Funnel week extravaganza on KHOI Radio

plus details on another "Office Lounge" Zoom

Feb 20, 2024

∙ Paid

On any given day, I would rather talk about state government than national politics. That’s especially true when the Iowa legislature is in session. So I was excited Dennis Hart and I were able to spend almost the entire February 19 edition of “Capitol Week” discussing news from the state House and Senate.

Before I recap the show, a quick reminder: the Iowa Writers Collaborative holds an “Office Lounge” Zoom call on the last Friday of each month. It’s happening on February 23 from noon to 1 pm Central time.

These informal Zoom meetings are open to anyone who is a paying subscriber to any of the Iowa Writers Collaborative columnists. At the bottom of this post, I put the Zoom link behind a paywall for people who pay to subscribe to this column. If you don’t pay me through Substack but have donated to support my work at Bleeding Heartland some other way (credit card, PayPal, Patreon, Venmo, or personal check), please email me and I will send you the Zoom link.

I will continue to share our radio shows in this space, but you can also download “KHOI’s Capitol Week” through your favorite podcast platform, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Also, KHOI’s website has the full archive going back to 2021.

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State lawmakers were incredibly busy before a major legislative deadline on February 16, and we did our best to cover a wide range of topics.

We began with some bills the full Iowa Senate considered and passed on February 19, the first day of floor debate in the chamber. Senate File 2311 is the latest Republican effort to undermine State Auditor Rob Sand, Iowa’s only remaining Democratic statewide elected official. The GOP fast-tracked the bill and didn’t consult with Sand’s staff before drafting the legislation. It cleared the chamber in a party-line vote;
Sand held a news conference last week to publicize the first example of a state entity withholding documents from his office, as Republicans enabled last year when they passed Senate File 478. The Board of Parole refused to provide records indicating whether staff had followed state law when handling cases;
Also on February 19, the Senate approved Senate File 2251, Governor Kim Reynolds’ proposal to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months. The bill was controversial because it would lower the income threshold for Medicaid coverage, so thousands of pregnant Iowans would no longer qualify for Medicaid at all. Three Democrats (Sarah Trone Garriott, Eric Giddens, and Zach Wahls) joined Republicans to vote for final passage;
In a party-line vote, Senate Republicans approved Senate File 2252, allowing the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services to administer a program that will direct state funds to crisis pregnancy centers (those are not medical facilities and are geared toward discouraging abortion). Democrats slammed the lack of guardrails in the “MOMS” program, noting that a similar program in Texas facilitated lots of waste, fraud, and abuse;
The Senate also approved some non-controversial bills on Monday, including one of the governor’s priorities. Senate File 2204 would tighten regulations on foreign ownership of farmland, and would force foreign entities to provide more details to the Iowa Secretary of State, with hefty fines for failure to comply;
Moving on to last week’s news, we couldn’t talk about every policy bill that got through the “funnel,” but we did our best to convey the state of play on many issues. The House and Senate Education Committees advanced different versions of bills to overhaul Iowa’s Area Education Agencies. They are now numbered House File 2612 and Senate File 2386;
House File 2611 is a slightly different version of the governor’s proposal to raise teacher pay. It covers school support staff as well. The House has also proposed increasing state funding for K-12 schools by 3 percent, but it’s not clear whether the Senate will agree;
Several bills of concern to the LGBTQ community are still in play. House File 2389 is the governor’s latest attempt to discriminate against LGBTQ people and especially transgender Iowans. I covered this bill in more detail at Bleeding Heartland;
While we were on the air last week, the Iowa House was holding a public hearing on that discriminatory bill (link to video);
Several bills that are designed to discourage abortion without directly regulating the practice are moving this year. One is the Senate bill mentioned above, regarding the crisis pregnancy centers. Another is House File 2617, which would require schools to show students in grades 7-12 a fetal development video like “Meet Baby Olivia,” produced by an anti-abortion group;
The governor’s proposal to allow Iowans to obtain hormonal birth control pills without a prescription is alive (House File 2584). The Iowa Senate approved a similar proposal last year, but it never came up for a vote in the House;
Another broadly anti-abortion bill is House File 2518, which enhances criminal penalties for causing a pregnancy to end non-consensually. Crucially, the bill would replace Iowa Code references to “human pregnancy” with “unborn child”;
Both chambers have advanced legislation to increase penalties for “SWATting” calls to law enforcement (Senate File 2161 and House File 2165);
