83, saw the absurdity in everything — in war, in politics, in raising kids, in the state legislature, in (especially) Richard Nixon’s presidency. And, on slow news days, he could always get the state worked up by writing about six-on-six girls’ basketball. (“Where else can you see a basketball player in full battle dress wearing a corsage?”)

He probably will be remembered as the co-founder, with John Karras, of The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, but he should be remembered for more. He was smart in print and quick in person, and while he enjoyed outraging readers, he got equal joy out of amusing friends. He was genuinely kind. And quirky. (Who else do you know who drove a Checker automobile?)

He started out in 1960 on the afternoon Des Moines Tribune, where he was a good reporter with a good reporter’s disdain for most editors, particularly his immediate boss. But the top editors at the time — Managing Editor Frank Eyerly and Editor Ken MacDonald (whom Kaul idolized) — saw something in his writing, or perhaps his newsroom behavior, that made them think he could succeed the bland and aging Miller.

It was a great call. Soon, his column was the first thing read every morning by many readers — those who knew they’d be amused and those who knew they’d be infuriated. The columns became the talk of the day at coffee shops in small towns and at the Des Moines Club downtown. Twice he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

He asked for a transfer to Washington in the early 1970s — where he could find even more absurdities to write about — and then became crosswise with Register editor Jim Gannon. Gannon ultimately fired Kaul. Or perhaps Kaul quit. It was never clear. At any rate, Gannon’s successor, Geneva Overholser, rehired him, and all was right with the world again. He was back in rare form. (“I was also the first to identify the classic defense of girls basketball: Standing in One Place and Waving Your Hands a Lot.”)

For many years, I was Kaul’s editor. I corrected his spelling and controlled his pay. He didn’t care much about spelling, but he did care about pay. Once, when I returned from lunch, there was a steering wheel on my desk. It was identical to the one in my car.

“We have your car,” the scribbled note said. “We will return it part by part until you give Kaul a raise.” 

— Michael Gartner

After six-and-a-half years of proceedings — and $987,849.80 in billings to taxpayers — George LaMarca is withdrawing as the state’s lawyer in the never-ending discrimination and defamation and retaliation lawsuit filed against former Governor Terry Branstad and five members of his administration by former Workers Compensation Commissioner Chris Godfrey. The defendants include current Governor Kim Reynolds.

The lawsuit was filed in January of 2012. It has twice been to the Iowa Supreme Court on special questions — last year, that court ruled that a person could seek damages from a government for violations of civil liberties — and the full trial now is scheduled for Jan. 14 in the courtroom of Polk County District Judge Brad McCall.

As commissioner, Godfrey held a post that has a fixed six-year term. He was twice overwhelmingly confirmed in bipartisan votes in the Iowa Senate, and his most recent term was to run until April 30, 2015. But after Branstad was elected in 2010, he demanded that Godfrey resign — first in a letter, then in a meeting. When Godfrey refused, the Governor cut his pay from $112,000 a year to $73,500, the lowest the state could legally pay him. The state never cited much of a reason for wanting him gone.

But there is this: Godfrey is a Democrat, and when Republican Branstad went after Godfrey he was the only openly gay department head in the administration.

Godfrey stayed on at the lower salary, and he sued. The suit is full of allegations, but it really boils down to discrimination and retaliation of one kind or another. The original suit made 14 claims; some were withdrawn and others dismissed. Five remain.

For some reason, Branstad didn’t want to be defended by the folks at the Attorney General’s office, and that office agreed “in view of the personal nature of the allegations made against the Governor and his strong preference to proceed with outside counsel.” The request was a bit unusual.

Branstad chose the LaMarca law firm, with the state agreeing to pay LaMarca $325 an hour with lesser amounts going to some colleagues. (The choice wasn’t political. Lamarca, a registered Democrat, makes few political contributions, and the ones he has made over the years have gone to fellow Democrats.) The bills quickly began to mount up, even though Solicitor General Jeff Thompson stepped back in to argue the Iowa Constitution issues raised at the Supreme Court.

At any rate, LaMarca the other day told the state he is retiring from the practice of law and wanted to withdraw as the state’s lawyer. The state has agreed to replace him with Frank Harty, a partner at the Nyemaster Goode firm who will be paid $320 an hour, “a significant discount from his standard hourly rate,” according to a letter to the state Executive Council from Thompson. Other lawyers in the Nyemaster firm will get from $170 to $270 an hour for working on the case. (Coincidentally, perhaps, the Nyemaster firm was the former home to Ryan Koopman, the lawyer who now is chief of staff to Gov. Reynolds and who filed an amicus brief in the Godfrey case on behalf of Iowa’s cities, counties and school boards, who were supporting the state’s position.)

Thompson and the Attorney General’s office also have withdrawn from the case now that the Constitutional issues have been resolved. That means the new team has a little over four months to get up to speed on the complicated case — or else request yet another delay in the trial.

Branstad has been deposed, and an expert witness for Godfrey has a report that apparently implies Branstad’s reasons for cutting Godfrey’s pay — reasons that are “inane and sometimes contradictory,” according to a Godfrey brief — were just a pretext to hide the fact that the actions were based on “the sexual orientation or political philosophy” of Godfrey.

