Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird announced Friday that her office will reinstate payments for emergency contraceptives, like Plan B, for victims of sexual assault and rape, but will no longer reimburse victims for abortions.

The announcement marks the end of the “full audit of victims services” announced by Bird shortly after winning the 2022 election against former Attorney General Tom Miller, the Democrat who held the office for 40 years.

That review involved the suspension of state payments for emergency contraception – and in rare cases, abortion – for victims of rape. The state’s Sexual Assault Examination Payment Program gave reimbursements to providers for these medical services through the Iowa Victim’s Restitution Fund, fees collected from people convicted of crimes.

That review involved the suspension of state payments for emergency contraception – and in rare cases, abortion – for victims of rape. The AG’s office formerly paid for these services through Iowa’s victim restitution fund, fees collected from people convicted of crimes. Bird said that while there is no state law requiring the practice of paying for these treatments, she said she would reinstate part of the payment program moving forward.

“I agree that Plan B contraceptive prescriptions for victims to prevent pregnancy should be reimbursed,” Bird said at the news conference. “The office will reimburse all pending victim claims for Plan B contraceptives and continue reimbursing providers moving forward. However, Iowa will not use public dollars to pay for abortions.”

The announcement ends the pause on payments for emergency contraceptives — meaning roughly 400 pending reimbursement requests from the review period will be paid, Bird said. She also emphasized that while the payment program was halted, no victims were denied or delayed in getting services because of the review.

She also said that during this period, there was only one reimbursement request through the AG’s office for an abortion. This request will be denied.

Bird, an outspoken abortion opponent, had faced months of criticism from Democrats and reproductive health advocates for the long process in finalizing the review and announcing whether the reimbursements would be reinstated.

Auditor Rob Sand, the only Democrat to currently hold statewide elected office in Iowa, said during a news conference in March that Bird was attempting to avoid “accountability” for pausing payments for sexual assault and rape victim services by categorizing the review as an “audit.” Neither the auditor’s office nor a third party conducted a review of victims’ services for the AG’s office, he said — adding that if an audit was happening, payments would not need to be paused.

“Every city, every county, every school district in the entire state of Iowa gets an audit every year,” Sand said. “None of them have ever suspended business while waiting for their audit to get completed. This is a policy decision the attorney general made.”

In a news release Friday, Sand reiterated this point and said there was no justification provided for the need to cease reimbursements.

“For a year, Iowa’s Attorney General inflicted even more trauma on rape victims just for politics,” Sand said in the statement. “We know because her report doesn’t provide a single legal or financial reason to have withheld payments for emergency contraception.”

Mazie Stilwell with the Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa said Bird’s decision to pause payments was unnecessary, and turned hundreds of sexual assault survivors “into political pawns.”

“Politicizing sexual assault survivors is absolutely reprehensible and sickening,” Stilwell said in a news release. “These are real people who are vulnerable and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Although state-paid emergency contraceptives will resume, those in need of abortion care will now have to shoulder the cost. This is the last thing survivors should have to worry about. It’s not right, and we must demand better from the people elected to represent us.”

Bird said the office encountered “some roadblocks” in the process of making the review and report, including problems involving missing documents or having to reconstruct certain grants. She thanked John Gish, section chief for the Victim Assistance Section at the office for taking on much of the work involved in the process.

In addition to the emergency contraceptives decision, Bird plans to make or request several changes based on the audit. These recommendations include raising pay for certified sexual assault nurse examiners from $200 to $400 per exam, the first increase since 2005, in addition to providing transportation reimbursement for trained nurses to travel for conducting exams.

Bird said these measures could ease problems caused by the shortage of nursing staff across the state. There are roughly 470 sexual assault nurse examiners currently certified in Iowa, Bird said, adding that she believed the steps would both better compensate nurses and ensure victims do not encounter long wait times.

“We do not want someone who’s going to a hospital to report an assault to go away without an exam,” she said. “They might not come back, or key evidence might be lost. We know of at least one victim who waited more than eight hours at a Polk County hospital before seeing a sexual assault nurse. Victims deserve immediate care, and our heroes in nursing deserve our support.”

Other measures include restarting notification services required by state law for victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse. The system was eliminated under Miller in 2019, Bird said, and the office is working to create a new system. The service, working with Iowa’s judicial and prison systems, would send victims a text message or other message when a requested protective order has been issued, and 30 days before it expires.

While the new system is not up yet, Bird said she hired a coordinator to build the new system.

Bird also said the office is fixing problems with the Iowa Victim Notification System, a currently operational program that notifies victims when their abusers are released from custody. The review found that the current notifications are often inaccurate, telling victims that a person had been released from custody when they were being transported between different facilities, like county jail and state prison.

“Victims have already been through enough and shouldn’t be scared by false notifications,” Bird said. “We worked with our partners to correct the messages and to keep victims informed about the perpetrator’s status.”

In addition to state-level changes, Bird also repeated her call for the federal government to stop a discussed cut of victim services funding provided through the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). Iowa receives roughly $5.5 million in VOCA funding each year for a variety of victim services — 42%, more than $2.3 million, of which would be cut if Congress does not act, she said.

“That cut, if it’s allowed to happen, will go through to the advocacy agencies that we have all across the state serving victims,” she said. “It will cause personnel cuts, it will mean less support for victims, especially in rural Iowa. It will mean fewer resources for healing.”

Verizon customers in Iowa were among those affected by a national outage on the company’s mobile network Thursday and Friday.

States in the Midwest and West experienced the highest number of outages, according to Verizon Support.

“We are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers, primarily in Midwestern and Western states,” a spokesperson for Verizon said in an email to USA TODAY on Thursday.

