A special meeting will be held on Wednesday evening in Spencer, Iowa, for people to be updated on the recovery from severe 2024 flooding that impacted the Clay County town.
The event will take place at 6 p.m. at the Sacred Heart Parish Church.
It is designed as a community informational meeting on last year’s flooding disaster, when the Little Sioux River in late June impacted homes and businesses. Rick Roe, a consultant, will present a fooding timeline, and also discuss an after action report.
Others who will present include Spencer City Manager Kevin Robinson and a new city employee who will discuss long-term recovery steps. After the worst of the flooding from the Little Sioux, which runs through many portions of Spencer, residents removed a huge number of damaged home and personal possessions.
Most property owners did not have flood insurance and have received federal, state and local help. Not everyone will receive all the funding they need to cover losses.
*Additionally, Iowa’s public universities, community colleges and tuition grants for private college students wouldn’t get a funding increase under a budget advanced by Senate Republicans this week.
Republican state Senator Jesse Green of Boone says his constituents have been asking him to shrink government, and this is a status quo budget.
“I think this aligns with our targets, I think this aligns with what Iowans are expecting of us at this point in time—they expect us to put more money into their hands than in the government,” Green said.
Senate Democrats say this will raise costs for Iowa students and their families because they’ll be charged more for tuition.
By comparison, Republicans in the House want an $8 million bump for community colleges and a $12 million boost for the three public universities. But that potential House increase is aimed at specific college programs and would come with a decrease to general purpose funds.
Both the House and Senate GOP are supporting a $1 million increase for the University of Iowa for Governor Kim Reynolds’ plan to investigate the potential causes of Iowa’s high cancer rates.
*In other state budget-setting news, in Nebraska the state senators began debate Tuesday on the budget for the next two years.
One big topic involved considering whether the state should defer major capital projects in order to avoid other cuts. What’s at stake is spending of about $11 billion over the next two years proposed by the Appropriations Committee.
State Senator Jason Prokop said the proposal at hand increases spending by half of 1 percent compared to the current Nebraska state budget. Prokop said it keeps a modest reserve, amid a period of declining revenues and pressure from the governor to deliver on property tax relief.
Some senators said the state should delay construction of a proposed $350 million prison.
State Senator Machaela Cavanaugh proposed taking money away from funds designed to offset local property taxes and instead using them to increase state aid to schools. Her proposed amendment on a vote of 32-4, and the complete budget plan got first round approval on a 37-6 count.
Tuesday’s debate centered on a budget proposal made before the state’s economic forecasting advisory board reduced its estimate of state revenues for the next two fiscal years by $190 million.
*Additionally, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of grants previously awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Several Iowa arts organizations are affected.
On Friday evening, arts organizations across the country received emails informing them that their NEA grant funding had been cut.
The emails came just hours after President Trump unveiled a federal budget plan proposing to eliminate the NEA altogether.
Among the many Iowa arts groups affected was FilmScene, based in Iowa City. Its executive director, Andrew Sherburne says that while the cinema doesn’t plan on changing any of its programming in the immediate future, he worries about not being able to rely on the National Endowment for the Arts for future funding.
“Looking a little further out, knowing that our second largest funder, we might not be able to count on them for anything next year, that's a little bit more concerning," Sherburne said.
Arts organizations now have until Friday to appeal the termination of their funding.
*Additionally, early voter support in the 2026 Republican primary race for South Dakota governor is focused on Congressman Dusty Johnson and incumbent Governor Larry Rhoden, according to a poll of 500 registered Republican voters co-sponsored by South Dakota News Watch.
The statewide survey, also sponsored by the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota, showed Johnson at 28 percent and Rhoden at 27 percent, with Attorney General Marty Jackley at 18 percent.
The number of respondents who said they were undecided was 20 percent.
That underscores the early nature of a race in which Jon Hansen, a Dell Rapids lawyer and anti-abortion advocate, is the only one to have officially declared his candidacy.
Julia Hellwege, an associate political science professor at USD, said that Kristi Noem's exit as governor and Rhoden's ascension to the top job "threw a wrench" into the race by allowing him to run as an incumbent.
"It sort of changed the landscape for the other candidates," said Hellwege.