The state has objected to the report, but the judge has ruled it admissible. Three times, too, Godfrey has gone to court to compel the defendants to produce documents; three times, the court has issued such an order; three times, the defendants have failed to fully comply.

Godfrey, now 45 years old — who left his job in August of 2014 to become Chief Judge and chair of the Employees’ Compensation Appeal Board of the U.S. Labor Department in Washington — is represented by Roxanne Conlin, the most noted of Iowa’s civil-rights lawyers, a onetime gubernatorial loser to Branstad, and a big biller. If Godfrey wins, the state will have to pay Conlin’s fees, which could well be twice what LaMarca has billed. By the time of the trial, the suit will be seven years old. That’s a lot of billable hours.

So the whole thing could end up costing the taxpayers $3 million, maybe more.

If Branstad had simply left Godfrey alone to serve out his term at his established salary, the cost to the state — the difference between $112,000 a year and $73,500 a year for 46 months — would have been about $150,000. …

Political rumors: Skip Moore, who lost his at-large City Council seat last year to Connie Boesen, is thinking of running against Linda Westergaard next year, some friends say. Westergaard holds the Second Ward seat, which covers the northeast side where Moore lives. Moore didn’t respond to a CITYVIEW email. Westergaard says she’s running again and doubts Moore is. He’s “a straight-shooter, [and] since he hasn’t talked to me about running…I’m inclined to believe the rumors aren’t true.”

And two young community leaders — both under 40 — are talking privately about running for mayor next year against long-time incumbent Frank Cownie. Neither has made up his mind, but each would be a formidable foe. Cownie, who is 70 and who was first elected in 2003, hasn’t had a serious challenger since beating Christine Hensley that year. He won with 80 percent of the vote in 2007, had no opponent in 2011, and won by 80 percent again in 2015. …

Yet another lawsuit has been filed against Marty Tirrell, the serial scammer and sometime sports radio shouter.
The plaintiff this time is Doug DeYarman, the managing partner of Shottenkirk Chevrolet in Waukee. The allegations follow a familiar pattern. In the lawsuit, filed in July, DeYarman says he occasionally purchased sports tickets from Tirrell, presumably without problems. Then in January of this year, the suit says, Tirrell “approached [DeYarman] regarding an opportunity to purchase a number of tickets to Super Bowl 52 on February 4, 2018, both for personal use and resale.”

DeYarman gave Tirrell $43,006.03, the suit says. But this time he got no tickets. “In the days and months following Super Bowl 52, [Tirrell] made a number of assurances” that the money would be returned. But it never was. So De Yarman sued for fraud.

As is often the case, Tirrell ignored the suit. On Aug. 16, Judge Michael Huppert gave DeYarman 30days to file motions that presumably would lead to a default judgment. But DeYarman’s chance of collecting is somewhere around zero. Tirrell has several millions of dollars of judgments against him, and his attempt to escape them by filing for bankruptcy fell through when the judge threw out the petition because it was full of holes. (When Tirrell did show up to defend himself in another suit this summer, the judge noted that “Tirrell was not a credible witness based on demeanor and inconsistencies within his testimony,” and she awarded the plaintiff $1,071,327.43.)

DeYarman did not respond to a request for comment.

Meantime, the FBI apparently is continuing to investigate Tirrell, who also faces a federal tax lien on his property and a warrant for his arrest in Massachusetts. His shows are no longer on radio or cable. …

Tom Rossley, the Drake trustee who was ousted in 2016 after challenging the university’s ruling expelling his son in a sexual-misconduct case, has lost a key point in his suit saying the university didn’t have the right to throw him off the board. He had alleged that he was covered by the anti-discriminatory language of Title IX because his removal was related to the sex case involving his son, who has a learning disability.

Federal District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger didn’t buy that argument.

Rossley “is not employed by Drake University and he has not sufficiently pleaded he was excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity,” Ebinger ruled. “He thus cannot bring a retaliation claim under Title IX.”

Two counts remain in the suit — breach of fiduciaryduties by the Drake board and breach of Drake’s policies and procedures by the board and the university. Rossley, a Drake graduate who lives in the Chicago area, had been a trustee for 23 years.

Meantime, the suit by Rossley’s son against Drake also continues to wind through Goodgame’s court. He sued in December of 2016 alleging the Title IX investigation by Drake that led to his dismissal deprived him of his rights, and he alleges discrimination based on disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The suits stem from an incident in the early morning hours of Oct. 9, 2015, when young Rossley — Thomas
Rossley III — and a female student acquaintance who is not named in the lawsuits engaged in oral sex in his
car outside a fraternity and then may or may not have had intercourse in the fraternity house. Both students had been drinking prodigiously, the son’s suit says.

Ultimately, the woman went to university officials and complained of assault. An investigation was conducted, and young Rossley, a junior, was expelled in February 2016. The woman apparently visited some other male students afterwards, and one unsettled issue in the suit is whether her sexual activity is admissible. …

A 5,800-square-foot home on five acres at 3550 Lincoln Place Drive sold the other day for $1,550,000, the highest price paid for a home in the Des Moines city limits since a $1.6 million sale in 2014. The home was purchased by Sara Ghrist from Richard and Katherine Cohan, who had bought the house from Ghrist in 2014 for $1,400,000, according to records in the Polk County Assessor’s office. The home, built in 1936, was the longtime home of the Ghrist family.

