Gazette Daily News Podcast, January 12

This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Wednesday, January 12.

It’ll be the warmest day of the week Wednesday, with light wind and partial sunshine. According to a forecast from the National Weather Service it will be partly sunny with a high near 39 degrees. The wind will be calm, blowing from the south at 5 mph. On Wednesday night it will be mostly cloudy with a low around 23 degrees.

On Tuesday Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds gave the annual Condition of the State address in Des Moines. Reynolds used the speech to give a preview of her priorities going into the next legislative session.

Her biggest proposal of the night was the reduction of the state income tax rate to a flat 4 percent for all taxpayer income brackets, put in place in phased reductions over the next 4 years. The governor’s office said that would make Iowa’s state income tax burden the fifth-lowest in the country. The state, according to the governor’s office, currently has the 16th-highest burden. The proposal would reduce state revenues by roughly $1.6 billion in 2023, the governor’s office said. Reynolds’ proposal also would phase out all state taxes on retirement income.

Besides this, Reynolds said her administration plans to get more people into the workforce by cutting of unemployment sooner; train teachers and give one time federal aid payments to teachers who stay on the job; address parent concerns about the content in school libraries; allocate public funding for parents who want to enroll their children in private schools; and introduce legislation that would require ethanol be offered in more ways by all relevant retailers.

Following a vast and swift trend sweeping four-year colleges and universities nationally, the Iowa Board of Regents is moving to permanently eliminate the mandate that applicants to their public universities submit either SAT or ACT scores — ending the 63-year-old requirement.

The board Wednesday will consider the proposal, which comes after regents in August 2020 took the temporary step of waiving the standardized test requirement — first enacted in 1959 — given challenges COVID-19 posed for students wanting to take the tests.

The regent proposal will retain ACT and SAT scores as one of three factors freshman applicants need to achieve automatic admission to the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa — along with grade-point average and number of courses taken in core subject areas.

ADM announced Tuesday it wants to build a carbon dioxide pipeline from its plants in Cedar Rapids and Clinton to a site in Illinois where it will sequester the greenhouse gases.

This is the third proposed CO2 pipeline for Iowa, which, if approved by state regulators, would add thousands of miles of underground pipe in Eastern Iowa.

ADM and Wolf Carbon Solutions announced Tuesday they have signed a letter of intent to build a 350-mile pipeline to transport liquefied CO2 from ethanol and cogeneration facilities in Cedar Rapids and Clinton to ADM’s already-operational sequestration site in Decatur, Ill.

Companies that sequester carbon are eligible for federal tax credits of up to $50 per metric ton. By reducing the carbon footprint of ethanol production, these companies hope to make the fuel more competitive in states, such as the huge market in California that also has low carbon fuel standards.

Support for this news update was provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s source for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; you can also order online through Co-op Cart at New p-i dot c-o-o-p.

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Support for this podcast provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s source for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at newpi.coop.