Art Cullen's Pulitzer Prize Analysis: 2 Stories

I chose to analyze the Big, Bold and Dead editorial because it told an interesting story about Gov. Terry Branstad and a legislative proposal that ended his political career.

The governor proposed to skim money from a sales tax committed to school infrastructure over the next 20 years to dispense out money for development in the water quality after the fallout of the Des Moines Water Works lawsuit opposed to Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties. The first attitude to the lawsuit was to belittle the waterworks for interrupting their way of doing business. The second response was to force a ton of money at the problem. The agri-industrial community has tried to convince it will take $6 billion or $10 billion or $15 billion to protect Iowa’s surface water from nitrate pollution, which scares the taxpayers. However, the waterworks looks to pursue some arrangement of the drainage districts, which scares the agri-industry. The lawsuit still will proceed.

I don't believe the idea of skimming sales tax money devoted to schools should have been used for water quality issues. There are other possible ways to deal with things like this. For example, a possible cut back on other possible budgets within Iowa. This could be potentially harmful to a child's education. Why would you want to disrupt that? It will make many taxpayers, parents of those children, angry.

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I chose to analyze the Farm Bureau County editorial because the Farm Bureau and Iowa Corn Growers have pledged to cover the legal bills of Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties as they defend themselves against a lawsuit filed by the Des Moines Water Works over pollution of the Raccoon River.

The Farm Bureau is setting the terms of the legal defense and not the elected officials of the county.

The supervisors believe there is no choice but to allow Farm Bureau to pay the bills and call the shots. In addition to this, they already called one shot: in the Farm Bureau engagement letter proposed to the counties, stating the counties shall not claim that the farmers are liable for pollution claims in the lawsuit in order to hold drainage districts or the county itself harmless. The Farm Bureau forecloses that possibility by exempting farmers or farm landowners from their aim. In addition to this, Iowa elected five county supervisors and a county attorney. The supervisors believe that the Farm Bureau’s interests are the county’s interests. Good News! The US Supreme Court delivered in a similar case to Farm Bureau involving Chesapeake Bay — that regulations may be applied to threatened watersheds.

To conclude, I think it was a smart choice for the Farm Bureau to get involved as a way of keeping their name out of the water situation and out of any possible illegal ties.

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