Another million-dollar-plus sale was made in July. Anthony and Andrea Klemm paid $1,225,000 for a stately 4,500-square-foot home on nearly an acre at 210 Foster Drive. The 10-room, two-story brick home, which backs on to Greenwood Park, was built in 1927 and had been owned by Warren H. May, according to county records. …

Leonard Boswell, who died Aug. 17 at age 84, worked hard at being a soldier and at being a politician. He was good at both…. B.J. Furgerson, who died Aug. 14 at age 91 in Cedar Rapids, was on the board of Iowa Public Television for 35 years, where she was a strong voice and a beloved colleague. She was also a fierce advocate for civil rights — and a nice person. 

Teree Caldwell-Johnson is thinking of running for mayor next year. And Sheriff Bill McCarthy is thinking of retiring this year.

Caldwell-Johnson, 62, is well-known in Des Moines. She was Polk County Manager from 1996 to 2003, is the very visible chief executive of the Oakridge Neighborhood Services, has been on the school board since 2006 (and is the current chair) and sits on a bunch of community boards. She would be a strong opponent for incumbent Frank Cownie or any of the others whose names keep popping up. One of those names is that of her school-board colleague Rob Barron.

For several weeks, she has been sounding out friends and some public officials about her prospects, and she says she is getting “positive feedback.”

Cownie, 70, has been mayor since 2004, when he beat Christine Hensley. Since then, he has been easily re-elected to three four-year terms. He didn’t reply to a CITYVIEW question as to whether he plans to run for re-election.

If Caldwell-Johnson were elected, she would be the first female to hold the job, though not the first African-American. Preston Daniels, who served from 1998 to 2004, has that distinction. Since Des Moines was founded in 1857, there have been 58 mayors. Cownie has served longer than any of his predecessors.

McCarthy has been Polk County Sheriff since 2009, when he was elected after retiring in 2007 as chief of the Des Moines police department, where he had risen through the ranks in a 37-year career. He was re-elected to four-year terms as sheriff in 2012 and 2016, and he still has two years on his latest term.

“My wife has had a long-time dream to avoid the Iowa winters,” McCarthy told CITYVIEW. “To that end, we recently purchased a house in Sarasota Manatee County area. At about the same time, we sold our Easter Lake home, and I moved into an apartment on the South side. My thinking at the time was, given the fact that we have been married 49 years, I could go to see her every so often and she could fly here for me and the grandkids.

“But I am finding that I do not like being separated from my wife and wish to be with her full time. I still love both this job and the community and feel that I have something to offer by way of the experience I have accumulated over the years policing in this community. So, while I have not made up my mind, it is something I am considering, which may or may not happen.”

If he does leave, the Board of Supervisors will name a successor to serve out the term. The odds-on favorite, say those who watch such things, is Kevin Schneider, who currently runs the court services division and who has held several posts since joining the department in 1981. …

As expected, District Judge Brad McCall has postponed the trial in the Christopher Godfrey lawsuit until June 3. It had been scheduled for January, but the retirement of lawyer George LaMarca messed things up, and the new lawyers, who are from a different firm, have to have time to get up to speed. LaMarca was defending the state and the individual defendants — including former Gov. Terry Branstad and current Governor Kim Reynolds — and had collected $987,849.80 in fees from the state for his work in the discrimination, defamation and retaliation lawsuit, which was filed in January of 2012.

If Godfrey wins, the state also will have to pay the fees for his lawyer, Roxanne Conlin. After the trial — and probably an appeal — the combined fees could easily reach $3 million. Essentially, the suit is about a cut in pay that would have totaled about $150,000 over the remaining 46 months in Godfrey’s term as the state’s Workers Compensation Commissioner. Branstad has never been clear about why he cut Godfrey’s pay, though Godfrey was a Democrat and at the time the only openly gay department head in the Branstad administration. …

Blogger Laurie Belin again has proved she is one of the best investigative reporters in the state. Relentlessly going through public documents, she discovered that Gov. Kim Reynolds’ appointment of Jason Besler to a district judgeship in Cedar Rapids violated the Iowa Constitution. She simply didn’t make the appointment in time. And she or her staff misled Chief Justice Mark Cady and others about it.

Here’s the issue: After a judicial nominating commission sends the Governor the names of candidates — usually two or three — for a judicial opening, the Governor has 30 days to make the appointment. It must be made in writing and filed with the office of the Secretary of State, the Iowa Code says. In the case of Besler, the Governor missed the June 21 deadline by several days.

The Supreme Court raised an eyebrow, but Reynolds’ staff told the Court and the press that the appointment was made on time. It wasn’t, Belin proved. The letter to Besler telling him of his appointment was undated — that’s as suspicious as it is unusual — and the letter that Reynolds and Secretary of State Paul Pate signed confirming the appointment was backdated, Belin discovered. (Earlier, CITYVIEW filed a Freedom of Information request with Pate’s office seeking a copy of the letter with a “date received” stamp. The Secretary has yet to respond.)

All of this could be written off as carelessness or sneakiness or dumbness, except for one thing: If Besler’s appointment was unconstitutional, does he have the power to sit as a judge? Let’s say, for example, a man in Cedar Rapids murders a woman and faces a non-jury trial in Besler’s courtroom. Let’s say Besler sentences him to life in prison without parole. Let’s say the man appeals, saying Besler wasn’t a constitutionally appointed judge.

