DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Attorney General’s Office says the state will receive nearly $4.7 million over five years as part of a multistate settlement with a firm that worked with opioid manufacturers to promote addictive painkillers. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said Thursday that the settlement will be used to address problems caused by opioids, including paying for substance abuse treatment services for Iowans.

Iowa is part of a coalition of 53 attorneys general who collectively won $573 million in a settlement with McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s largest consulting firms. The settlement will be split among 47 states, five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA— A Council Bluffs man, 52-year old Thomas Donald Boatright, entered a plea of guilty, Wednesday, to four counts of coercion and enticement of a minor. His plea was received in Council Bluffs U-S District Court. Boatright is scheduled to be sentenced in Council Bluffs, on June 4th.

Thomas D. Boatright

Boatright worked as a foreign exchange coordinator and host for a program in which students from other countries enrolled in a year of high school in the United States. The students were assigned a host family to live with while they attended high school. In February 2020, a student reported that a hidden camera was discovered in Boatright’s bathroom where two minor foreign students were assigned to live as part of this program.

An investigation unveiled that Boatright used his cellular phone and computer to engage in conversations with the students prior to and after arriving in the United States that were sexual
in nature. Boatright used his position as a foreign exchange coordinator and host parent to coerce and entice the students to engage in sexual activity.

The case was investigated by the Council Bluffs Police Department, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Offices for the Southern District of Iowa.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Officials at Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines have announced the name of a male giraffe born there in January: Raza. The zoo says in a news release Thursday that the name was the overwhelming pick of thousands of people who voted among three names selected as possible choices. The zoo says 45% of the vote went to Raza over the other choices: Mosi and Ikemba. The zoo says Raza means “hope.”

The calf will be on public display for the first time starting Thursday afternoon and was expected to be available for public view on a limited basis in the coming days. Zoo officials said viewing times would increase in the coming weeks.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – A Pottawattamie County man was sentenced this week to prison on a firearms charge. 56-year old Patrick Daniel Kampe, of Council Bluffs, was sentenced on February 3rd in Council Bluffs United States District Court, to 60 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release for prohibited person in possession of a firearm. Kampe pleaded guilty to the charge on September 21, 2020.

On May 12, 2020, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Task Force Officer received a tip regarding a felon with warrants living in Council Bluffs who was in possession of a firearm. Kampe was located at the targeted residence and arrested. Officers located a loaded Glock 26 9mm pistol, small amounts of methamphetamine, and drug paraphernalia in the home. The investigation was conducted by the Council Bluffs Police Department and the ATF. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

And, the U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa has announced 39-year old Brian Keith Messer, of Omaha, Neb., was sentenced in Council Bluffs United States District Court, to 24 months in prison to be followed by 10 years of supervised release for failure to register as a sex offender. Messer pleaded guilty to the charge on October 16, 2020.

Messer was convicted in Nebraska in 2016 of attempted sexual assault on a child in the third degree. As a result of this conviction, Messer is a sex offender and is required to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”). In October 2018, Messer moved from Nebraska to Iowa and did not register in the State of Iowa as required.

The investigation was conducted by the United States Marshals Service and the case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has announced its new special agent in charge of its Omaha Division that covers all of five Upper Plains states. The agency named Justin King as the division head overseeing the division’s 11 offices, according to a news release sent Thursday. King began his new duties on Monday, replacing Richard Salter Jr., who retired from the DEA in January.

King’s territory includes Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and a handful of counties in western parts of Wisconsin and Illinois. King is a 19-year veteran of the agency and comes to the Omaha Division after serving three years as assistant special agent in charge of the Little Rock District Office.

As reported earlier, Iowa 3rd District Democrat Congresswoman Cindy Axne entered self-quarantine on Monday, and is now seven days past exposure to positive case. On Thursday (today) Representative Axne said in a statement: “I’m pleased to share that I received a negative test result for COVID-19, and I’m still not showing any symptoms for the virus.” She says “My team and I have talked to everyone who joined us last Wednesday to let them know about the exposure, and some thankfully have told us that they too have received negative COVID-19 tests in the past 48 hours.”

Axne adds, “I hope that this unfortunate diagnosis on my team can serve as a reminder to folks about the ongoing threat that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to our state ­– and how important it is for us to follow the advice of our public health experts. I am confident that my office’s policy of using masks, following social distancing, and engaging in rigorous contact tracing allowed us to avoid a more dangerous outcome from last week’s public events.

As my team member recovers from COVID-19, I want to thank all those who reached out to me and my office. I will continue to operate with caution by conducting my work remotely this week – participating in vital hearings and critical floor votes in the U.S. House that focus on the priorities that matter to Iowa.”

(Radio Iowa) – The presidents of Iowa’s three state universities say their budgets have taken a hit during the pandemic and they’re asking legislators for an extra 18 million dollars in the next state budgeting year, which begins July 1st. University of Iowa president Bruce Harreld says despite federal assistance to cover pandemic-related costs, there’s still a hole in the university’s budget. “People ask: ‘Isn’t it a lot cheaper to operate online?’ Well, no,” Harreld says. “We haven’t closed any of the buildings. We’ve actually had to change out the air handling equipment…I can’t think of a more expensive way to operate. We have nightly cleaning of our facilities, for obvious reasons, so we’ve added more economic activity to keeping the campus open and safe and yet we don’t have as many people in classrooms. This is a very difficult time.”

University of Northern Iowa president Mark Nook says 80 percent of U-N-I classes are being held in person, but they had to spend money to set up new classroom space — with microphones and speakers so students could hear professors wearing masks. “It has meant a lot of changes on campus,” Nook says. “We took many of our spaces, including spaces like the ballroom in our union, which is not an academic space at all, was able to divide that into three classrooms…using lobbies and lounges that are in our residence halls for spaces as well.”

Nook says if legislators are able to provide the five-and-a-half million dollars in additional spending for his university, U-N-I’s tuition rate will remain flat. Iowa State University president Wendy Wintersteen says the extra funding from the state is essential, because when it comes to administrative costs, there’s not much to cut. “We are all very efficient and you get to a place where you cut more, you really start to impact — in a very negative way — the quality of the work done at the institution,” Wintersteen says.

Wintersteen says I-S-U’s administrative costs are 75 percent less per student than the University of Minnesota and 35 percent less than the University of Wisconsin.