The Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission will not promote a new casino in Polk County - or anywhere else - but will move forward with plans to hear proposals from five other counties whose voters have approved new gaming facilities, commission members said Thursday.

"We owe it to those five counties to give them the best shot and the best look and that's how we will proceed," said Commission Chair Greg Seyfer at a meeting at the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort.

Commissioner Kate Cutler added that it's not the board's role to encourage communities to apply for new gaming licenses. "We're not going to promote additional applications," she said. "That issue should be put to rest."

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) heard an earful in four town-hall meetings held this week across the central part of the state, with a majority of the large crowds telling him to put the brakes on Democratic plans for health-care reform.

At congressional town-hall gatherings across the country, opponents of the Democrats' health-care-reform proposals have been loud, angry, and in some cases involved in physical altercations with those who are supportive of President Barack Obama and Democrats. U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) experienced some of that shouting and booing during his meetings in Des Moines and eastern Iowa.

The largely conservative and Republican audience that attended Grassley's town-hall meetings in Adel, Afton, Panora, and Winterset were forceful in their condemnation of Obama and in some cases said they would vote against Grassley in 2010 if he does not stop his efforts to fashion a bipartisan health-care compromise. They occasionally mocked the few dissenting Democratic and liberal attendees who implored Grassley to embrace a government-run insurance option as a part of health-care reform.

But for the most part, the events were civil and respectful - and full. The meetings in Adel and Winterset were moved out of the public library and into a park after it became clear the large crowds would overwhelm those venues. (About 300 showed up for a morning event in Winterset; nearly 1,000 braved the heat in Adel.) The meetings in Afton and Panora were indoors and featured standing-room-only crowds of around 300 and almost 500, respectively.

"I don't want a government-run plan," Grassley said in Afton to enthusiastic applause, using a line he repeated throughout the day, each time to loud cheers.

When he was arrested early February 11, State Representative Kerry Burt (D-Waterloo) brought up his position as a state representative and firefighter, and that he had been drinking at a reception attended by Governor Chet Culver, according to a police report and video released this week. Burt faces a charge of Operating While Intoxicated.

According to the report, Burt tried to tell the officer that he couldn't be arrested. "I better show you this. ... I'm a representative," Burt said. "I'm also a firefighter. Is there professional courtesy?"

The report revealed that Burt's preliminary breath test showed his blood-alcohol level at 0.131, above the state's legal limit of 0.08. When the officer asked Burt how much he had to drink, he replied that whom he was drinking with was more important than how much he had to drink. He then said in a soft voice, "The governor."

For the fewer than 10,000 people of Lyon County (in far northwest Iowa), the Iowa Racing & Gaming Commission's decision to accept applications for new casino licenses for the first time since 2005 was life-changing.

"This is so huge that no one can appreciate how important this would be to our growth," said Jeff Gallagher, president of the Lyon County Riverboat Foundation. "We think that the casino, through the resort, through the golf course, through the convention center, is going to reshape life in Lyon County. ... We're just terribly excited about what can happen over the next 10 years."

Two recent studies concluded that Lyon County is the most compelling site for a new casino, with high incremental impact and low cannibalization.