(*phrase credited to Jay)
Today Jay Villwock and I were joined by Dave Thrasher on our trip to the Iowa Capitol. The first thing we did was engage in a casual conversation with the governor's office manager, Leo Hough, who said there are four pay grades for the job of manager of the Iowa film office and that this would be the basis for possible salary negotiations. He said the job is an "at-will" job, not a contract arrangement.
A source within the Iowa legislature said he "heard" that the new IFO manager is a woman but had no other details to share.
We know from speaking with Senator Bill Dotzler and Rep. Dave Deyoe that the budget for the IFO is still alive and in a joint house/senate conference discussion.
What remains a mystery is the identity of the new Iowa film office manager. The head of Iowa Cultural Affairs, Mary Cownie, revealed in recent weeks that she has made her selection, yet we are all still in the dark because not a peep has been made concerning who Mary has chosen.
Because the Iowa film office has been stagnant for four years, not dead, but in hibernation on some forgotten state of Iowa shelf, I sense that despite the best efforts of Senator Dotzler, the film industry is what a legislator called it when it was shut down, "Iowa's whipping boy", who has been comatose for far too long. If the identity of the manager of the film office is not made public and if the film office continues to remain helplessly lifeless until the end of the current fiscal year, the funds allotted to the film office may likely be blown by being infused into various Iowa Cultural Affairs projects. This would mean another year of going through this sluggish political process of ensuring proper funding and putting a film office manager to work.
Now you should better understand what Jay meant when he coined that little phrase.
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