In the News

OTTUMWA, Iowa (KYOU) - Ottumwa’s 2022 Fiscal Budget continues on last year’s decrease of the property tax. This year by around 24 cents.

Finance Director Kala Mulder says a $50,000 house could see savings of around $12-13.

Double the savings for a $100,000 house, and so on.

However, while the overall municipal levy is reduced this year (largely in part to the removal of transit), some levies, like debt services, are increasing.

Mulder says it was lower in the past to keep overall taxes lower, but at the cost of having savings.

(KWWL) - Iowa Representative Dr. Marianette Miller-Meeks introduced H.R. 1897 on the House floor Tuesday. Called the REACT Act, the legislation would require the Department of Homeland Security to test all migrants crossing illegally into the country for COVID-19. It would apply to all migrants DHS plans to then release into the U.S. 

OTTUMWA, Iowa (KYOU) - Solving issues with federal agencies like taxes, veteran healthcare, or passports could get easier with a vote coming up in Tuesday’s Ottumwa City Council meeting.

A passed vote would see a regional office established for Representative Marianette Miller-Meeks.

The lease is for these Offices 201A and 201B in City Hall.

The offices still have items in them from the previous tenant, but the City Administrator says once a vote passes they can have the offices ready within a week.

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — A group of Republican House members will tour a migrant processing center and meet with border officials Monday during a visit to El Paso, Texas.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy will lead the Congressional delegation to discuss what he calls “President Biden’s border crisis.”

The group will first tour the El Paso Processing Center, which is run by Immigration Customs and Enforcement, or ICE.

OTTUMWA, Iowa (KYOU) - On Friday, JBS workers in Ottumwa had the chance to receive the one-shot, Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Wells Hometown Drug, a Bloomfield pharmacy, partnered with Wapello County Public Health and and JBS to vaccinate 1,300 JBS workers. A mobile vaccination clinic was set up inside the meatpacking plant. Local government officials like Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Cherielynn Westrich were both in attendance to witness employee vaccinations at one of the area’s largest employers.

WASHINGTON — Vaccine holdouts could end up being the last obstacle to defeating the pandemic, and a growing effort is aimed at convincing one substantial group of skeptics: Republicans.

While efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy and access have so far been mostly focused on African Americans and Latinos, recent polls suggest the largest group of Americans either hesitant about the Covid-19 vaccine or outright opposed to it are Republicans, and efforts to reach them are only in their infancy.

Iowa’s congressional delegation is urging the Biden Administration to restructure the state’s weekly allocation of Covid vaccine. The group says putting more doses of Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine in the mix make sense. Representative Ashley Hinson of Marion says pharmacies in rural parts of the state cannot afford the freezers required to store the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

 “Rural and low income Iowans face unique barriers to receiving the Covid vaccine,” Hinson says. “One of the challenges, of course, is storing the vaccine in cool enough temperatures.”

Vaccination, particularly for the most vulnerable Americans, is the surest way for us to overcome the Covid-19 crisis. As physicians, we celebrate the light at the end of the tunnel, in large part due to Operation Warp Speed. But as members of Congress, we are becoming increasingly concerned that federal bureaucracy continues to stand in the way of rapid, widespread administration of Covid-19 vaccines.