Author: Nick Bergus

Only a Failing System Could Produce Chuck Grassley

Alex Skopic for Current Affairs:

When Chuck Grassley was born in 1933, Hitler and Stalin were both still alive, and the chocolate chip cookie had not yet been invented. When he was first elected to the Iowa state legislature in 1958, segregation and Jim Crow were still in full effect, and would be for another six years. When he became a U.S. senator in 1980, it was part of the “Reagan Revolution” that created the Republican Party as we know it today—and Grassley was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, who reportedly gave him “an eight out of ten for his voting record.” One of his first big decisions in Washington was to vote against the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983, although he insists he was just concerned about the expense of giving federal workers another day off. Simply put, this guy has been in Congress forever, outlasting six successive presidents. Now, at age 92, he visibly struggles to read statements on the Senate floor—but that hasn’t stopped him from filing the paperwork to run for yet another term in 2028, when he’d be 95. More likely, if the actuarial tables are anything to go by, he’ll follow in the footsteps of Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Gerry Connolly, and simply drop dead in office one of these days. 

A damning indictment of Sen. Grassley, the Democratic Party and our entire political system.

What the Fuck Does it Even Mean to be “Black Flag” Anymore?

Nate Rogers for The New York Times:

Greg Ginn would really rather not be doing this. The co-founder and only constant member of Black Flag, the Southern California band that came to define hardcore punk in the late 1970s and ’80s, hadn’t given a formal interview in 13 years, savoring what he called a media “retirement.”

In April, he rebooted Black Flag with three new bandmates, which was not exactly notable for a group that requires a color-coded chart to keep track of its former members. But this time stood out because the collective age of those musicians — the singer Max Zanelly, 22; the bassist David Rodriguez, 21; and the drummer Bryce Weston, 22 — was less than that of Ginn, 71.

Fucking weird, dude.

Does Pooping Improve Our Water Quality?

Iowa City’s best City Councilor, Laura Bergus1, is doing a regular podcast, Not Quite Quorum, with fellow Councilor Oliver Weilein. But last week he was off touring Canada. So she had some “local government expert” slub on for a short episode.

We covered the amazing Sycamore Greenway, water quality, city news feeds, sunsets, neighborhood sounds and animals, and bike infrastructure.

Take a listen and subscribe in your favorite podcast app.

  1. She’s my wife, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. ↩︎

The Gazette is Selling

Yesterday The Gazette, one of a dwindling number of locally owned news operations around the country, announced a planned acquisition by an out-of-state conglomerate.

The Gazette‘s announcement:

Minnesota-based company is entering into an agreement to purchase The Gazette and 11 community newspapers, the companies announced jointly Tuesday morning.

The agreement between Tom Pientok, president & CEO of Folience Inc., and Mark Adams, president and CEO of Adams MultiMedia (AMM), is expected to be finalized by Dec. 1, at which time most employees of The Gazette will join Adams MultiMedia. Employees of The Gazette were told of the transaction Tuesday morning.

That more change was coming to a local newspaper is not a surprise. As Paul Brennan notes in the The Little Village, there have been signs of needing to change coming:

In recent years, the Gazette has experienced the same financial difficulties many newspapers have. In 2021, the company sold off its printing plant, laying off 62 employees in the process. Printing of the paper was outsourced to Gannett Publishing Services in Des Moines.

In January, the Gazette announced it was cutting back its print edition to three days a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.

It’s easy to suggest this is another terrible consolidation of local media, and the values of the organizations ownership deeply matter, but I’m willing to wait and see how this plays out.

I said “news operation” above intentionally. Folience, Inc., the local, employee-owned company that owns The Gazette owns a newspaper and lays out daily editions, but only prints the newspaper three times a week. And, I’m told, editors have resisted pursuing digital products like email newsletters. All of this is bizarre to me.

So they’re a news operation, and the sooner they realize that, the better. To survive, the digital product has to come first, and if Adams MultiMedia can help pull the local operation around to that, it only helps.

I should note that I do not currently pay for The Gazette after being a proud subscriber for year for, really, one simple reason: the website could not keep me logged in, so I finally got fed up with having to log in ever time I followed a link instead of just getting to read the story. I was delighted when I discovered This One Weird Browser Trick that let me just…read the news. Give me convenience, and I’ll pay for it.

Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air.

Cara Buckley, “reporting from a bus in Iowa City,” for The New York Times:

Iowa City eliminated bus fares in August 2023 with a goal of lowering emissions from cars and encouraging people to take public transit. The two-year pilot program proved so popular that the City Council voted this summer to extend it another year, paying for it with a 1 percent increase in utility taxes and by doubling most public parking rates to $2 from $1.

Ridership has surpassed prepandemic levels by 18 percent. Bus drivers say they’re navigating less congested streets. People drove 1.8 million fewer miles on city streets, according to government calculations, and emissions dropped by 24,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. That’s the equivalent of taking 5,200 vehicles off the roads.

