Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird tours Western Smokehouse plant, speaks with business and law enforcement ahead of upcoming legislative session | The Hawk Eye – Burlington, Iowa

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Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird tours Western Smokehouse plant, speaks with business and law enforcement ahead of upcoming legislative session | The Hawk Eye – Burlington, Iowa

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird got a special tour of the Western Smokehouse Partners facility in Burlington on Friday, as she enters her third year on the job with some legislative goal in mind.

The tour was part of Bird’s annual efforts to speak with Iowans in all 99 counties of the state.

Prior to the start of the tour, Bird and Andy Swanson, director of external relations for the Office of the Iowa Attorney General, got to sit-down with Des Moines County Sheriff Kevin Glendening, Amy O’Brien, president of the Greater Burlington Partnership, and Jeremy Hess, director of economic development for the Greater Burlington Partnership, Zach LaVelle, maintenance manager at the plant, and Roland Vorwaldt, plant manager, to learn more about their backgrounds, the Burlington facility, their employees, the work they do, and Western Smokehouse’s products.

Vorwaldt and LaVelle led the group as they toured the facility and got a peak at all the sectors of the plant, including where the meat is processed, packaged, sent off for distribution, and more.

The Burlington plant, located at 3800 West Ave in the Flint Ridge Business Park area, processes 60,000-65,000 pounds of meat every day, opened in the Burlington facility in May 2023, and employs nearly 200 people.

The smell of spicy meats was lodged on the party’s nostrils throughout the tour, but Bird said she used the tour invitation as another way to learn more about the people she serves throughout the state.

“I’m from western Iowa, from a farm, and I know that it’s important to get out of Des Moines and I want to be able to serve everything one of our 99 counties,” Bird told The Hawk Eye. “And I do that by making sure I’m there.

“I was glas the Sheriff was able to join us here today. He’s been a great partner, and you’ve got great law enforcement here and (a great) county attorney.

“But also your economic development folks. Because as things come up, I want Des Moines County and Burlington to reach out to me if there’s something I can do to be helpful. I want to serve the whole state.”

Prior to Friday’s tour, Bird said she did not know much about the process of making beef sticks, let alone the work and business Western Smokehouse has done in southeast Iowa since opening their Burlington plant.

“It’s really impressive,” Bird said. “You see the team that is working here to make beef sticks and other types of meat sticks. How impressive with everything they’re doing and just how much product they make right here. You wouldn’t necessarily know it from the outside. And it smells good in here.”

With the arrival of a new year and a legislative session about to begin, Bird says protecting kids who have to testify in court, raising penalties for assaults on law enforcement, and protecting Iowan pensions are all at the top of her legislative priorities for 2025.

“We had a supreme court decision in Iowa that came down that makes it so that many kids won’t be able to testify by closed circuit TV,” Bird said. “We’re the only state in the nation that does that.

“And as a prosecutor, I know how important it is for kids who have been traumatized to be able to testify by closed-circuit.

“So to fix that, we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear that kids can be protected in court.

“We have proposed that. We’ve got great support from all over the state.

“I know it’s important as a mom and a prosecutor that the kids who witness violent crime or been a victim of a violent crime and are traumatized can testify. If they’re not able to do that, what will happen is we will have violent criminals walking free or getting lesser penalties than they deserve.”

Bird added that, should this constitutional amendment pass, a judge will be the one to decide if a child has been traumatized or otherwise met the standard required to allow a child to testify via closed-circuit TV.

As for her push to increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement, Bird says she is advocating for the increases in response to an increases seen nationwide in attacks against police, jailers, and other professionals, including firefighters.

“As a former county attorney, I would see (assaults on law enforcement) in my own county,” Bird explained.”And I thought that the penalties needed to be increased so they get taken much more seriously.

“When a criminal will assault a law enforcement officer, that shows how dangerous they are and our law enforcement deserve our respect and our protection.”

Bird said she wants Iowans to know that their pensions will be there for them when they retire.

“People who have a pension, and this applies to state government pensions because that’s the way our law works, (but) they need to know that their pension will be their for them when they retire,” Bird said.

“So we make it clear that the proxy advisors that advise on investments, when they’re making advice about shareholder votes, they need to do that based on return on investment and that pension being there for the retiree, not based on experimental politics or ‘woke’ social policy, and we’ve seen that happening.

“We want to make it very clear that Iowa pensions will be protected and that they’re going to look at what’s best for the people that have that pension be there.”

Bird clarified that no Iowa-based companies have engaged in the type of policies her proposal is seeking to prevent from potentially hindering investment earnings.

But Bird did cite the goals of some companies or pension fund managers of allowing issues like achieving “net zero climate goals” to take priority over ensuring retirees have their pensions.

“It’s always good when companies do things that are cleaner and better, but some of these radical net zero goals make it so that the return on investment is reduced a great deal.”

Since taking over as Iowa Attorney General in 2023, Bird has filed a number of lawsuits against the federal government and others in efforts to push back against federal policies that she and others deem to be unfair, unconstitutional, or detrimental to Iowans or others throughout the nation.

But Bird conceded that with Donald Trump about to return to the White House, her office might not be fighting multiple battles in court with the federal government for much longer.

“I’’m a strong supporter of President Trump,” Bird said. “But I think we’re heading in a completely different direction. And he has a mandate for change to get the country back on track and to fix some the things that were broken by the prior administration.

“So I’m very thankful that he was elected, but we’re going to be working with the administration to help and do everything that we can do, because a lot of these lawsuits are things that we found out about and knew we had to stand up against…

“It’ll take a while. It won’t happen overnight.”

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