February 2019 » Lynda Waddington

24Feb 2019 by Lynda Waddington

Lawmakers should end religious exemption

Gazette Column

Iowa lawmakers dispatched two proposals that would have allowed more parents to forgo required and necessary vaccinations for their children. That's good, but not enough. It's time to take a closer look at the state's lax vaccination rules. According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, more parents are seeking religious exemptions to vaccination requirements - four times the number from only 15 years ago. At the county level, the percentage of parents taking a religious exemption varies widely. In Buchanan County, for example, 356 religious exemptions were filed in a total enrollment of 3,515. Larger Linn County had 744 religious exemptions from a total enrollment of nearly 40,000. That's partly because state law doesn't require parents to cite specific religious teaching against vaccinations to claim the exemption. All it…

23Feb 2019 by Lynda Waddington

Unhappiness no justification for bad policy

Gazette Column

Here's a thought: The Legislature could pass laws capable of surviving constitutional scrutiny. That was my first thought after listening to Iowa Press moderator David Yepsen query state Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, about the ongoing, blatant GOP judicial power grab. "It will put politics right in the middle of what is supposed to be an objective, impartial process that right now is considered one of the best in the country,” Wolfe said when asked about a Republican plan that changes how Iowa judges, including Supreme Court justices, are selected. The state, she added, would be better off making small changes to the nomination and retention process approved by Iowa voters nearly 60 years ago. "If you are a conservative, and you're unhappy, what will you do then?” Yepsen asked in…

06Feb 2019 by Lynda Waddington

#EndFGM — New Iowa bill for ‘Day of Zero Tolerance’

Gazette Column

Today is the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. So it is appropriate that members of the Iowa House have begun work on a bipartisan bill that would ban the heinous cultural practice in the Hawkeye State. Iowa Rep. Steve Holt, R-Denison, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced House Study Bill 115 this week and assigned it to an all-female subcommittee consisting of Megan Jones, R-Sioux Rapids, Ashley Hinson, R-Marion, and Liz Bennett, D-Cedar Rapids. The introductory language of this bill is nearly identical to House File 63, which had been introduced last month by seven Democrats. Currently, the offering makes non-medical female genital mutilation procedures as well as trafficking girls for such procedures Class D felonies. This is the lowest tier of felonies in Iowa,…

02Feb 2019 by Lynda Waddington

Could Wahls be a champion?

Gazette Column

No one wanted to brave the frigid elements this past Wednesday, not even those who have repeatedly confronted rain and snow in previous years to count the number of homeless on the streets. Point-in-time counts of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people, required by the federal government, take place annually on the last Wednesday of January. But not this year. Dangerous temperatures have pushed Iowa's count to Feb. 6. It goes without saying, or at least it should go without saying, that if it is too risky to count those experiencing homelessness, it is too dangerous to be experiencing homelessness. That seems to be what one of Iowa's newly elected lawmakers was thinking on Tuesday night when he invited a man named Rick into a Des Moines hotel lobby to warm…