House File 2546 is one of several attempts to restrict children’s access to obscene material online;
The House State Government Committee advanced a bill that would repeal Iowa’s gender-balance requirement for boards and commissions (House File 2540);
Both chambers have advanced bills that would reduce the number of state boards and commissions. Senate File 2385 tracks closely to the governor’s recommendations, and would eliminate more than 100 boards. It has generated much more controversy than House File 2574, which preserves dozens of boards the governor wants to scrap;
One of the oddest education-related bills is House File 2548, which would prohibit foreign language teachers from incorporating gender-neutral language in a language that has a gender structure. I avoid editorializing on the air at KHOI, but I can tell you that I simply do not believe State Representative Bill Gustoff’s assertion that teachers in Iowa are being threatened with discipline for this reason. To me that sounds as credible as the “litter box in school restrooms” hoax;
House File 2567 and Senate File 2340 are similar attempts to criminalize illegal immigration on a state level. I’m skeptical that these bills are constitutional;
Yet another voter suppression bill moved quickly through each chamber’s State Government Committee last week. House File 2610 and Senate File 2380 would allow federal candidates convicted of felonies to appear on the ballot. But its more far-reaching provisions would make voting with absentee ballots more difficult in many ways;
Senate File 2374 is shaping up to be the biggest union-busting bill of the 2024 session. Republicans want to make it easier for employers to decertify public sector unions;
Both chambers are working on bills that combine restrictions on handheld devices while driving with a ban on law enforcement traffic cameras. I’m skeptical that either House File 2595 or Senate File 2337 will get across the finish line;
I have my eye on House File 586, a transportation bill that would require drivers to yield to bicycles in crosswalks, and also yield to other human conveyances like wheelchairs, scooters, baby carriages, and so on;
Of particular interest to the KHOI listening area near Ames: House File 589 would require the State Transportation Commission to prioritize improvements to U.S. Highway 30, one of the longest and most-traveled roads in the state;
Both chambers have advanced bills that respond to an Iowa Supreme Court ruling from last year. The court enjoined a provision on electric transmission lines, saying it was passed in an unconstitutional way in 2020. House File 2551 and Senate File 2372 would enact the same policy as a stand-alone measure;
The House Judiciary Committee advanced House File 2097, which would prohibit the governor from regulating “a place or practice of worship for any reason,” even during a state of emergency;
We had a few minutes to talk about bills that didn’t make it past last week’s deadline. Remember, while these proposals are all “dead” in theory, some may come back as amendments to other bills later in the session;
House File 2082 would have removed gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. I think this one is not coming back;
The latest attempt to resurrect the death penalty, Senate Study Bill 3085, got through subcommittee but was never brought before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Even if the upper chamber had passed this bill, it would go nowhere in the Iowa House;
State Representative Skyler Wheeler wasn’t able to get his colleagues on board with House Study Bill 633, which would make local elections partisan;
At Bleeding Heartland, I wrote about the majority party’s refusal to advance bills geared to helping feed hungry children;
House Republicans abandoned the much-ridiculed proposal to force K-12 students to sing the national anthem in school every day;
Three versions of bills that would give city councils more control over public libraries failed to advance. However, I wonder whether something along these lines may be attached to a different local government bill later;
We had just a few minutes to talk about non-legislative happenings. The Iowa Board of Medicine approved revised administrative rules related to the near-total abortion ban the state wants to enforce. I wrote much more about these rules at Bleeding Heartland;
Moving to Congressional news: all four Iowans in the U.S. House voted again to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The resolution passed by a single vote, a week after failing by a single vote;
U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were part of the bipartisan majority that approved a bill containing aid to Ukraine and Israel, without border security provisions. It’s not clear whether the House (which is in recess until February 28) will bring this bill to the floor;
Finally, as I reported at Bleeding Heartland, Grassley was unrepentant last week after the Justice Department indicted a former FBI informant at the center of unfounded bribery allegations. Grassley did his best last year to create the impression that President Joe Biden is corrupt. Now he’s claiming credit for forcing the FBI to investigate the claims (not true, agents looked into it in 2020).

Whew! Thank you for reading or listening. You can learn about some bills Dennis and I didn’t have time to discuss by reading the post-funnel roundups in the Des Moines Register, Cedar Rapids Gazette, and Iowa Capital Dispatch.