Faced with the temptation of handling thousands of dollars, an increasing number of city clerks in small-town Iowa have used taxpayer money to buy items including alcohol, laptop computers, gas grills, pumpkin pies, cat litter, and self-improvement books.

"To me, it's just very frustrating," said Carrie Kirchhoff, city clerk of the 433-resident town of Lewis in southwest Iowa. "It makes the rest of us clerks look bad that really try to do a good job for our cities. And then it gets the citizens all worked up, too. How do they go on in the same community and hold their head up? It's unreal."

The number of fraud cases in Iowa cities with populations of fewer than 700 has grown from seven cases from 2000 through 2005 to 32 cases from 2006 through 2011, said State Auditor David Vaudt.

When the public and private sector are combined, Iowa was fourth in the nation last year in a ranking of states most likely to have losses from major embezzlement cases, according to a study by Massachusetts-based risk-management company Marquet International.

A bill expected to be taken up the legislature's Government Oversight Committee aims to clamp down on the fraud through increased audits and oversight.

Iowa lawmakers have once again crushed a proposal to expand the state's 1978 bottle bill.

A panel of lawmakers on February 22 heard testimony on House Study Bill 652, which would expand Iowa's beverage-container-control law - the anti-litter law more commonly known as the "bottle bill," - to include water bottles and sports drinks.

But the bill's floor manager made clear that the legislation isn't going anywhere this year.

Jody Miller played online poker for three to four years before the government cracked down on the practice a couple of years ago.

Before that, Miller said, online poker was technically never legal, but the laws were rarely enforced. Increased government enforcement, he said, made it more difficult to play and caused some online poker Web sites to shut down. Some players saw their assets frozen and become tied up in online accounts.

Miller, 34, of Indianola, said it's time for Iowa to legalize online poker.

"I think it's an opportunity to capture some funding if you can legalize it - for the state to capture the revenue. Now's the time to do it," Miller said. "I think people are doing it anyway."

Iowa Senate State Government Committee Chair Jeff Danielson (D-Cedar Falls) said the federal government has done a poor job of telling Americans what is legal in terms of online poker.

Danielson said he plans to introduce a bill this month that would legalize online poker in Iowa. He said the nation had a tremendous rise in poker activity until 2009. At its peak, he said, Iowans were spending close to $100 million outside the state on online poker.

City and county officials expressed frustration and a sense of helplessness January 24 over the lack of money to repair crumbling roads and bridges.

The local-government leaders argued strenuously at a Transportation Day 2012 event at the Wallace State Office Building that it's time for the state to increase the gas tax to upgrade infrastructure. But Republican Governor Terry Branstad insisted the state must first show taxpayers it's being efficient with money it already has.

Keokuk County Supervisor Mike Hadley said his county will have to close five bridges this year - including bridges that connect rural and agricultural areas to market towns - because they're in such disrepair. He said rural America can't grow if it doesn't maintain its infrastructure.

"We can't cut any more pencils and paper clips," Hadley told the governor. "This has gone on too long. We have to act. Nobody wants to do this, but we have to ... . We can't continue to just close down our infrastructure, because it never reopens."