In a response to a complaint on social media the company’s support account shared a similar message.

Multiple customers reported cell network outages on social media.

At 6:39 p.m. ET Thursday, the website Down Detector recorded 12,599 reports of outages, by 9:54 p.m. the number of reported outages fell to 5,831.

Where is the Verizon outage in Iowa?

Dubuque experienced some of the highest reports of outages in Iowa, according to Verizon’s page on Down Detector. There were over 200 reports of outages for Verizon customers in Dubuque on Thursday afternoon. By the evening the outage number dropped to 12, with another 12 reports trickling in Friday morning. Other areas of the Midwest including Chicago and Omaha also had high reports of outages.

“Some customers, primarily in Midwestern and Western states, experienced a service interruption for several hours yesterday,” Verizon support told the Register. “Our engineers worked quickly to solve the issue.” The account reported most service in Iowa was restored by 3 a.m. CT.

If you are still experiencing service issues in Iowa, Verizon’s support team recommends power cycling your phone.

Kate Kealey is a general assignment reporter for the Register. Reach her at kkealey@registermedia.com or follow her on Twitter at @Kkealey17.

IOWA CITY – Following a historic day in 2015 at Kinnick Stadium, when the Iowa wrestling program upended the No. 1-ranked Oklahoma State in front of the largest crowd for a collegiate wrestling dual ever, Tom Brands went out to a tailgate at the football practice facility for the upcoming Minnesota-Iowa football game.

A man named Bob Nicolls approached him. They chatted briefly, trading comments as people do at a tailgate. Nicolls was insistent that he could be of help, as a Hawkeye wrestling fan since his days as a freshman and then as a real-estate businessman in operating Monarch Investments. He approached Iowa wrestling’s director of operations at the time, Luke Eustice.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Nicolls told Eustice.

Eustice passed that message to Brands. Not long after, Brands gave Nicolls a call. He and Eustice were headed to Colorado in a car, driving hundreds of miles to have a visit at 7 a.m. the next morning.

After that meet-up, Brands and Eustice walked out of Nicolls’ office in Colorado with a $50,000 check for the Hawkeye Wrestling Club and a $1,000,000 commitment to helping build a new practice facility for Iowa. The Iowa wrestling room was named after Bob and his wife, Kathy Nicolls. That commitment later expanded to $3,000,000.

The facility itself, which was officially unveiled Thursday, is named the Goschke Family Wrestling Training Center, after Doug and Ann Goschke. When Brands met with the Goschke family at their home to discuss the project, he remembers their family dog dashing over the kitchen table and sitting on his lap.

It’s little stories like that of Brands meeting passionate Hawkeye wrestling fans that led to this $31 million facility for the Hawkeyes, all of which has been privately funded.

“In this endeavor, I’ve made a lot of friends,” Brands said. “I’m a pretty gracious person when it comes to being thankful and showing gratitude, so they got me as a friend whether they want to or not.”

‘We have to continue to lead.’

Before you can even reach the main doors, you have to pass the Dan Gable statue with his fist raised high, moved from his original location by the northwest entrance and directly above where the Dan Gable Wrestling Complex was.

Upon entry, you’re greeted with what is dubbed a “Hall of Champions” with team and individual trophies. Also on the first floor are coach and staff offices. Those offices have windows that look down onto the wrestling mats on the lower level.

The first level also includes individual men’s and women’s lounges that house areas to relax, but also nutrition stations and other amenities to promote physical and mental well-being.

On the lower level is where much of the competing is set to occur. Upon going downstairs, the floor opens up to a six-mat-wide wrestling room. Ropes dangle from the ceiling along with televisions plastered on the wall.

The most important feature of that wrestling room, Brands said, may be the layout. Adjacent to the mats and directly underneath where the mats lie is the strength and training center. Athletic training areas to treat injuries and fatigue are accessible right off the mats, as well as bikes with tablets stationed around the outskirts of the mats.

Brands said that was a part of the old facility, an idea introduced by Dan Gable. Brands added the additional athletic training portion to that flow. The idea centers around being able to move from one workout to the next with no delay. Having the athletic training space close by requires and reminds athletes to check in when needed.

Brands and the staff received pushback for trying to implement that once again in the new facility, but that was a deal breaker.

“Notice the flow, it’s by design,” Brands said. “It will get better with time. We will learn how to use it better. We will put more powerful and more credentialed athletes in this space and win championships.”

Down on the lower level are also men’s and women’s locker rooms and individual ice bath and sauna areas. Prior to this facility opening, the women were required to share locker-room space with the opposing teams in Carver-Hawkeye Arena since the previous facility did not have space.

“This personal space allows us to mentally and physically prepare for the battles ahead,” Iowa women’s wrestler Nyla Valencia said. “It ensures we can focus entirely on our performance and well-being.”

From that floor, Hawkeye wrestlers will be able to prepare and race down the tunnel to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for matches.

With the price tag large and a 38,000 square-foot building to build in, the Hawkeyes’ programs have the nation’s premier wrestling facility. That comes at a time when the inevitability of revenue-sharing has prevented other programs from moving forward with projects of their own and will continue to do so in the future.

Iowa is not interested in being in an arms race with other programs, Brands said. This was another step for the men’s program to return to a championship level after missing out on a team trophy this past season, and just as important, a place the women’s program can continue to dominate as it did in its inaugural season.

“We have to continue to lead,” Brands said. “I don’t think we’re in a race to put great facilities in the ground to be ahead of the competition. You look at what’s necessary. We still have a lot of work to do. Our donors dug deep, they stepped up. Now, we got to perform.”

Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23