The Iowa Attorney General has stepped into the debate over when city council and park board vacancies can be filled, advising auditors statewide they do not have to wait until the next "city" election to place vacancies on the ballot.

Admissions and revenues in fiscal 2010 fell to 10-year lows at the Isle of Capri Casino in Bettendorf, according to Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission reports.

Yearly admissions to the riverboat permanently anchored on the Bettendorf riverfront totaled 1.15 million gamblers in fiscal 2010, down 43 percent (nearly 900,000) from fiscal 2000.

With wife out of town, dog doesn’t get the amount of exercise to which he’s become accustomed. He’s 13, slower than he used to be, but still just as curious, so I can’t take him on five-mile perambulation that does wife and still get to work on time.

So last Saturday he had plenty of energy and we set out. Once he realized that we weren’t just going around the block, he became so enthusiastic that he grabbed the leash in his mouth and began to pull.

Halfway through the 1,391-page U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed "transport rule," regulators finally zero in on the reason for the legislation: Upwind state sources contributing to air quality degradation in a downwind state should bear substantial responsibility to control their emissions.

After years of legal delays, the EPA Tuesday (July 6) filed the proposed rule to limit interstate transport of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in 32 "Eastern" states, including Iowa and Illinois.

See the U.S. versus Slovenia soccer game June 18? That’s the one during which ref Koman Coulibaly called back a U.S. game-winning goal. Big deal certainly in a contest of such importance, but it happens and the United States team ended up playing through anyway.

Once again, the city of Bettendorf is planning to award tax incentives to a developer, this time for an office building on prime real estate adjacent to Interstate 74.

The deal would rebate a total of $250,000 in city, school district and county taxes over a 10-year period back to the developer. The incentive with Plantation Development sets a bad precedent and should be turned down.

That’s the light tower on Michigan Island in the Apostle archipelago on Lake Superior. This National Seashore area holds the highest concentration of light towers in North America. They take a variety of forms and shapes, are in good condition, and all quite picturesque. The day after this visit, we sailed to Devil’s Island, the northernmost. We’d hoped to go ashore there to, but the winds were shifting so we listened to the NOAA weather report. Big storm coming. Strong winds from the south.

A Scott County judge ruled Tuesday (June 15) in favor of the city of Bettendorf over when appointees to city council and park board vacancies must stand for election.

Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz informed city officials earlier this year that newly appointed park board member Frank Baden should be on the ballot this fall in the November general election. The city appealed the decision to Scott County District Court arguing past practice and state statute did not require Baden to face voters until the next city election in the fall of 2011.

In the June 10, 2010 New York Review of Books, noted British American physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson reviewed a new book by Nobel Prize winner physicist Steven Weinberg. The tone is largely positive, but toward the end Dyson makes an interesting observation.

He says that Weinberg juxtaposes “militant atheism” on the one hand and absolute faith in the ability of science to explain everything on the other. He tells us that Weinberg believes that science will soon have developed a “Final Theory” with a set of mathematical rules precisely describing every aspect of our universe.

A new five-year transportation improvement plan approved by the Iowa Transportation Commission includes $31 million for the Interstate 74 corridor/bridge reconstruction.

The cost to replace the I-74 bridge and make corridor improvement from 23rd Avenue, Moline, to 53rd Street, Bettendorf, has been estimated at more than $1 billion. More than $20 million already has been spent on bridge design, engineering work, the environmental impact study, replacement of the Lincoln Road overpass and right-of-way acquisition.