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Last week Gov. Culver unveiled Barack Obama’s plan to invest in renewable and create thousands of green collar jobs in wind energy industries.
“The outcome of this election is very important to the…



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John Edwards is coming back to Iowa next month.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards next month will make his first trip back to Iowa since the state’s caucuses.

Edwards will be keynote speaker at a June 19 poverty conference in Des Moines organized by Mari Culver, wife of Gov. Chet Culver. The conference will bring state officials, service providers, business leaders and others together to work toward ending poverty.

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Over the weekend, I wrote about the flaws in the odor study bill. I said the bill wastes taxpayer on a study that has already been done. Vilsack requested a study in 2002 and since then other states have done similar studies.

Unfortunately, the bill has been passed by Iowa House and Iowa Senate and now sits on Gov. Culver’s desk.

The Iowa Farmer’s Union is calling for Culver to veto the bill. They cite the redundancy of the study…

Research has already been done on cost effective ways to mitigate odor. Included are better siting methods, and the use of biofilters and covers on lagoons. Iowa’s taxpayers should not be required to fund another round of studies on proven technologies when the legislature has not shown any willingness to act on the information already gathered from previous studies. Instead we should require producers to implement what we already know.

Hopefully, Culver will realize that this study stinks and decides to veto it.

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Kansas Governor Kathleen Seblius took another strong stand against the expansion of coal plants.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius today vetoed legislation to allow a sizeable coal plant expansion in western Kansas.

The bill would have eliminated the discretion a state regulator used last year to block Sunflower Electric Power Corp.’s plans to add two coal-burning generators to its existing Holcomb, Kan., power station.

Sebelius said that she couldn’t support an erosion of an environmental regulator’s powers and that the bill didn’t do enough to encourage renewable energy.

Last week, a group of concerned citizens from Waterloo and Marshalltown, where coal-fired power plants are proposed to be built, held a rally at the State House to encourage Gov. Culver to take action against the coal plants.

The question now is if Culver will follow Sebelius’ lead?

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Last week, I wrote about Chet Culver talking about how important of an issue local control of large hog confinements is.

Todd Dormon responded to my post and shows what Culver has done on the issue…

Here is the chronology of Culver’s push for local control, as I see it.

1. Promise repeatedly during the 2006 campaign to push for local control over where large hog confinements can be built.

2. Insist weeks before even taking office that you can’t get the Legislature to go along with local control, so you’re not going to press the issue.

3. Make no mention of local control in your second legislative agenda.

4. Make a great speech talking about your continued push for local control.

I don’t care whether you favor or oppose local control, but I defy you to find any real evidence that Culver has “pushed” for it.

He’s insisted, repeatedly, that the votes aren’t there in the Legislature. That may be true.

But the votes weren’t there for a $1 cigarette tax increase when he proposed it in his first budget address to lawmakers last year. He lobbied hard and got it anyway.

I am not sure if there are any bills on this issue still being discussed this session. If not, hopefully, this can become an issue in the upcoming elections and one that Culver pushes next legislative session.

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Yesterday, members of Iowa CCI held a lobby day at the State House where they met with legislators, DNR official Wayne Gieselman, and Governor Culver. Two of the issues discusses with Culver was VOICE and local control.

Governor Culver, in his meeting with CCI members, said he would continue pushing for local control of factory farms, an issue he pledged his support of during his campaign and for which his commitment was questioned. “I commend your commitment to this important issue,” Culver stated.

Culver also said he was “more open than ever before” to supporting Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections, a system where candidates can choose to run using public funding instead of fund raising and accepting monies from powerful special interests. After seeing the impact of special interests in the legislature firsthand, Culver stated, “We have to do something.”

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The Des Moines Register has a nice summary of Gov. Culver’s speech today at the State Capital…

HEALTH CARE: Culver would like to see all Iowans have the same type of health care as elected officials get. That would be expensive, and the growing budget is already a headache. For now, he’d like to expand pooling options for associations, small businesses, and organizations in an effort to reduce the cost of group rates. He would like to allow parents to cover their adult children up to age 25. He would eliminate exclusions and waiting periods for people who are transitioning from group health plans to individual plans.

