MLManley

(www.DesMoinesRegister.com) More than 1,000 state workers are expected to retire early under a package of incentives signed Wednesday by Gov. Chet Culver.

The deal is expected to save the state about $60 million and is a key part of Culver’s plan to cut $340 million from the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

State workers have already had to accept unpaid furloughs, and some have lost their jobs. Danny Homan, president of the local unit of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the retirement incentives were among the only good options for workers.

“If we don’t have these people go out the door, we’re going to have massive layoffs,” said Homan, whose union is the largest in state government.

Under the measure, workers can get cash payments of $1,000 for every year of service to the state, up to $25,000.

The state also will continue to pick up its share of health insurance costs for up to five years.

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(www.DesMoinesRegister.com)

Gov. Chet Culver’s proposed budget is at least $25 million above the state’s legal spending limits, largely because of inaccurate calculations of possible savings, State Auditor David Vaudt said Wednesday.

Last month, Culver released his proposed budget to the Legislature for the fiscal year that begins July 1. By law, his proposal must not exceed 99 percent of projected revenues.

Vaudt, a Republican whose analysis was based upon Culver’s numbers as well as information from the Legislative Services Agency, said he would forward his report to the Iowa attorney general’s office to examine whether legal action against the governor is warranted.

“The taxpayers of Iowa deserve better,” Vaudt said.

A spokesman for the Democratic governor said the auditor “is simply wrong.”

The problems largely center on a consultant’s estimates of potential savings from nearly 100 recommendations. In some cases, the estimates of savings have been lowered, yet Culver used the larger amounts for his budget proposal.
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A bill introduced in the Iowa House would expand what’s required to be taught in schools to include “age-appropriate”, comprehensive sex education beginning in kindergarten. The legislation is being pushed by Mary Mascher, a Democrat from Iowa City, who is a longtime educator.

She says kids need more information than they get in schools where abstinence only is taught. “We need to give kids good information. We need to give kids the ability, the skill set to be able to make a good choice and good choices in their lives,” Mascher says. Mascher says parents would have the option to pull their children from the sexuality classes.

But the proposal still raises concerns among some private school administrators. The executive director of the Iowa Catholic Conference, Tom Chapman, says the idea violates the moral beliefs of many parents. “We think that the sexuality education is a job for parents, and we’d certainly would like to keep it that way. And this bill would require all Catholic schools to teach comprehensive sex education as defined by the state board of education, so we would have some concern about what they might approve as the curriculum,” Chapman said.

The Association of Christian Schools is also opposed to the bill, while Planned Parenthood is lobbying in favor of it. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland spokesman, Kyle Carlson, says the studies he’s read prove that the abstinence only lessons taught in some schools don’t work to keep young people from sexual activity.

“We know it’s more effective to provide more information in terms of healthy relationships, birth control options, getting tested for S-T-Is and treatment for that,” Carlson says.

But Chapman says parochial school parents don’t want their children presented with more information about sex. “A lot of our parents really want abstinence only education and that’s why they choose a Catholic school and so we’d like to keep that,” Chapman says. The bill will now be considered by the full education committee of the Iowa House.

The state the Division of Criminal Investigation has released a few more details on the fatal shooting in Chariton Wednesday. The D.C.I. issued a news release that says the 9-1-1 call came in about the shooting just about 5:30 Wednesday.

Officers arriving on the scene found 37-year-old Tod Peek dead. They also found five-year-old Cheyanne Peek suffering from a gunshot wound. She is now at a Des Moines hospital but her condition has not been released. Officers says witnesses told them that 12-year-old Jacen Pearson, the stepson of shooting victim Tod Peek, had left the home after the shooting.

Officers located the boy approximately one-half mile from the home and he was taken into custody and sent to a juvenile facility. No other details of what led to the shooting have been released, and officials say no charges have been filed.

A small earthquake in northern Illinois set off car alarms, knocked books off the shelves and jolted scores of people awake at 4 a.m. Wednesday, but otherwise caused no serious damage, officials said.

The United States Geological Survey reported that the earthquake, which had an estimated magnitude of 4.3, was centered near Virgil, about 50 miles northwest of Chicago, at a depth of about three miles. There were no immediate reports of aftershocks.

Sarah Evans, 29, of the northwest Chicago suburb of Elgin, said she was awakened at about 4 a.m. when her house started trembling.

“I popped out of bed,” she said. “I felt extreme shaking. I shook my husband, and said, ‘Oh my God, I think it was an earthquake.” She said the dogs didn’t bark but it seemed as if everything in her 100-year-old single-family home was shaking, as if a train was roaring by.

Pat Gengler, a spokesman for the Kane County sheriff, said the switchboards had been lighting up with calls, but he said there were no immediate reports of any damage.

“Right now the only reports we were getting were some people a little startled at 4 in the morning when their house started shaking,” he said. “We got a lot of snow out here and we had a little earthquake, so it’s been an interesting 12 hours.”

Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the agency, said that the tremor was only the second notable earthquake in more than 30 years to rattle the area. Even though the quake was relatively small, it was felt by residents as far away as southern Wisconsin, according to news reports.

“This is not a very seismically active area,” Ms. Vaughan said. “We don’t know what fault system this is, but there are faults everywhere throughout the world that can slip at any given time.”