Gazette Daily News Podcast, Feb. 1

On today’s episode: Iowa COVID hospitalizations drop; the State Auditor’s Office audits Iowa’s COVID data; former Hawkeye players’ attorneys accuse the University of Iowa of stalling a racial discrimination lawsuit; Johnson County attorney Janet Lyness is not seeking re-election; and a House GOP proposal would make it faster to get a teacher’s license.

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The number of people hospitalized due to the coronavirus and the number of confirmed infections have dropped in Iowa, but hundreds of people in the state remain seriously ill with the virus, according to state data released Monday.

The Associated Press reports that while hospitalizations have dropped about 10 percent in a week, Iowa still has 849 people hospitalized with COVID-19 and 130 in intensive care, according to information from the state Department of Public Health.

The seven-day moving average of daily cases fell to around 4,200 from a recent peak of over 5,500 on Jan. 18.

The number of nursing homes with outbreaks increased to 107 in Monday's report, up from 95 reported Friday. Schools continue to see a significant number of infections.

Despite concerns from critics on the state’s handling of publicly available COVID-19 reports throughout the pandemic, the State Auditor’s Office “did not identify any significant concerns regarding the integrity of the data” from the Iowa Department of Public Health.

State Auditor Rob Sand reviewed COVID-19 data collected and reported by the state from March 1, 2020, through May 17, 2021, as part of a COVID-19 Audit Task Force.

In the audit published Monday, the Democratic state auditor said there were opportunities for the state to improve its public coronavirus website to increase transparency and accountability.

Overall, the integrity of COVID-19 data reported on the state’s website, coronavirus.iowa.gov, was supported by lab results sent to the state public health department. Any delays or late-recorded test results “appear to be attributable entirely to private labs submitting results late, rather than to Iowa State government issues.”

In his report, Sand encouraged the state to add public school district and long-term care outbreak data dashboards back into the website.

More than a year after 13 former Hawkeye football players filed a lawsuit accusing some University of Iowa athletics staff of racially motivated discrimination and harassment, attorneys are accusing the UI of “intentional subversion” and delay tactics and are asking a judge to intervene.

Attorneys are asking a U.S. District Court judge to compel the UI to turn over multiple documents, including those from a 2020 independent review that includes reports on head coach Kirk Ferentz, offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, assistant defensive coordinator Seth Wallace, and former strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle.

The players’ attorneys also want key financial documents; performance evaluations; cellphone records; and other communications.

The attorneys say the UI has extended deadlines on filing the documents on multiple occasions.

Lacking documents they’ve demanded, the players’ attorneys said they were forced to postpone depositions of Kirk and Brian Ferentz, which already had been rescheduled for Jan. 18 and 19 after previously being delayed until football season ended.

In objecting to the production of documents or failing to do so, UI attorneys with the State Attorney General’s Office have cited privacy laws, like the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, or they’ve said “collection of documents is ongoing.”

A status conference in the case is scheduled for Feb. 23. A jury trial is slated for 10 days in March 2023.

Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness announced Monday that she won’t seek another term and will retire after serving over 31 years in the county attorney’s office.

Lyness, 63, has been the top prosecutor for the last 15 years. This is her last year of her fourth four-year term, which ends Dec. 31. She was the first woman elected as the Johnson County attorney back in 2006.

Lyness graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1989. She joined the Johnson County Attorney’s Office in 1990 as an assistant prosecutor. She was elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

Assistant Johnson County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith last week filed her notice of intent to run for Johnson County attorney but hasn’t made a formal announcement at this time.

People with a bachelor’s degree and three years of work experience would have a faster route to getting a teacher’s license under a proposal introduced by Republicans in the Iowa House on Monday.

Those workers would need to get 15 credit hours of teacher education and then work in what would amount to a yearlong internship, according to Iowa Rep. Dustin Hite, a Republican from New Sharon who chairs the House’s education committee.

Mike Beranek, the president of the Iowa State Education Association, the state’s largest public teachers union, called the proposal and others they have offered a welcome start, but not everything that educators need from the state.

He said his organization supports the alternative licensure program proposed by Hite, another proposal to eliminate the standardized test needed to acquire a teaching license, and a proposal to increase the number of teachers-in-training who are eligible to apply for a state grant program.

Beranek said Monday that while he supports the proposals he’s looking to the Legislature to fully fund Iowa schools and help make sure classrooms aren’t overcrowded.

Gov. Kim Reynolds, in her budget proposal, proposed a 2.5 percent increase in state funding to K-12 public school districts over the previous year. House and Senate leaders are expected to release their funding proposals in the coming weeks.

Historically, K-12 funding increased an average of 5 percent annually over the first 38 years under the state’s current state funding formula, according to data from the state’s nonpartisan fiscal analysis agency. Since 2011, when Republicans gained at least a portion of control over the state lawmaking process, the average annual K-12 funding increase has been 1.9 percent.

According to the National Weather Service’s Quad Cities’ bureau: