A "Capitol Week" anniversary, and another busy week for Iowa lawmakers

Feb. 5 show is online

Feb 06, 2024

When I signed an employment agreement with KHOI Radio in December 2020, I didn’t expect to have my own show. I thought I would occasionally call into “Local Talk” with updates on what was happening at the Iowa legislature. But KHOI decided to experiment with a 30-minute program about Iowa politics.

Dennis Hart and I were on the air live for the first time on February 1, 2021. We weren’t sure KHOI would continue the show beyond the 2021 legislative session. But we’ve been going strong now for three full years, and as Dennis pointed out last night, we have not missed a single program. We really enjoy working together and appreciate all the listeners who have kept us going.

The whole “Capitol Week” archive is always available for free through KHOI’s website. Audio from the February 5 edition:

1×

0:00

-30:02

Please share with a friend who may enjoy KHOI’s 30-minute show about Iowa politics.

I’m thrilled to have the Iowa caucuses behind us, so we can focus almost our entire show on state legislative or state government happenings. Topics Dennis and I covered this week:

Last Wednesday, an Iowa House subcommittee voted down House File 2082, which would have removed gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, while redefining gender dysphoria as a disability subject to some civil rights protections. I explained why the bill was so contentious and the subcommittee’s action was unusual;
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the capitol to oppose the bill and cheered its demise. At Bleeding Heartland I wrote more about the bill’s sponsor, State Representative Jeff Shipley, who complained that his critics did not “behave civilly”;
The celebrations were short-lived, because on Thursday the governor’s office introduced House Study Bill 649, with serious implications for Iowa’s LGBTQ community. The bill would define “sex” as a person’s sex assigned at birth, and terms like “man” and “woman” in ways that exclude transgender or nonbinary people. Most controversially, the bill would require transgender Iowans to have special birth certificates and driver’s licenses, indicating their sex assigned at birth as well as their new “sex designation”;
We discussed some of the constitutional concerns about the governor’s bill, which states that “Separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.” I wrote more about the potential legal problems at Bleeding Heartland;
On February 5, Republicans on an Iowa House subcommittee advanced House File 2139, which would prohibit schools from disciplining students, teachers, or staff for legal names or pronouns they use when referring to another person. During the subcommittee, critics pointed out the bill seems to contradict last year’s Senate File 496, which allows parents to designate the names and pronouns they want schools to use for their own children;
Last week, Republicans on an Iowa Senate subcommittee advanced a shell bill on state aid for K-12 school funding, with no firm number on a percentage increase for schools. For many years, the legislature would approve school funding bills 18 months in advance. The GOP trifecta changed the process so the legislature would pass a supplemental state aid bill during the first 30 days of each year’s session, covering funding for the school year that begins this July. The legislature is going to miss that deadline this year, which is problematic for school districts, which need to finalize their budgets by April 15;
Republicans on an Iowa House subcommittee advanced House File 2031, which would require schools to show students fetal development videos, beginning in the youngest grades. Anti-abortion advocates support the bill as a way to discourage abortion, while others said the video that inspired the bill, Meet Baby Olivia, includes inaccurate medical information. Educators expressed concern about putting very specific curriculum requirements in state law, rather than leaving it up to the state Board of Education;
There was high drama at the statehouse last Wednesday, as Iowa House and Senate subcommittees considered Governor Kim Reynolds’ proposal to overhaul Iowa’s Area Education Agencies. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest fights of the 2024 session;
Republicans on a House subcommittee surprised most of us in the room by declining to advance the governor’s bill. The next day, House Education Committee chair Skyler Wheeler confirmed his committee will not move the proposal forward;
Republicans on the Senate subcommittee did advance the governor’s AEA bill (Senate Study Bill 3073), but State Senator Lynn Evans began the meeting by literally throwing the governor’s original proposal in the trash, and made clear he wasn’t satisfied with the amended version either;
Leaders of the Iowa House and Senate Ways and Means committees rolled out a plan to accelerate income tax cuts and eventually eliminate the state’s income tax. Their bill is somewhat different from the governor’s proposal;
The Iowa House Judiciary Committee approved House File 2128, which would exclude any undocumented immigrants from accessing in-state tuition. I attended the subcommittee on this bill, where no one spoke in favor and lots of people opposed the bill, including immigrants and representatives of Iowa’s state universities and community colleges;
Governor Reynolds made another trip to Texas over the weekend and held a news conference at the capitol on Monday to announce that she will use American Rescue Plan funds for a third deployment of Iowa state troopers to the southern border. She didn’t specify the date or length of that deployment. Reynolds voiced support for the new GOP position that Congress should not pass a bipartisan Senate bill on the border and immigration policy;
Democrats in the legislature highlighted some of their priorities last week. Senate Democrats introduced a package of bills on reproductive rights and health care access, including birth control and postpartum Medicaid coverage as well as a constitutional amendment on abortion;
House Democrats rolled out a package of economic measures that would target relief toward working people, especially those who will not benefit from the GOP’s proposed income tax cuts. Among other things, the bills would raise the minimum wage, expand the annual sales tax holiday in August, and increase child care assistance. Although Democrats don’t have the numbers to advance these bills, they want to highlight policies they support instead of spending the whole legislative session talking about what they oppose;
We noted the passing of former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey;
We discussed the highlights from the latest round of campaign finance disclosures by Iowa candidates for Congress. In the first district, Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan raised more than U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks for the second quarter in a row. Miller-Meeks has more cash on hand;
In the second district, U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson’s fundraising far surpassed that of Democratic challenger Sarah Corkery;
In the third district, Democratic challenger Lanon Baccam out-raised U.S. Representative Zach Nunn. Nunn has more cash on hand. The other Democratic candidate, Melissa Vine, is far behind in fundraising at this point;
In the fourth district, U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra has more than $2 million in the bank, way ahead of his Democratic challenger Ryan Melton. Kevin Virgil is challenging Feenstra in the GOP primary, but he only just launched his candidacy last month, so won’t file a fundraising report with the FEC until April;
In part because of their strong fundraising, Bohannan and Baccam landed on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “red to blue” list last week, indicating IA-01 and IA-03 are among the top targets for Democrats trying to retake the U.S. House;
The Polk County Attorney’s office is charging Michael Cassidy with a felony under Iowa’s hate crime statute. In December, Cassidy destroyed the statue at the center of the Satanic Temple’s display near the state capitol rotunda.

Thank you for reading and listening!

A quick reminder: I publish lots of articles and commentaries at Bleeding Heartland that don’t appear on this Substack or in our radio show. Most recently, Tom Walton looked under the hood and found that Governor Kim Reynolds moved the goalposts in order to (falsely) claim that the Future Ready Iowa program met its goals ahead of schedule.

If you don’t want to miss anything published at the main site, please subscribe to my other free email newsletter, called Evening Heartland, which goes out a couple of times a week.