Iowa City’s fare free buses have been a big success. Popular and an easy win. The program started as a two-year pilot and was recently granted another year. Are we ever going to just say “yeah this is a thing we do”? This graf suggests not this big win isn’t something the City of Iowa City considers a core service:

Darian Nagle-Gamm, the city’s transportation director, said that the unknowns in federal and state funding, along with proposed property-tax changes, meant that the city would most likely have to review the program every year. But there was eagerness for fare-free buses to stay, she said. “The transit system is one of the greatest tools communities have to combat climate change and reduce emissions,” she said. “You can make a pretty immediate impact.”

Of course there are questions about the budget ever year, but it sure is maddening that things like free buses, which are a success and directly align with the City of Iowa City’s strategic plan, get put in the category of something to revisit every year while, um, other things we spend millions of dollars on every year go forward without question (at least until recently).

The year-by-year assessment is a little bit disconcerting since the long-wished-for Sunday service was approved by the City Council and then implementation was delayed and then everyone seemed to forget.

Not Sure How They Deal With Criminals In Your Town, But ’Round Here We Use A Restorative Justice Process

The Onion:

Out here, we prefer settlin’ disputes the old-fashioned way, by addressin’ the harmful impact of a crime head-on, then determinin’ what can be done to repair that harm while holdin’ the person who caused it accountable for their actions. Lemme tell ya, we don’t take kindly to strangers whose idea of restitution relies solely on dehumanizin’ punishment.

The Right Number is Zero

At its work session on Oct. 16, 2025, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors took the next step toward building a new jail. Megan Woolard of The Gazette:

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors is moving forward with plans for a new sheriff’s office and 120-bed jail. The decision comes after more than a year of disagreement between board members over the size of the proposed facility.

Board members have advocated for a number of beds ranging from 92 to 140 after Shive Hattery completed a space needs assessment in the summer of 2024 that called for an $80 million, 140-bed facility.

Following discussion at a work session Thursday, the board agreed to move forward with plans to build the footprint of a building with enough space for 140 beds but to only include 120 beds in the initial build.

Lots of the conversation around a new Johnson County jail has led to the suggestion that folks who, like me, question the findings of the “needs assessment”1; have some basic requests for what should be included; or ask “why this” are people who simply hate cops and are opposed to everything “new jail.” So let me first be clear about my stance:

The current building is not a workable long-term solution.

There are real concerns, and doing nothing fails to address those concerns.

There are real concerns about long-term commitment to current and expanded diversion efforts, and asking for trust fails to address those concerns.

Induced demand for incarceration is real.

The right number of beds is zero.

I’m not dumb. Zero isn’t realistically achievable tomorrow or next year or in a decade or within the theoretical lifespan of this new facility. But we know goals matter, and we have plenty of examples of setting the goal of zero and working towards it. Shooting for zero is much different than planning for 120 with room to expand to 140.

We do this ’til we free us.

In short, I oppose this proposal.

How Many Beds is 120 Beds?

Figuring out how many beds a specific number of beds actually is can be surprisingly tricky. Here’s Woolard:

When the current jail was opened in 1981, it was built with a capacity for 46 beds and the ability to add bunks to increase capacity to 92. However, Sheriff Brad Kunkel said the jail has an operational capacity of 65.

The number of beds in the current jail was increased to the doubled number soon after it opened. When we see a formal proposal for the voters, it will be important to ask how much additional capacity the Johnson County Sheriff will be able to add.

Is a 120-bed jail really a 240-bed jail? How do we know? If we can’t offer a straightforward number for capacity now, how can we state it so matter-of-factly for the future?

If our goal is zero, we would build no more than the 92-bed facility. We would bring inmates outside of the jail for enrichment and other programs, invest heavily in social supports we know work and find more, and build our capacity for new and existing diversion programs.

We Shouldn’t Build Extra Cages Just In Case

Supervisor Rod Sullivan offered road salt as an analogy, both on his blog and in the meeting, to suggest it’s simply common-sense to build extra capacity for the future:

It just makes sense. You have friends coming over for dinner. Is it better to have a little too much food, or not quite enough? We deal with this all the time in county government. Do we want to have a few too many ballots, or not enough ballots? Do we want to have a little extra salt and sand, or not enough? Do we want to have a little extra money to get through the year, or not enough? The answers are obvious! The same thing applies to jail beds. Do we want to have a few extra, or not enough? I want a few extra!

You can argue, “if you build it, they will just fill it.” But there is no evidence to back that up. Look at my earlier examples. Do we put down extra salt and sand just because we have it? No, we carry it forward. Do we spend extra money just because we have it? No, we carry it forward.

But using road salt (a supply) and cages for people (capacity) are very different. If we’re going to stick with a road analogy, a more appropriate one is road capacity.

