Gene Tinker smelled his own demise in June. He was the worker who oversaw animal feeding operations for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Representatives from the Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa Pork Producers were in Director Chuck Gipps office complaining that Friday about Tinker educating county boards of supervisors what their capacity might be in objecting to hog confinement sitings.
He was not invited to the meeting.
Afterwards, he asked Gipp if he still had a job. Gipp laughed it off.
On Monday, Tinker said, his supervisor told him to quit educating boards.
Three weeks later he was gone. A victim of budget cuts, they said.