What does the court do? …

A family whose two pricey homes bordering the Wakonda Club were heavily damaged in that big rainfall on June 25 is suing the engineering firm and the builder, alleging the engineering firm “failed to provide accurate information and recommendations regarding storm water run-off and water drainage” and the builder improperly developed and built the homes.

The defendants are McClure Engineering Co. and Wakonda Living LLC, a subsidiary of Hubbell Homes.

The plaintiffs are Thomas, Amy and Katherine Donnelly. Thomas Donnelly, a retired vice president of Principal Financial Group, and Amy Donnelly own the homes, which are next door to one another. They live in one, Thomas Donnelly’s mother, Katherine, in the other. They say the damage was “catastrophic,” with “the lower living areas filled with water not only causing structural issues but causing the destruction of many irreplaceable personal effects and personal property.” The suit alleges negligence and breach of warranties, among other things.

The homes, built in 2015, are among those lining the north side of the golf course, along Park Avenue. The home at 1700 Park Ave. was purchased by the Donnellys a year ago for $620,970. The home next door, at 1616 Park Ave., was purchased at about the same time for $557,400.

The Donnellys are represented by lawyer Jim Carney, who owns a $1.2 million home in the same row. He says his home was not damaged. …

As expected, District Judge Michael Huppert has issued a default order in the latest ticket-scam case of Marty Tirrell. The judge ordered Tirrell to pay $43,006.63, plus interest and costs, to Doug DeYarman, the managing partner of Shottenkirk Chevrolet in Waukee. DeYarman said he advanced that sum to Tirrell for tickets to this year’s Super Bowl, but that Tirrell kept the money and never provided the tickets. Tirrell never showed up in court. He now has about $3 million in judgments against him. DeYarman’s chance of collecting is roughly the same as the chances of the Cleveland Browns going to next year’s Super Bowl. …

What appears to be the last claim against the estate of Kirk Blunck apparently has been settled out of court. Earlier this summer, Jeffrey and Marylou Tyler dismissed their claim. The Tylers had hired Blunck to be architect and general contractor for work on their home at 2814 Forest Drive, but they alleged that he botched the job and sued his estate for a minimum of $250,000. A trial had been set for August. Blunck, a well-known architect, died under puzzling circumstances on a Sunday afternoon in January 2016. He fell or was shoved to his death in a stairwell of the East Village’s Teachout Building, which he owned, leaving a trail of claims and lawsuits and messy finances. No charges were brought, but the family believes he was murdered and filed a wrongful death action against Zachary Allen Gaskill, a convicted burglar who was on probation at the time. Gaskill never showed up in court, which entered a default judgment for $6,250,000 against him. Gaskill was released from probation early this year, according to records of the Iowa Bureau of Corrections.

Chances for recovery against him are roughly the same as chances for collecting judgments from Tirrell. 

How’s the new Hilton convention hotel doing in downtown Des Moines?

Who knows?

Somebody does — probably a lot of somebodies — but not you, even though as a taxpayer in Des Moines and in Polk County you, in effect, own the place.

Hearing that the 330-room hotel might not be living up to expectations — hearing that from people who may or may not know what they’re talking about — CITYVIEW filed a Freedom of Information request with the county. It asked for monthly financials since it opened in March and for average room rates and occupancy rates.

Here’s the reply, from Assistant County Attorney Ralph Marasco:

“…The IEC Hotel Corporation (“IEC”) owns the Hotel. IEC is an Iowa nonprofit corporation exempted from federal income taxation pursuant to Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3), however we agree that IEC is an instrumentality of Polk County and, as such, generally subject to open records requests pursuant to Iowa Code Chapter 22.

“IEC has contracted with Hilton Worldwide, Inc. to have Hilton Management LLC operate and manage the Hotel. Accordingly, to the extent the ‘monthly financials’ you request constitute records; they are records of Hilton, rather than IEC or Polk County. As the Hotel actively competes with other private enterprise hotels in the metro area, such records would constitute trade secrets and be of a proprietary or confidential nature. If released, these records would give a competitive advantage to other hotels against which IEC Hotel Corporation is competing.

“For these reasons, to the extent Polk County is in possession of records responsive to your request, it respectfully declines to produce them under the exceptions identified in section 22.7(3) and 22.7(6) of the Code of Iowa.”

Exception 22.7(3) is “trade secrets which are recognized and protected as such by law.”

Exception 22.7 (6) is “reports to governmental agencies which, if released, would give advantage to competitors and serve no public purpose.” (emphasis added.)

In other words, it’s none of your business.

But it is your money. The county and the city — that’s you — have spent or guaranteed around $70 million of the $105 million cost of the hotel. Here’s how, according to figures supplied by the county:

• The county bought the old Allied building and demolished it, at a cost of about $6 million. The county still owns the land under the hotel.

• The county lent the hotel project $27,750,000 at 4 percent. That loan matures in 30 years.

• The county has guaranteed $7,351,000 in bonds backed by a special 3 percent room tax. Those bonds pay 4.55 percent interest and mature in 2043.

