Sioux City Journal from Sioux City, Iowa • A1

DESIGNER: matt.aRRoyo@NwI.com Northwestern Kami Kuhlmann hopes to make another national championship appearance. SPORTS B1 Weighing in Sioux City Six have good results in healthy living contest. HEALTH D3 Thursday, May 3, 2012 sErVING rEadErs sINCE 1864sIOuXCITyJOurNaL.COM MOBILE aLErTs Stay connected on the go. Get Breaking News alerts delivered to your cell phone. Text the phrase to 724665 to sign up today.

inDEx WEATHER: More on page A2 and at siouxcityjournal.com TODAy Storms SATuRDAy Partly sunny fRiDAy Mix of sun, rain Are the Secret Service agents who were put on adminis- trative leave still receiving pay for doing nothing? Well, if they are, no different than our congressmen. dennis altman, Meriden, Iowa Classifieds C4 Health D1 Obituaries C2, 3 Features D5 Lotteries B4 Opinion A6 Markets A7 World C3 THE mini iowa legislative leaders reach education deal By DAViD PiTT The Associated Press DES MOINES Iowa lawmakers reported prog- ress Wednesday in their talks over two large chunks of the state budget, as legislative leaders said they had reached a deal on an education spending package and negotiators agreed to remove several disputed items from the health and human services budget. Leaders immedi- ately release details about the tentative education agreement, but they said a bill could be ready for de- bate as early as Monday. Education spending repre- sents more than $850 mil- lion. Meanwhile, conference committee members met to discuss the health and human services budget, which funds programs for public health, the elderly, food assistance, child sup- port enforcement, Medic- aid and mental health.

It spends about $1.6 billion. Sen. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, said the group made progress in its two meetings Wednesday and was expected to meet again Thursday. have a couple of more meetings of work to he said. mov- ing House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, a Republican, said once agreement is reached on those two areas of spending, the remaining budget pieces should fall into place quickly.

The office, the Republican-led House and the Democrat-controlled Senate generally agree on spending about $6.24 bil- lion from the general fund, up about 3.8 percent from the current year. Con- tention usually stems from the underlying individual budgets, how money is al- located within them, and millions of dollars spent outside the general fund. Other areas of the bud- get assigned to conference committees are admin- istration and regulation, justice, economic devel- opment, the court system, and the Rebuild Iowa Infra- structure Fund, which gets money from gambling and other sources and uses it to fix state-owned buildings. Kraig Paulsen Mike Gronstal Find complete Legislative coverage at siouxcity journal.com/ legislature 84TH ASSEmBLy Measure could be ready for Monday debate BuDgET, PAgE A5 cOLD cASE Honoring the brightest Tim Gallagher says more to the Sioux City Downtown Kiwanis dinner than just honoring the top 5 percent of graduating classes. LOCaL a4 fighting fraud Christie Vilsack tells a Sioux City audience that if she wins a seat in Congress, work to fight government waste and fraud.

LOCaL a3 inSiDE By mOLLy mOnTAg SIOUX CITY Ricarda Till- man-Lockett left Sioux City as a teenager for big-city life in Memphis, Tenn. She was married within a few years. The couple had a baby boy. Tillman-Lockett, 22, was re- ported missing Feb. 19, 2007, when she pick up her son, then 11 months old, from a babysitter.

Police and family members never heard from the Win- nebago, native again. Her body was never found. The loss torments her moth- er. even hardly talk about it no more, because it A mother in mourning Foul play suspected in Winnebago, death Journal photo by Tim hynds Francesca Medina talks about the disappearance of her daughter, rica Tillman-Lockett, on Monday in sioux City. The case is being investigated as a homicide.

cOLD cASE, PAgE A5 Nebraska audit finds pension flaws By gRAnT ScHuLTE The Associated Press LINCOLN A handful of Nebraska public school employees have not paid into the pension fund when they should have, and one worker im- properly collected retire- ment benefits while con- tinuing to work for a dis- trict, according to a new state audit. Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley said Wednesday that the cases were isolat- ed. But he said his auditors see similar flaws each year when they review the Ne- braska Public Employees Retirement Systems. look for that kind of thing when we do this each he said. does occur from time to time.

isolated, but the kind of thing we look for. It shock me to find them again next year. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of people participating in these a a ta te audit tested 3 8 ees from 12 a districts. It found that one employee, whose name was not re- leased, received $33,280 in retirement benefit payouts through February, while collecting a regular pay- check from a school dis- trict. Five others did not contribute to the fund as required, and two did not begin contributing as early as they should have been.

The audited pension fund covers school district em- ployees, judges, and mem- bers of the Nebraska State Patrol. Phyllis Chambers, the director, said state officials who over- see the pension fund have most cases were isolated, auditor says de plenty of beer, but little history By RuSSELL cOnTRERAS The Associated Press ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. what Cinco de Mayo has become in the U.S.: a celebration of all things Mexican, from mariachi music to sombreros, marked by schools, politicians and companies selling every- thing from beans to beer. And what Cinco de Mayo is not, despite all the signs in bar windows in- viting revelers to drink: not Independence Day, and barely marked in Mexico, except in the state of Puebla, where the holiday is rooted in a com- plicated and short-lived 1862 military victory over the French. But let that spoil the party.

In Houston, ballet folk- lorico dancers will ring in Cinco de Mayo by stomp- ing to traditional Mexican music in a city park. New York City will close parts of Spanish Harlem and Queens for street fairs as Mexican flags flap from apartment fire escapes and car antennas. Albuquerque honors the day with a Ma- riachi concert and free cab rides for those who show their love for Mexico with a little too much Dos Eq- uis or tequila. Even West Des Moines, Iowa, has an all-day festival with Mexi- can food, artwork and live music. The associated Press amir ahmadian, foreground, and Grand Murphy eat their burritos while competing at the second annual for Cinco de Mayo last year in Los angeles.

Mike Foley PEnSiOn, PAgE A5 cincO DE mAyO, PAgE A5 DIAMOND DREAMS At a glance A woman who left Sioux City as a teen- ager was reported missing in February 2007. not been heard from since and her body has never been found. Her loss still torments her mother. ricarda Tillman- Lockett.