Red Oak Police report the arrest at around 8:40-p.m. Thursday, of 20-year-old Vanessa Michelle Jensen, of Red Oak. Jensen was taken into custody in the 400 block of E. Joy Street, on a charge of Simple Assault. At last report, she was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $300 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – The U-S House has passed a proposal from Iowa Congresswoman Cindy Axne that would force big corporations to disclose if they’re outsourcing jobs and using so-called tax havens in other countries to avoid paying U.S. taxes. “Last year 55 profitable US corporations paid no federal corporate income taxes,” Axne says. “I can tell you that’s not what happened on Main Street back in my district in Iowa. They paid their taxes.” The plan would require corporations with shareholders to publicly disclose how many people it employs on a country-by-country basis.

Axne and others say it would show how big multinational corporations open a store front in a low-tax jurisdiction to avoid paying U-S taxes where all their sales and profits are made. “This cost the US more than $50 billion per year in taxes,” Axne says. “It hurts all of the businesses who are doing the right thing — those that are on Main Streret in all of our communities, including many small businesses across this country who don’t have a subsidiary in Barbados just to avoid taxes.” This attempt at revealing which corporations are using off-shore tax havens was included in a wide-ranging package that narrowly cleared the U.S. House this week.

Another Axne proposal was included that would require require public companies that are owned by investors to disclose more information about pay and benefits, training programs, workplace safety and how much turnover there is in the corporation’s workforce. Axne says stockholders deserve that information. “By the way, these are sets of data that are already being collected by most public companies,” Axne says. “The pandemic, though, has only driven home how important it is for companies to make sure that their workers stay safe and healthy for their company’s success. It’s obviously that companies with workers that are more engaged will do better, which is why investors want this information.”

Axne, a Democrat from West Des Moines, says Democrats from Virginia and Maryland are sponsoring companion legislation in the U.S. Senate.

(Radio Iowa) – A bill that became law this week increases the state tax credit for volunteer firefighters from 100 to 250 dollars. Another approved by the governor last week will, for the first time, let voters approve a property tax levy to support the operations of a local fire department. About 90 percent of the firefighters in Iowa are volunteers and Iowa Firefighters Association president Nick Riley of Traer says legislators recognized volunteer firefighters took on new risks during the pandemic as emergency responders, transporting Covid patients to hospitals.

“Their interest in us has greatly increased throughout the pandemic,” he says, “which was greatly, greatly appreciated by everyone.” Riley says the association is hoping to take another step in 2022 and get legislative approval of a pension fund that volunteer firefighters could contribute to. Riley says the Iowa Firefighters Association has found a financial institution that will manage it.

“We can sit down with some of the legislators that had some of those big questions of: How will it be run, how will it funded, what will a fire fighter at the end of his service — how can he get his money?” Riley, like many, has a family history in the profession. His dad was a firefighter for 33 years in Mount Pleasant. His brother served for 15 years and Riley has been a firefighter for the past 12 years. The Iowa Association of Firefighters represents 15-thousand volunteer and career firefighters.

(Radio Iowa) – One person was injured in a truck-train accident in northwest Iowa. A semi with a gravel dump trailer collided with a Burlington Northern-Sante Fe train at about 1:15 p-m today (Thursday) at a crossing about three miles west of Le Mars. The semi was coming down a hill heading eastbound and the train was going northbound.

The driver was airlifted to a Sioux City hospital in serious condition. The Plymouth County Sheriff says the crossing signals were working at the time of the accident.