Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will require that people wear masks if they join indoor gatherings of 25 or more people as the state sees a continued surge of coronavirus infections that is threatening to overwhelm hospitals. Reynolds said Tuesday she signed a proclamation taking effect Wednesday that would require masks for those indoor gatherings as well as for outdoor gatherings of 100 or more people. The governor did not require new mask requirements for bars and restaurants. The new rules don’t apply to school districts…but the community spread has led to an increase in districts seeking to temporarily return to on-line only learning, according to Dr. Ann Lebo, director of the state education department.
Today is Veterans Day, which U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of New Hartford noted in remarks on the Senate floor yesterday, urging colleagues to join his office in recording oral history interviews with veterans for the Library of Congress project on the topic.
A Republican candidate seeking to flip a Democrat-held congressional seat in Iowa has pulled ahead by 50 votes after a county discovered it had failed to report one town’s votes. The dramatic turn was the latest in the seesawing race between Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Democrat Rita Hart. And it may not be the last. The 24 counties in the southeastern Iowa district were certifying their votes Tuesday after completing their official canvasses. It’s possible additional provisional ballots or absentee ballots that arrived by Monday at noon could be added to some county totals. The race is considered among the closest in the nation and could remain unsettled for weeks.
We still don’t know which party will have the majority in the U.S. Senate…but each party held leadership elections yesterday. U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, fresh from a re-election victory last week, was re-elected as a vice chair of the GOP Senate conference.
According to an update from the Iowa Supreme Court, all jury trials that do not have a jury sworn in by next Monday and are already scheduled, will be suspended until after February 1, 2021. Updates on precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus are posted regularly on the state judicial branch website. Trials currently scheduled to begin before February 1, 2021 will be rescheduled by priority under a supervisory order.
The Waterloo City Council continues to discuss holding fewer full council meetings each month, but as Mayor Quentin Hart told me, that doesn’t mean less public contact—quite the opposite. The mayor is isolating at home after testing positive for COVID-19; you can hear our full interview during the 10 o’clock hour of KXEL Live & Local today.
Iowa has a new public health order effective this morning, adding mask regulations for public gatherings. As the number of cases spike across the country, at a news conference yesterday, Gov. Kim Reynolds discussed the state’s new effort at public outreach through media–print, radio and television–in an education effort.
Three Iowa prisons are reporting coronavirus outbreaks with hundreds of inmates and more than 100 prison workers testing positive in recent days. An Iowa Department of Corrections report says the prison at Clarinda has 377 inmates and 16 staff members testing positive, and at the prison in Rockwell City there are 254 positive inmates and four staff members. The department released data Friday showing an outbreak at the Anamosa prison, where 485 are now testing positive out of 982 inmates housed at the prison. Another 50 staff members are testing positive. Other prisons have smaller numbers of positive cases. In total 1,145 inmates and 103 staff members are positive in the state’s prisons.
A Charles City man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for driving drunk and causing a collision that killed a 9-year-old Sioux City boy. 30-year-old Jesse Blade was sentenced Monday after entering a plea of guilty in September to vehicular homicide while intoxicated, second-offense operating while intoxicated and three counts of serious injury by vehicle. Prosecutors say Blade was drunk and had cocaine in his system on Oct. 26, 2019, when he ran a stop sign at a rural intersection near Rudd, hitting a minivan and killing 9-year-old Royce Fisher. Three other people in the minivan also were injured.
A new state auditor’s report has confirmed problems with the integrity of the evidence room of the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office in northwestern Iowa. State Auditor Rob Sand said in a special investigation report released Tuesday that record logs of evidence did not match the actual evidence in inventory in at least six cases. That included 49 pills of both over-the-counter medicines and unknown substances missing from the evidence room. Investigators also found that some evidence bags had been tampered with and 18 instances in which the sheriff’s department failed to keep sufficient records to determine whether something was missing from the evident room.