• The county has guaranteed $7,805,000 in bonds backed by the Iowa Reinvestment Tax, which is a sales tax collected within the IRA district downtown. Those bonds pay 3.83 percent interest and mature in 2038.

• The city has guaranteed $8.5 million in bonds backed by that IRA tax, bonds that pay 3.83 percent interest and mature in 2038. The city takes precedence over the county in case those bonds default. Private investors have guaranteed another $4 million of those bonds, and they also take precedence over the county.

• And the city contributed $14.2 million in urban renewal bonds, which are backed by the city’s assets.

Another $30 million or so of “certificates of participation” were sold to private investors. These are backed by a senior lien on the net operating income of the hotel. Those are not guaranteed by the county or the city, but in case of trouble those investors would get paid back before the county gets its money that is backed by a similar lien.

Presumably, all these notes and bonds and certificates will be paid off from the net income of the hotel, the IRA revenue or, in one case, the special 3 percent room tax. But before you get to net income — basically the revenue minus the expenses (including property taxes of about $1 million) — you have to take out another cost: According to a construction-loan commitment letter issued by Bankers Trust in 2015, Hilton gets to take up to 3 percent of the hotel’s gross revenue as its management fee. That comes right off the top, before money is allocated to pay off the bonds guaranteed by the county and the city. (The interest alone on all bonds is around $2.5 million a year, and some of that isn’t paid until the $1.5 million in interest is paid private investors.)

One person in the hotel business told CITYVIEW that downtown hotels were operating at around a 65 percent occupancy rate in September with an average room rate of $135 to $140 a night. But whether the Hilton is at, above or below that level is a “trade secret.”

And telling you whether the hotel is doing well enough to support the bonds backed by the city and county and thus keep the county and the city off the hook serves no public purpose.

Maybe, of course, the hotel is doing great, and there’s nothing to worry about.

But maybe not.

An aside: CITYVIEW also asked the county for a list of county employees and employees elsewhere — specifically including people in the city of Des Moines and at the Convention and Visitors Bureau — who see the figures. No such lists exist, the county said. …

Reporter Clark Kauffman has left The Des Moines Register to become a special investigator for the office of the state ombudsman.

Kauffman is one of the three or four best investigative reporters in the state — others are Ryan Foley of the Associated Press in Iowa City, Tom Cullen of the Storm Lake Times and Laura Belin of the “Bleeding Heartland” blog — and has been a mainstay for solid journalism at the paper.

But he feels his time is up. “A year or so ago, I reached the conclusion that I was no longer a good fit” with the Register, he says. “The paper had moved in a direction that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, so it just made sense — for me and, much more importantly, for the newspaper — that I leave.” He added that he’s “confident they’ll be able to quickly fill my position with someone who has all the qualities they prize” — a phrase that can be interpreted in many ways.

Kauffman, 58, joined the paper in 2000. He spent a stint as an editorial writer — where he excelled — but spent most of his years there as a reporter. In 2005, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting “for his exposure of glaring injustice in the handling of traffic tickets by public officials.”

At the Ombudsman’s office, he will join former colleagues Bert Dalmer and Jason Pulliam.

Meantime, the newspaper has dropped the daily Business Page from the Register. Executive Editor Carol Hunter says the move was made “to meet the ongoing challenge of matching costs with the revenue coming in.”

In other cost-cutting moves, CITYVIEW is told the newspaper is giving up its half of the fourth floor at Capital Square, consolidating its staff and the Gannett regional staff in space on the fifth floor, where it has the entire floor, and this spring it will give up its community-room on the first floor of Capital Square. None of this has been announced. …

Polk County District Judge Robert Hutchison has issued a temporary restraining order against one-time sports-talker and serial scammer Marty Tirrell, saying he cannot “threaten, assault, stalk, molest, attack, harass or otherwise abuse” Mary Jo Corley, his onetime girlfriend. The order, issued Oct. 18, came a day after Corley petitioned the court for “relief from domestic abuse.” Corley, whose filing says she has been “in an intimate relationship” with Tirrell, says he has physically abused and threatened her.

According to the petition, Tirrell has three times “physically abused me with his fist, hitting me in the chest, breast and torso.” What’s more, on Sept. 26 of this year Tirrell “threatened to go to my employer, the Iowa Clinic, and claim I gave unauthorized medication samples to him.” Tirrell did this, the petition says, “in an attempt to get me fired.”

Corley, 57, also asked the court for financial support, saying she has “credit-card debt that places a burden on my financial situation.” The implication is that the debt was run up by Tirrell, who has been sued countless times for not paying debts and for scamming friends and acquaintances and businesses. Judgments against him total several millions of dollars.

Tirrell, 58, long had sports-talk radio shows in the Des Moines market, jumping from station to station for one reason or another. Eventually, he ended up with a cable-TV show, but that was canceled a few months ago. Corley’s petition says it’s “unknown” where he might work now.

A hearing date on her petition has not been set. …

An Urbandale home sold for $3.8 million in late August, by far the highest-priced sale for a home ever in that suburb. The sale finalized a contract sale made three years ago between the Clark Colby Trust and Marilyn Colby Trust and something called MJG Holdings, LLC. The 4,000-square-foot home was built in 1970. The address, at 12804 Cardinal Lane in the Deer Creek area, includes three parcels of land totaling about 20 acres and is assessed at about $1 million. The tax bill for MJG Holdings is mailed to the Urbandale home of Matthew and Jennifer Willis. 

