Iowa car dealers have in less than two weeks sold at least 2,300 vehicles under the popular "Cash for Clunkers" program, but more than half of those dealers were making sales conditional as they waited to get reimbursed about $9.7 million from the federal government and to see whether the Congress would authorize $2 billion more for the program.

The Senate voted 60-37 on Thursday night to approve the additional money, and President Barack Obama signed the legislation on Friday. The bill cleared the U.S. House last week.

"I'm not complaining," said John McEleney, a Clinton, Iowa, auto dealer who's chair of the National Automobile Dealers Association. "I'm very pleased; dealers in general are very pleased we have this program. It gives us some confidence that business is turning around. There's pent-up demand, and people are willing to buy cars. We would have preferred much less bureaucracy, but we understand it's a government program."

While fellow Democrats Governor Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes were hurling insults at each other several days ago about the state budget, I picked up the phone and called Illinois Senate Majority Leader James Clayborne.

"Are the rumors true?" I asked. Was Clayborne really thinking about running for governor in the Democratic primary?

Over the previous several days, quite a few people had said they'd spoken with Clayborne, and all claimed that he sounded like a candidate to them.

But Clayborne would only say that he was still just talking to people, mulling it over, and considering his options. No decision yet.

Moments after members of the Illinois State Board of Education voted to cut the board's budget by a net $180 million last week, an activist group called Voices for Illinois Children sent out an urgent e-mail to supporters.

The group sketched out the pain the cuts would cause (the net cut actually disguises a $389-million reduction to individual program lines). A one-third cut to early-childhood programs, for example, could mean the loss of preschool for 30,000 children.

"This budget immediately erases five years of progress in early learning," the group's interim president was quoted as saying in the e-mail. Voices has an interim president because its founding president is now Governor Pat Quinn's chief of staff. The group was ecstatic when Jerry Stermer took Quinn's top job, but the champagne bottles are long empty.

On Thursday, July 23, business leaders announced the realignment of Quad Cities economic-development organizations. This will mean the end of DavenportOne and the Quad City Development Group, and the beginning of the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce and Quad Cities First.

mp3 mp3 file of the announcement event (33 minutes)

Effectively, this shifts control of external marketing and business-attraction efforts from the Quad City Development Group and its board to two chambers of commerce: the Illinois Quad City Chamber of Commerce and the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce (the successor to DavenportOne, whose staff and resources will be merged into the new entity).

The two chambers' chief executives will run Quad Cities First -- a new organization, taking over the role of the Quad City Development Group -- and the chambers will together nominate 10 of its 17 board members. (Seven city and county governments will each appoint one member.)

Dissatisfaction with the effectiveness and fragmentation of regional economic-development efforts has been brewing for a long time. Three years ago, the Reader published "Note to Self: Why Is the Business Community Threatening Itself About Regional Economic Development?" about a letter that clearly set the stage for this shift.

The Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce has "endorsed" the new economic-development model but will not merge into the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce.

Other resources:

DavenportOne releases about the Iowa Quad City Chamber of Commerce (1, 2) and the economic-development model.

Argus/Dispatch coverage.

Quad-City Times coverage.