Induced demand is real. Adding lanes brings more traffic just because we have the space.

Sullivan and Kunkel both rightly point out that the county doesn’t have precise control over the jail population, which depends on other law enforcement departments, judges, prosecutors, state law and many other factors.

In complex systems like transportation planning and criminal justice, capacity pressures are part of what encourages the various players in the system to make the choices we want to move towards.

If our goal is zero, we would leverage the pressure jail capacity brings to incentivize and build new programs that are alternatives to incarceration, such as mediation, restoration and transformation. We hear that we are discounting victims when we stand against jails, but our current system doesn’t truly offer closure for many victims; what if we built something that could offer closure and repair at scale?

It Often Makes Sense to Rent

We hear that this extra capacity is about saving taxpayers money by reducing the cost transporting inmates to and from other facilities. These costs are not cheap. Woolard again:

As a result, the county has been housing inmates outside of Johnson County and has spent nearly $16 million doing so over the last 20 years. Though generally, the county is spending less and sending fewer inmates out of county each year. […]

Between 2021 and 2023, the county paid an average of $387,000 a year to house inmates out of county, according to county data.

In 2024 the county spent around $376,000 housing inmates out of county, averaging around 18.5 inmates housed of county per month, according to Sheriff’s office data.

Those numbers reflect housing costs and do not include the expense of staff time or transportation-related costs.

Additionally, the cost to house out of county is subject to change depending on the rates other facilities set.

Keep in mind that an up-to-$99 million jail also doesn’t include the expenses of staff time.

Meanwhile, Supervisor Jon Green wants to think about the next 50 years (“The number that I keep returning to is 2075 because I think we have a responsibility to put forth a facility that potentially could serve the county for five decades,” he said at that meeting).

It’s not as simple as saying the next 50 years would cost us a back-of-the-envelope $40 million in inmate transportation, but we could transport a lot of inmates for the $99,000,000 proposed for the jail.

Sometimes renting makes more sense than buying, especially if our goal is to reduce the number of people we’re incarcerating and with Johnson County’s trend line going down. One of the tenets of buying instead of renting is that you eventually get back money when you sell it, but we’re not selling this jail when we’re done.

If our goal is zero, we would prefer the temporary investment of transporting folks at the times the jail is over capacity and work toward ways to reduce the occurrence of those times.

We Must Fund Diversion

There’s also a disagreement around funding other public safety priorities, including the diversion efforts the initial Shive-Hattery report called necessary. The agreement on Thursday was to give the literal leftovers from a $99-million bond to affordable housing. Woolard:

While the board has discussed the role of social services and diversion measures throughout the process of working toward the future of the sheriff’s office and jail, Thursday’s work session was the first time the possibility of directing bond funds to affordable housing efforts has been brought up.

I don’t think this is a fair characterization. Diversion and social services have literally been at the center of this entire discussion.

We continue to hear that we’re doing diversion — and we are — but we don’t know what the ceiling is, and don’t seem to be particularly interested in finding it.

That’s a real shame.

If our goal is zero, we would start here — how do we get the most people out of cages — and then decide what we have left for our jail.

If our goal is zero, as it rightly should be, this whole exercise has been backwards, and until we approach this problem as one about rehabilitation and restoration and love, we will fail to solve it.

Aiming for zero isn’t optimism. It’s hope. Hope that victims can get real reparation for the harms they’ve faced. Hope that families can stay together. Hope that we invest in things that keep people safe. Hope that we can build systems centered on love instead of retribution. Hope that we stop investing in an inhumane system of state-sanctioned violence.

Someday.

  1. I don’t think calling the Shive-Hattery report a “needs assessment” properly frames it. The report isn’t a wish list, either, even though it includes one. I will refer to it as the Shive-Hattery report. ↩︎

Why I Voted for Amy Hospodarsky

I posted this back on Oct. 6 on social media, but failed to add it here. Early voting is going on Nov. 1, 2 and 3, and Election Day is Nov. 4, 2025.

The choice is so clear for the Iowa City Council District B seat on Nov. 4: Amy Hospodarsky.

As a fellow lover of Iowa City, my path has crossed Amy’s many times, in ways both personal and professional. I know her best through our overlapping board service, first with The Englert Theatre and currently with the South of 6 Iowa City Business District.

I’ve come to know her as the person who will ask the important questions, say the hard thing, and make sure there is accountability for follow through.

Just showing up to meetings and voting isn’t enough. No matter what a candidate claims, it’s not action. We need people who will champion action that advances our shared values and make decisions based on facts, not allegiances. Amy Hospodarsky is one of those people, and I’m proud to vote for her for Iowa City Council.

Also on my Nov. 4 ballot:

Iowa City City Council At-Large: Clara Reynen

Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors: Ruthina Malone and Jennifer Horn-Frasier

Local Option Sales Tax Ballot Measure: Yes