HARMS RECEIVES COMBINED SENTENCE
(photo-KSCJ)
Reese Harms of Le Mars was sentenced today (Friday) to a maximum 50 years in prison in the death of Michael Gomez of Merrill.
Judge Patrick Tott announced the sentence at a hearing in Plymouth County District Court in Le Mars.
The 25 year old Harms was found guilty in March of 2nd degree murder and attempted murder of Gomez, 44,
Today, Judge Tott combined the verdicts and rendered one sentence. Under state law, 2nd degree murder carries a mandatory 50 year prison sentence, with the possibility of parole after serving 70% of the sentence. That means Harms can be considered for parole after serving 35 years.
Fines and court costs were waived, but Harms was ordered to pay 250-thousand dollars in restitution to the victim’s family.
GOVERNOR REYNOLDS AND HOUSE GOP LEADER SPAR OVER STATE BUDGET PLANS
A disagreement over whether to spend 14 MILLION dollars to boost pay for paraeducators in public schools is the stumbling block in budget talks among Republicans. Governor Kim Reynolds says House Speaker Pat Grassley successfully lobbied to include that amount in last year’s budget, and it should in the funding plan House and Senate Republicans have adopted. Speaker Grassley says the money for paraeducators was in the governor’s budget plan released in January. Grassley says they are not going to go back and make a cut that leaves schools in a situation to find the difference. He says those are more like Governor Culver practices that we saw, and we don’t want to see that happening on something like that.” Republicans criticized former Democrat Governor Chet Culver for approving an increase in state funding for schools in the spring of 2009, then ordering a 10 percent across-the-board spending cut a few months later.
DRY AREAS EVEN OUT WET ONES AS APRIL RAIN ABOUT AVERAGE
April had plenty of showers at times, but state climatologist Justin Glisan (Glisten) says overall precipitation for the month was near normal.
Residents of portions of northern Iowa will tell you the April showers were anything but normal.
Glisan says those areas were balanced out in the statewide average by the drier areas. Glisan says April was just a little warmer than normal when statewide readings are calculated.
Glisan says we had two big storm events in April, including one with a lot of hail, but there were no serious issues with either storm.
REPORT: 38% OF IOWA’S RURAL HOSPITALS OFFER LABOR AND DELIVERY SERVICES
A report finds only about a third of rural Iowa hospitals now deliver babies, with three hospitals closing their maternity wards in recent years, and two more considered at risk. Harold Miller, president and C-E-O of the nonprofit Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, says rural hospitals often lose money running expensive O-B units with few births. Miller says small rural hospitals are losing money overall, so they don’t have any profits to be able to subsidize labor and delivery services. He says a major driving factor is commercial insurance reimbursement rates. The report says Iowans who have to go to an alternative hospital to give birth have a median travel time of 32 minutes.
DNR HAS SUCCESSFUL WALLEYE SPAWN
The Iowa D-N-R says its spring efforts to collect walleye eggs to raise the next generation of fish was one of the fastest in the program’s history. Jay Rudacille (Roo-duh-sill) oversaw the operation at Lake Rathbun and says all the fisheries seemed to benefit from warmer water temperatures during the spawn. He says walleyes get stocked as just one to two day old fish that are very small and they have a fairly low survival rate, but can be produced in large numbers. Other walleyes are raised to an inch and a half size and stocked around the first two weeks of June in rivers. Other fish are raised to eight to nine-inch size at both Rathbun and Spirit Lake hatcheries and get stocked into constructed and natural lakes in the month of October and early November. Rudacille says their goal is to have 116 million walleye fry, which he believes is second only to Minnesota, which looks to stock 257 million walleye.
