As momentum builds for a measure to increase Iowa's gas tax to pay for the state's roads and bridges, a taxpayer-advocate group is one of the lone voices opposing the plan.

Lindsay McQuarry, policy director for Iowans for Tax Relief - a Muscatine-based not-for-profit that supports reduced state-government spending and lower taxes - said her group won't be alone for long.

"It is an uphill battle, but it's something that Iowans are going to be outraged by once this picks up steam," McQuarry said. "I don't think this is something that has the support that the special-interest groups would like to lead people to believe."

A proposal before the legislature would have the Iowa Department of Transportation find $50 million in savings for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The plan would then increase the gas tax by 8 cents a gallon over the next two years, starting in 2013. It would also increase registration fees for new vehicles from 5 percent to 6 percent of the purchase price. The increase would generate about $180 million a year when fully implemented, lawmakers said.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller ranks second in the nation for receiving campaign money from lawyers in the past five years and is among the friendliest to trial lawyers' agenda, according to a report released October 25 by a conservative think tank.

But Miller denounced the report as inaccurate and called it a "cheap shot" from a corporate interest group. He said that campaign-finance data citing $338,223 in contributions in three weeks came from a discredited report, that claims about him keeping a low profile are "ridiculous," and that more-favorable data about Iowa's business climate are "conveniently omitted."

"If the Center for Legal Policy were subject to Iowa's Consumer Fraud Act, we'd probably bust them because of their outright misrepresentations," Miller told IowaPolitics.com. "This report is riddled with misrepresentations and omissions of important facts."

The battle for control of the Iowa Senate got underway Monday, with Republican Mary Rathje announcing her candidacy for a vacant Senate seat and a gay-rights group emphasizing the importance of the November 8 special election.

"This is it. We are facing a special election, and marriage equality hangs in the balance," wrote Troy Price, executive director of One Iowa - the state's largest gay-rights advocacy group - in an e-mail to supporters. "If we lose the seat, we face a very real chance that a marriage ban will pass a vote in the Senate. In Iowa, marriage has never been threatened like this before."

Swati Dandekar (D-Marion) resigned Friday from the Iowa Senate to take a $137,000-a-year job with the three-member Iowa Utilities Board, which regulates Iowa's utilities. The move threatens Democrats' majority in the Iowa Senate, now reduced to 25-24.

The turn of events is key, because Democrats' slim majority in the Iowa Senate prevented passage this year of Republican priorities ranging from a public vote on same-sex marriage to sweeping property-tax reform to a bill that Democrats criticized as bringing an end to collective bargaining.

(Editor's note: This opening section of this article links to other IowaPolitics.com stories on this topic. All the articles can be found here.)

Residents of Riverdale successfully sued their city three times after being denied access to public records and meetings, and now have a case before the Iowa Supreme Court.

The Ottumwa school board recently went into closed session to interview three finalists for school superintendent, leading to distrust among some residents who questioned whether the selection process was fair.

And Erich Riesenberg, 41, of Des Moines said he can't get information about stray pets taken into the city's animal-control unit, now that the shelter is operated under contract by the Animal Rescue League of Iowa, the state's largest not-for-profit animal shelter.

In battles statewide, Iowans are fighting for access to government meetings and records. While state and federal right-to-information laws are on the books to help, Iowans say they're still running into roadblocks.