Red Hollis

Red Hollis died the other day.

Unless you were a semi-regular at the Iowa Cubs games or at a favored Beaverdale bar or two, you probably never ran into him.

But if you had, you never would have forgotten him.

He always had a story and a smile, and he was always glad to see you, genuinely glad. He roamed the skyboxes at Principal Park, checking out who was there — he’d then make sure the owners would stop by to say hello — and making sure there was always a baseball or a Cubs hat for any special youngster in the crowd. He was, for lack of a better term, an ambassador of good will.

He was born in North Carolina in 1928, and he never lost his southern accent. By age 17 — in 1945 — he was a professional baseball player, a scrappy, sure-handed, red-headed second-baseman who would bounce around baseball for the next 10 years. He played for Atlanta and Los Angeles — and if you inferred that that meant he was a Major Leaguer, he wouldn’t correct you. But that was in the 1940s and early 1950s, when Atlanta and Los Angeles were minor-league cities.

He was good. In 1951, he played in 149 games for the triple-A Los Angeles team, batting .282 and driving in 54 runs. He turned 101 double plays that year. He played with and against some of the great players of the era, and, with little prodding, he’d have a story on each. They were always good stories, though not always stories that you’d want to check out in the record books.

For like all good story-tellers, he’d embellish a bit here and a tad there to make the story a little better. But little boys and grown men would be wide-eyed, and that’s what counts. (He embellished a bit about his height as well. That 1951 Los Angeles roster listed him at 5-feet 10-inches, a stretch that was beyond the margin of error.)
After his baseball career was over, he became a salesman and later a sales executive in the agricultural-chemicals industry. That job eventually brought him and his family to Des Moines, where he became a fan and customer — he had his company buy one of the first skyboxes at the new park in 1993 — and, quickly, a fixture at the park. Somewhere along the line, he was put on the payroll.

He clearly was the most popular person on the staff — and the only staffer ever honored by having his own bobblehead giveaway day. “Where’s Red?” or “Red says…” or “Tell Red…” is how many conversations started at the park. When he was so weakened by cancer in mid-season this year that he no longer could make it to the ballpark, the place seemed a little less joyous.

Jackson Glenn Hollis was 90 when he died on Oct. 9. 

— Michael Gartner

Twelve drummers drumming…

…for Gabriel Espinosa and the other 29 new citizens from 16 countries sworn in at a baseball game on July 3…and for Judge Robert Pratt, who swore them in… and the 40,000 or so (who knows?) undocumented immigrants who are changing the state for the better…and the 2,800 or so Dreamers living in Iowa…for Omar Padilla and Rob Barron at the Latino Political Network…and Erica Johnson and Jody Mashek and the people at the immigrant-rights program of the American Friends Service Committee….

Eleven pipers piping…

…for Schoolboy Johnson (bats left, throws right), the Negro League pitcher and, later, Des Moines Bruins outfielder who just turned 90…and former Chicago Cub (and Little League coach) Byron Browne…and Drake basketball coach Darian DeVries…for the Grand View wrestling team, which this year won its seventh straight NAIA national team title…and its 10 (count ‘em: 10) all-Americans…and coach Nick Mitchell…and Iowa amateur golf champion Mike McCoy…for Drake’s Becca Hittner…University of Iowa wrestler Spencer Lee…baseball expert John Liepa…for Laura Leonard… and Drake’s new radio guy, Michael Admire…and sports talker Ken Miller….

Ten lords a-leaping…

…for Max Wellman at Noce Jazz Cabaret…and his dad, Mike…and Marty Scarpino at the Embers on Ingersoll, and we’re glad he’s back…and brother Ken Scarpino, too…for Chris Diebel and the folks at Bubba’s…and the breakfast regulars at the Cub Club…and the very nice people at Teriyaki House on East 14th…for Alexander and Whitney Hall and everyone at St. Kilda’s…and C.J. and Kari Bienert at The Cheese Shop…for Bruce Gerleman, who shepherds Splash and Jethro’s…and, of course, for the Food Dude….

Nine ladies dancing…

…for Kim Reynolds, the first woman to be elected governor of this state…and the victorious women politicians of Polk County: Jennifer Konfrst and Heather Matson and Karin Derry and Claire Celsi and Kristin Sunde — who are joining the Polk County delegation in the Legislature…and repeat winners Marti Anderson and Ruth Ann Gaines and Jo Oldson, too…and especially Janet Peterson, who Counts the Kicks…and Angela Connelly, re-elected to the Board of Supervisors…and Amber Gustafson, who came close in Ankeny…and for Cindy Axne, our new Congress member…and her new colleague Abby Finkenauer….

Eight maids a-milking…

…for Harry Hillaker, who has retired after 37 years as state climatologist, and for Justin Glisan, his successor…for everyone at linly.com, especially Troy McCullough who is back in America…for Kathie Anderson at Tandem Brick Gallery…for Zachary and Mackenzie and Christopher and Maggie, the world’s best grandchildren…for Gary Galinsky…for Mark Eggers…for new neighbors Kirk and Janel Tyler…and baseball fans Mike and Mary Pitcher…and Christy Anderson, who is nice to people and cats….

