Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds says deciding to close the Glenwood Resource Center for people with severe disabilities was “really hard.”
She announced late last week that the state-run residential facility would be closed in two years. This comes after the U.S. Department of Justice found Iowa should be caring for more people with disabilities in home and community settings instead of institutions. The DOJ also found Glenwood center residents were subjected to human experimentation and poor medical care.
Reynolds says state officials couldn’t meet the federal government’s expectations.
Federal officials are reporting 68 Iowans are hospitalized with COVID-19 as of today (Wednesday).
Statewide hospitalizations have more than doubled from last week when they hit a record low for the pandemic.
State officials have confirmed nearly a thousand positive COVID tests in the past week. This marks the second week in a row that the number of positive tests has increased.
Officials have also confirmed in the past week an additional 21 deaths from the virus, bringing the state’s total death count to more than 94 hundred.
According to state data, over 58 percent of all Iowans are fully vaccinated against the virus.
The South Dakota Senate has chosen prosecutors and the date for Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg's impeachment trial. The Senate will hold a two-day trial starting on June 21.
Pennington County State's Attorney Mark Vargo will serve as the lead prosecutor in the Senate impeachment trial, said Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck today.
The decision comes less than 24 hours after Ravnsborg was impeached by the House of Representatives for his role in the traffic fatality of Joseph Boever.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts signed off on a $900 million property and income tax cut package Wednesday. The measure will reduce the top individual and corporate income tax rates to 5.84% by 2027. It will also speed up the state's plan to phase out taxes on Social Security income and create a refundable tax credit to reimburse property owners for some of the taxes they pay to community colleges. Some senators raised concerns about how the tax cuts will affect the state budget in future years, but lawmakers ultimately passed the package over those objections.
