There will be increased prison time and fines for crimes related to selling fentanyl and other illegal drugs under a bill signed into law today (Tuesday) by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.
The new law is aimed at combating a recent spike in fentanyl-related overdose deaths. It combines the governor’s bill with a proposal from Attorney General Brenna Bird.
Bird says drug dealers who cause an overdose death are currently prosecuted at the federal level. And the new law adds provisions that’ll allow such crimes to be prosecuted at the state level.
As a prosecutor, nothing is harder than looking a family in the eye and telling them that Iowa law doesn’t provide them the justice they deserve for the death of their loved one due to a drug dealer.
The new law will also allow law enforcement agencies, fire departments, schools, and health care workers to distribute opioid overdose reversal drugs to Iowans. It takes effect July first.
The number of homeless people in the Spencer area more than doubled between 2019 and 2021 — and Clay County and the City of Spencer are launching an emergency housing program, according to Radio Iowa.
Data released recently by the Institute for Community Alliances found fewer than 50 people in Clay County were homeless in 2019, but two years later, more than 100 people in the area were homeless. The plan is to hire two part-time people who would be emergency housing coordinators.
The county’s emergency coordinators will help set up a plan to find housing for homeless individuals or a job, and to find whatever services they’re needing, whether that be mental health, physical health, substance abuse or whatever that would look like,
About 2400 people in Iowa experienced homelessness at some point last year — and only 16% of them were chronically homeless.
The Sioux City Council approved a resolution Monday allowing a Sioux Falls developer to continue with plans to convert a former downtown Sioux City hotel into a multifamily residential property.
Floyd River Flats, LLC, purchased the former Ramada Inn, 130 Nebraska St., in early 2022. The City Council approved a development agreement and a minimum assessment agreement with Floyd River Flats.
As part of the agreement, Floyd River Flats committed to investing $5 million to a mixed-use multifamily residential property, with the first floor used as leasable commercial space.
South Dakota Republican Representative Dusty Johnson introduced federal legislation Tuesday to preserve an area of land where hundreds of Lakota men, women and children were massacred by the U.S. Army at Wounded Knee in 1890, according to the Argus Leader. https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2023/05/16/wounded-knee-massacre-site-south-dakota-bill-dusty-johnson-us-lakota-oglala-sioux-cheyenne-river/70222751007/
The 40 acres of land, where an old trading post was located, was purchased by the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in September. A covenant was signed by the tribes in October that stated the property would be maintained as a memorial and sacred site without development.
Johnson explained Tuesday the bill added an additional degree of certainty for tribes to “know that they will have the long term ability to govern that land and manage that property.”