SMOKING: If lawmakers pass a bill to allowing local authorities to ban indoor smoking in bars, restaurants and other public facilities, Culver promised to sign it.

ENVIRONMENT: Culver would like to double the bottle fee from 5 cents to 10 cents. Those who return the cans would get 8 cents back. Two cents would not be refunded. It would go environmental fund and to pay bottle handling operators.

EDUCATION: Teachers will see a raise of about $5,400 over two years with legislation Culver signed last year. Some Republicans are unhappy because the raises would not be merit-based; mediocre teachers would get raises along with outstanding teachers.

TAXES: The taxes paid by multi-state corporations who do business in Iowa would go up with Culver’s proposal for closing a certain tax loophole. Culver’s said Iowa would gain revenue by requiring “combined corporate reporting” of profits.

WORKERS: Education is the way to address a potential workforce shortage, Culver said. He proposed creating a $5 million science, technology, engineering, and math center at the University of Northern Iowa. He would also like to expand a needs-based scholarship program.

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Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley is being strongly urged by his top energy advisor to take aggressive steps to cut energy consumption, and the state should create a multimillion-dollar fund to give homeowners an array of incentives to use less power.

The blueprint, to be released by the Maryland Energy Administration, will offer 20 proposals to help O’Malley (D) deliver on his ambitious pledge to reduce the state’s energy consumption by 15 percent in seven years and stave off rolling blackouts that experts predict could occur in three years.

The report recommends that the state encourage the fledgling solar and wind energy industries to invest in the region and help Maryland more than double its use of renewable power.

Iowa Governor Chet Culver has been a proponent of renewable energy, creating the Iowa Power Fund, the Iowa Office of Energy Independence, and saying he wants Iowa to become the renewable energy capital of the world.

Culver has made a goal for Iowa to produce enough wind energy by 2015 to power 500,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by more than 7 billion tons per year. It seems that a program like the one in Maryland would help Culver and Iowans reach this goal.

Instead there are plans to build coal-fired power plants in Marshalltown and Waterloo that would emit more carbon into the air.

If Culver was serious about making Iowa into the renewable energy capital, one would think he would be stressing cutting energy use.

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Marc Ambinder is reporting that Mari Culver, the wife of Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, is rumored to be endorsing John Edwards tomorrow.

Rumors abound on the campaign trail today that a big Iowa voice is set to endorse John Edwards. His campaign is mum, but Democratic sources in Iowa believe that Mari Culver, the wife of Gov. Chet Culver (D), is set to endorse the former North Carolina senator tomorrow.

The governor himself is said to be remaining neutral, but if his wife endorses Edwards, the larger Culver orbit will be seen to have descended on Edwards’s campaign. (Mari Culver endorsed Edwards in 2004).

Gov. Culver’s chief of staff, Patrick Dillon, worked for Edwards in Iowa in 2004, and his is married to Jennifer O’Malley, Edwards’s state director. Another Edwards alum serves as Culver’s communications director.

This won’t be as big of deal as Christie Vilsack’s endorsement of John Kerry back in 2004 because the Culver’s have only been in office for a year. However, it is big news for Edwards because it gets him back in the news after he lost the Des Moines Register vote to Hillary.

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Considering this is an Iowa blog, I thought I should mention some things about Chet Culver’s speech at the Jefferson Jackson dinner.

I thought Culver gave a very good speech. It wasn’t on par with the speeches later in the night, but no one expected him to be that good. Culver used Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote about the future belonging to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Culver tied all the accomplishments from his first year in office to the dreams of Iowans. He mentioned raising the minimum wage, increasing teacher pay, lifting the ban on stem cell research, expanding health care to children.

However, when he talked about expanding health care to children, Culver missed an opportunity to use the bully pulpit to talk about expanding SCHIP. I would have liked to have heard Culver mention Bush’s veto of SCHIP and how an extension to SCHIP affects Iowa’s children.

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