🔎Local news is necessarily bifocal
While easy to yell at the town hall near you, an equal focus needs to be on the state that sets an environment for our cities, counties.
February 14, 2021 | Letter. No. 33
Friday morning, I filed two stories that ultimately dealt with the same tenuous relationship between local and state government.
In the first, Gov. Kim Reynolds visited Johnson County’s new behavioral health access center. The $8.75 million GuideLink Center is the result of 15-years of conversations as like-minded Johnsonians searched for a jail and emergency room alternative for people in crisis.
"It's something to celebrate," Reynolds remarked.
Somehow I ended up right behind her during the “conversation.” She was at the front of the room and immediately in front of her were the county supervisors and city councilors who put in time and dollars to pull it off. All of them looked on expectantly. Because Thursday was not about bringing the governor in to celebrate. It was an ask.
In 2018, Reynolds signed a bill requiring The East Central Mental Health/Disability Services Region and its counterparts to provide access centers. But it did not pass with changes to Iowa’s Medicaid administrative rules meaning there is not a clear path for structuring billing. And while the state is seeking a contractor to combine the departments, the state still has one department for funding substance use treatment and another for mental health; a problem for a facility that seeks to do both.
In the other story, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is seeking approval to plant a campus in North Liberty. Once completed, the facility will add 36 additional beds in a 300,000-square-foot building that will sit on 60 acres at the corner of Forevergreen Road and Iowa Highway 965.
Looking at the Johnson County side of the corridor metro, the location is no wonder. West, east, and south of Iowa City, the UIHC doesn’t have a ton of competition for medical services. But in growing North Liberty there Mercy Iowa City has both a rehab hospital and a family hospital. As the metro’s focal point shifts north, UIHC is hoping to stay on top of Mercy as the preferred health care provider for the area.
[Below: A conceptual drawing of the proposed facility in North Liberty taken from UIHC’s application to the state.]
As Mercy Iowa City President and CEO Sean Williams put it: "The collaborative spirit has evaporated." If more beds are what UIHC needs, send them to Mercy; they could use the traffic.
To avoid competition shocking the supply of healthcare in the state, before a hospital can make a big move like planting a new campus, they have to convince a governor-appointed board that there is a need for it.
Reading again through these stories Friday afternoon, they feel deeply similar. In both local actors are caught up in a web created by the state government. The regulatory framework in both cases will decide the extent to which both the access center and North Liberty campus thrive.
We hope that when a change is made to Iowa Medicaid rules, that when the council decides whether there is a need for the new facility, that those choices are made fairly and expediently.
Tied up in the ‘local control’ argument, there is a strand about self-determination. That popularly and consistently elected progressive officials ought to be able to enact progressive policy even in the belly of a red state. But as Iowa City keeps learning, the fate of the local is intimately tied to the state.
Changes to Iowa’s Medicaid rules. The certificate of need process. The nixed rental permit cap. The required bow hunt. The multi-residential property tax rate rollback. The out of date energy efficiency requirements for new buildings. Iowa City, Johnson County may want to do big things, but without a more coherent approach to affecting change, they are tied to the actions happening in Des Moines.
I’m hearing a lot of excitement for the coming city-schools election this fall. And there should be. There are a lot of seats coming up. But while I think there’s been a lot of mobilization on cities recently, these two stories got me thinking about whether that kind of focus is being aimed at the state? In Iowa, it takes both.
Your friendly neighborhood reporter,
Zachary Oren Smith
Daily Iowan cleans up at INA
Because my week got away from me with coverage, I never got to write about the Daily Iowans 2nd Newspaper of the Year award at the Iowa Newspaper Association.
The award is given out for the paper that has the highest awards across the categories ranging from photography and video to blogs and politics coverage. They won two years in a row and deserve every last one of those awards.
The P-C placed first for best news story; second for best news photo and coverage of courts and crime; and third in Coverage of Government and Politics and best breaking news story. While our wins were small this year, I’m deeply proud of the work our team put in.
I feel like in the last two years in particular, the Press-Citizen has made some long strides towards earning your subscriber dollars. And I’m deeply proud to be part of that work.
Take Four
P-C Live at the Englert - My friend Isaac Hamlet, the P-C’s arts and entertainment reporter was on The Best Show Ever talking about his beat and vision for the time after. It’s a must checkout for anyone thinking about what that might mean, how it might be changed forever.
🎓 Tenure under fire - ICYMI, Iowa Republican legislators are preparing to take a swing at sacking tenure at the Regent universities. This decision will have a larger impact on our community than others given the large role faculty play in our community.
📉 “We’re barely making ends meet.” - Slow-rolling unemployment assistance checks are putting families under financial strain. Iowa is one of five states in a “pre-implementation” stage for federal benefits from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment compensation that were signed Dec. 27 as part of the federal stimulus bill. The Gazette had an excellent story looking at its impact.
🚜 Ag. Manufacturer Wars - Kinze Manufacturing is accusing Deere & Co. of operating an "unlawful monopoly.” The Register had a story looking at the back in forth between giant manufacturers of giant equipment.
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Zachary Oren Smith writes about government, growth and development for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Reach him at zsmith@press-citizen.com, at 319 -339-7354 or on Twitter via @Zacharyos.