Seven swans a-swimming…

…for Lynn Hicks and Anna Backstrom and Kyle Munson and Mackenzie Elmer and Aaron Young and Grant Rodgers and Mark Marturello and Lauren Ehler and Jason Noble and Clark Kauffman and all the others who left the Register’s newsroom during the year…and former publisher David Chivers, too…for the retiring Dave Busiek of KCCI, newly named to the Iowa Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame…and his successor, Allison Smith…for Andy Garman, who has moved on to new things, and Scott Reister, the new boss at Channel 8 sports…for Rick Brown and Indianola’s Ken Fuson and John Carlson — three great reporters…for Bodie Birch (and mom and dad Allyson and Tommy)…for Kevin Cooney (and bring back Wonks!)…and Mollie, too…and Alex…for Kay Henderson…for indefatigable bloggers Laura Belin and Pat Rynard…and freedom fighters Mike Giudicessi and Randy Evans….

Six geese a-laying…

…for Supreme Court Justice Daryl Hecht, Chief Appellate Judge David Danilson and Chief District Judge Art Gamble — all of whom are retiring…and new Supreme Court Justice Susan Christensen…for Lucy, the court’s top dog…for Chris Godfrey and his lawyer, Roxanne Conlin…for Danny Homan and his lawyer, Mark Hedberg…for everyone at the Roosevelt Barber Shop…and all those nice people at the downtown Hy-Vee…for retiring sheriff Bill McCarthy — and thanks for everything — and probable incoming sheriff Kevin Schneider….

Five golden rings…

…for Gary Palmer and Kurt Rasmussen, who keep pouring Prairie Meadows money back into the community…and Bob and Laurel Kirke…for John Mauro, who gave his all…for Adam Emmenecker — the man, not the sandwich…and Earl Short, who loves streetcars…for Art and Gloria Filean…for Lynn Yontz at the community foundation…for the ageless Chuck Betts and his pal George Turner…for Dr. Bob Shreck, who reads CITYVIEW…and Celeste Tilton, who designs it….

Four collie birds…

…for Fred and Charlotte Hubbell, who love this state and proved it…for State Treasurer Mike Fitzgerald, who always wins, which is a good thing…for David Johnson, who will be missed in the Iowa Senate…for Maya Miller, who’s off to college…and her uncle Marty…for Nancy Winget, who keeps track of things…and so does Katie Miller…for Steve Beckley…and everyone who works for him…for Chris Anderson at the Playhouse…for Julie Stewart and her mom….

Three French hens…

…for Neal Smith, who also loves Iowa and who showered it with largesse during 36 years in Congress and who now — going on 99 — rarely misses a meeting or a lecture or anything else of interest. Enjoy Gray’s Lake and Brown’s Woods? They’re public parks because of him. And so are Rathbun Lake and Saylorville Lake and the Des Moines River Greenbelt. And, of course, the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge. He is an expert on the past and, still, a thinker about the future. Farmer, soldier, lawyer, legislator — there is no one like him….

Two turtle doves…

…for Kristin Steele at the county…and Joseph Barry at the state…for Beth Giudicessi, who may or may not be the employee of the year (there’s a recount)…for new supervisor Matt McCoy — and his colleagues Steve Van Oort and Bob Brownell and Angela Connolly (who gets two mentions today) and Tom Hockensmith, who worry about the needy and do something about it…for everyone in the Polk County Election Office, especially John Chiodo and Rosemary Moody….

And a partridge in a pear tree…

…in memory of the wonderful Dan Miller and the witty Don Forsling…and Gil Cranberg, who made us think…and Don Kaul, who made us laugh…for Bob Ray, who changed the state…and Johnny Danos, who knew the numbers…for Bill Sailor and Sean Sellers and Ralph Schlenker… for Donna Red Wing, fighter and advocate and protector…for Tom Slater and his wife Valentina Slater Fominykh… for Florence Buhr and Mary Grefe, who got involved…and Michael Sadler…for Meredith’s Bob Burnett and David Jordan…for Larry Cotlar, who always had a good word…and Gene Ratffensperger, a terrific newspaperman with an equally terrific laugh…and the inventive (and nice) Eugene Sukup…oh-so-sadly for Iowa State golfer Celia Barquin Arozamena and Iowa’s Mollie Tibbetts…and reporter Larry Fruhling…and B.J. Furgerson…for Giles Fowler, who taught newspapermen…and Leonard Boswell, farmer and soldier and politician…for pollster and artist Glenn Roberts, who was ahead of his time…for Red Hollis…and, always, for the first Christopher. 

Sabbaticals: Space bicycles, a suicide in 1634 and Mexican accents. LaMarca bills top $1 million.

Your tax and tuition dollars at work:

John Cunnally, an art professor at Iowa State, will spend next academic year completing a third book about antiquarianism during the Renaissance. “Tentatively titled Amici Huberti, the book will shed light on the people who collected, interpreted, and exchanged ancient Greek and Roman coins during the 16th century, and provide value to undergraduate and graduate students studying art history and theory.” Cunnally makes $77,000 a year, according to state records.

Jeremy Withers, an assistant professor of English at ISU, will spend the fall semester “to complete Futuristic Cars and Space Bicycles, the first book to examine the history of representations of road transport machines in American science fiction from the late 19th to early 21st centuries.” Withers earns $67,000.

