Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The conservative non-profit group Iowa Progress Project (IPP) has released a series of e-mail exchanges between state officials that it says calls into question Gov. Chet Culver’s response to last summer’s flooding.
A spokesman for Culver said the allegations fall “somewhere between nonsense and paranoia.”
One set of e-mails from June involves Culver’s then chief of staff, Patrick Dillon; then head of the Department of Management and current chief of staff Charles Krogmeier; and chief legal counsel James Larew. The subject is tax policy and ways the government could restructure tax code in response to flooding, an idea Krogmeier calls “All the more reason to avoid a special session.”
The second e-mail exchange from September shows Rebuild Iowa Office Chief of Staff Emily Hajek saying she was “relieved” no special session would be called.
The e-mails exchanges took place while Culver was saying publicly that there was still a chance a special session could be called to deal with flood recovery. Iowa Progress Project President David Kochel said he believes they show that the administration was never considering calling legislators back to Des Moines.
The e-mails “raise many new questions about the [Rebuild Iowa Office], its leadership, competence of bureaucrats, and the intentions of those who wanted to block a special session that would give relief to flood victims,” Kochel said in a press release.
Troy Price, Culver’s press secretary, said the group’s allegations don’t merit a response.
“The so-called Iowa Progress Project is nothing more than a secret political slush fund that lacks the honesty or integrity to reveal their campaign contributors,” Price said. “They are quick to make negative, dishonest, political attacks but are apparently too cowardly to reveal their true identity.”
Because IPP is organized as a nonprofit it does not have to reveal its donors and is not governed by Iowa campaign finance law.
The group shares an organizational history with American Future Fund (AFF), a conservative nonprofit that works on the national level. Iowa Progress Project was originally named Iowa Future Fund. Leadership in both organizations is made up of several former leaders of the Republican Party of Iowa and Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful Iowa Caucus campaign.
Both AFF and IPP are registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4), a section of federal tax code that exempts them from federal income taxation if they operate primarily to promote social welfare. Both organizations have been accused of violating their tax-exempt status by trying to influence elections.
“The real issue is how an organization that does nothing other than make political attacks against Gov. Culver and other Democrats can continue to flout and ignore the intent of Iowa’s campaign finance laws,” Price said.
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