Gazette Daily News Podcast, December 7

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This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Tuesday, December 7.

There will be some of the coldest temperatures of the week Tuesday before temperatures pick back up again as the week goes along. According to a weather forecast from the National Weather Service there will be a chance of snow flurries between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Cedar Rapids area with a high near 30 degrees. It will be cloudy, with a south wind of 5 to 15 mph. On Tuesday night the sky will gradually clear, with a low around 20 degrees.

4 years after the University of Iowa began fiercely denying allegations it discriminated against a student organization by punishing it for barring an openly gay member from becoming a leader of the group, the state will pay the law firm representing the student group nearly $2 million.

In a pair of judgments from lawsuits that the Business Leaders in Christ student group led against the UI in 2017 and that Intervarsity Christian Fellowship filed in 2018, the U.S. District Court ordered the university to pay a combined $1.93 million for attorney fees and damages.

The payments close the yearslong hard-fought disputes that involved numerous injunctions, summary judgments, appeals, affirmations, requests for reconsideration and final rulings.

Business Leaders in Christ was first to sue UI in 2017 when the campus yanked its student organization status — including not allowing it at campus recruiting fairs — after a member complained he was blocked from becoming a leader when he refused to affirm the group’s belief that same-sex relationships are against the Bible.

In its lawsuit, the Christian group accused the UI of selectively applying its human rights policy, noting other student groups — like Muslim and ethnic groups and fraternities and sororities — are allowed to restrict leadership and membership based on gender, ethnicity and ideology.

The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office will request $240,000 for a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle — despite objections from protesters and some elected officials that civilian police forces shouldn’t deploy military-style vehicles — in its upcoming fiscal year budget.

Sheriff Brad Kunkel presented an $810,841 decision package, which also includes money to replace aging camera equipment, to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors during a work session Monday morning. The board has been holding work sessions for county departments to present fiscal 2023 budget requests ahead of the first vote, which is slated for Jan. 12.

The BearCat would replace the county’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle — or MRAP — which was acquired by the Sheriff’s Office in 2014 for free through a federal program disposing of obsolete or unneeded military equipment. The MRAP has been a source of community concern and scorn in Johnson County ever since it was first acquired. In discussion about the budget Monday, supervisors were split over the need of any armored vehicle for the department at all and the benefits of using the BearCat as a more palatable replacement for the MRAP.

More than 30 people spoke out against a carbon dioxide pipeline proposed to run through 36 Iowa counties, including Linn, at an informational meeting where hundreds of people gathered Monday night in Cedar Rapids.

Navigator CO2 Ventures, a Texas company, is proposing a 1,300-mile pipeline that would capture carbon dioxide at Iowa ethanol and fertilizer plants and transport it in pressurized liquid form through a pipeline to a sequestration site in south-central Illinois.

There, the liquid carbon would be injected into rock formations, where it would calcify and be permanently stored. The idea, which scientists say can work, would keep carbon dioxide out of the air, where it contributes to global warming.

Questions asked during Monday night’s more than three-hour meeting concerned safety, the proposed pipeline route, whether the project brings value to average Iowans and the financial backing of the project.

The Navigator project is one of two carbon capture pipelines currently proposed for Iowa. The other, by Summit Carbon Solutions, is a 2,000-mile pipeline through Western and north-central Iowa.

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