Reinier Hesselink, a history professor at the University of Northern Iowa, will spend the academic year working on his book about the suicide of Takenaka Uneme, a suicide that took place in 1634. The book will “describe the warrior class of Japan as it was reorganizing itself during the reigns of the first three Tokugawa shoguns after the end of a civil war that had lasted for more than a century (1467-1600).” Hesselink earned about $85,000 in fiscal 2018.

These sabbaticals — or “professional development assignments” — are designed to promote “effective use of resources meeting institutional missions.” The assignments also help the teachers compete “for external grants that benefit the professors, programs, the universities and the state by generating revenue for core university activities.” In the coming fiscal year, 135 faculty members will take sabbaticals.

Hesselink says his sabbatical matters because “for a state, like Iowa, that depends for much of its economy on Japan (most of its soybean crop and a large part of its corn harvest are exported to East Asia), it is of great importance to foster an awareness of Japanese culture and history.”

Alison Altstatt, an associate professor of music at UNI, will spend next academic year researching a project on “religious women’s music and ritual in the thirteenth-century Wilton Processional,” a medieval manuscript from a Benedictine convent. The project, Altstatt says, “benefits the people of Iowa by contributing to a more educated populace in the fields of History, Religion, and the Arts.” Altstatt is paid around $60,000.

Damani Phillips, an associate professor at the University of Iowa, will spend the spring semester traveling to four undisclosed cities outside the U.S. to study “iconic folk/dance/music styles.” He then will compose a jazz album, “a slate of compositions that embody an experiential comprehension of the music’s source culture.” Phillips earns $81,000.

David Stern, a philosophy professor at Iowa, will spend a semester “mapping the origins and structure of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922): a bilingual digital humanities edition of the book and its relationship to its sources.” Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is “one of a handful of key works of early analytic philosophy,” Stern notes. Stern earns $110,000.

Melissa Tully, who teaches journalism at Iowa, will spend a semester studying “the spread of misinformation on social media in Kenya and how to develop media literacy interventions to combat it.” Tully earns $79,500.

Christine Shea, an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Iowa, will spend the spring semester working on a paper to be titled “Social Sensitivity to Different Accents in Mexican Children.” Shea is paid $72,000.

Robyn Schiff, a professor of English at Iowa, will spend half time of the academic year composing “Information Desk,” which will be “a book-length poem in the epic tradition that draws on her personal experience formerly working at the information desk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to contemplate art, commerce, and epistemology.” She adds: “Both a work of art history and a coming-of-age story, the poem is as concerned with the forces of power and history that drive the museum’s encyclopedic collecting as it is with the social and psychosexual workplace dynamics of the museum itself at the turn of the 21st century.” Schiff earns $94,000.

And Raymond Mentzer, a professor of religious studies at Iowa, will spend his spring semester working on an article to be called “Training and disciplining Protestant pastors in early modern France.” He views his sabbatical as “an unparalleled opportunity to scrutinize misbehavior among theology students and the manner in which they were disciplined.” Mentzer earns $145,500.

Perhaps the most useful sabbatical will be that of Ann Gansemer-Topf of the school of education at Iowa State. She will spend the spring semester addressing “current challenges facing colleges and universities by investigating effective strategies for translating higher education research into policy in areas such as student learning, degree attainment, diversity and inclusion, and accountability.” Gansemer-Topf earns about $80,000 a year. …

The debt-ridden scammer and former sports talker Marty Tirrell didn’t show up for the hearing in which Mari Jo Corley, his former girlfriend, sought a protective order against him. The court then ruled that Tirrell “represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of Corley, and it issued a restraining order against him until Oct. 30, 2019.

Corley, 57, sought the order after reporting that the 58-year-old Tirrell “physically abused me with his fist, hitting me in the chest, breast and torso” on three occasions. The sheriff’s office was unable to serve the final order on Tirrell.

“There is no address for this defendant,” the sheriff’s office reported. “Spoke by phone and text 3 times…He said he would call and meet me twice and does not follow thru…avoiding service.”

Tirrell, who has millions of dollars in judgments against him for scamming friends, former advertisers, former employers and ticket brokers, rarely shows up to dispute the charges. …

George LaMarca may be through representing Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds and others in the seven-year-old Chris Godfrey case, but he’s still sending bills. The Executive Council the other day approved bills totaling $18,067.32, bringing the total to date to $1,005,917.12.

A few months ago, LaMarca withdrew from the case, saying he was retiring, and the state then hired Frank Harty of the Nyemaster firm. The case was scheduled to go on trial in Polk County District Court in January, but the change in lawyers has caused yet another delay. Trial now is scheduled for June 3 of next year. So far, at least 50 depositions have been taken.

Godfrey has sued Branstad and Reynolds and three others for discrimination and defamation and retaliation after then-Governor Branstad tried to fire him as head of the Workers Compensation Board — that didn’t work, because Godfrey had a fixed term — and then cut his pay. Godfrey was a holdover from Democratic administrations and at the time was the only openly gay department head in the Branstad administration. The pay cut totaled about $150,000 over the 46 months remaining in the term.

If Godfrey wins, his lawyer — Roxanne Conlin — can submit her fees to the court, too. It’s a pretty good bet that they’ll end up at $2 million or more.