Governor's big speech, new legislative session, and Jan. 9 "Capitol Week"

Full-court press to pass school vouchers

Iowa House chamber by Nagel Photography, available via Shutterstock

It’s one of the most exciting times to be a political reporter in Iowa, and I delayed my “Capitol Week” recap so I could bring you highlights from Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State address as well.

THE GOVERNOR’S BIG SPEECH

For decades, Iowa governors delivered their annual remarks to a joint legislative session on Tuesday morning. Reynolds moved the event to prime time in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic heightened public interest in state government. She’s continued to schedule her remarks to reach a wider audience, even though she barely touched on the pandemic this year, or last.

I’ve embedded the Iowa PBS video below and uploaded the full text at Bleeding Heartland. Reynolds hardly deviated from the prepared remarks, so you won’t miss much by reading rather than listening.

Reynolds began with a victory lap, claiming critics of various Republican policies had been proven wrong. For instance, some called the GOP tax cuts of 2018 irresponsible, but then “State revenue soared, exceeding expectations.” She didn’t mention that the massive influx of federal funds during the pandemic created state budget surpluses—not just in Iowa, but across the country.

The governor also claimed employee relations have improved since Republicans shredded public sector collective bargaining rights in 2017. That’s hard to square with the thousands of unfilled teaching positions in Iowa, a predictable outcome when teacher pay has been stagnant, and benefits packages have become worse in many districts, since educators can no longer bargain over matters other than base pay.

Education

To no one’s surprise, Reynolds spent a lot of time advocating for her school voucher plan. The new version would cost the state nearly $107 million in the first year—double the price tag of the plan she failed to get through the Iowa House last year.

Costs would escalate rapidly, since the governor promises to make current private school students eligible for the $7,598 in state funding in the third year of the program. That’s a big subsidy for wealthy families who can already afford to send their kids to private schools.

One Republican senator admitted last year that well-off families could continue to pay private school tuition and let the state’s voucher funding roll over. Eventually they could use those taxpayer funds to cover their child’s higher education expenses. UPDATE: Under this year’s proposal, unspent funds in a student’s individual account when the pupil graduates from high school or turns 20 years old will revert to the state’s general fund.

On a related note, the peerless policy wonks at Common Good Iowa released this graphic after the governor’s speech Tuesday night. Reynolds vowed to ensure “every family can make the choice […] to send their child to the school that best fits their needs.” But nearly two-thirds of Iowa counties have zero private schools, or just one. What kind of “choice” would families living in those communities have?

Reynolds mentioned a few other education policies as well, like giving school districts more flexibility on how to spend certain pots of money.

Abortion

The governor didn’t advocate for new laws to restrict abortion; she is waiting to see how the Iowa Supreme Court rules on her effort to reinstate Iowa’s 2018 abortion ban.

But she did ask state lawmakers to expand a new program to direct taxpayer dollars to faith-based crisis pregnancy centers. I wrote a deep dive on this last year, when the legislature allocated $500,000 to the so-called “MOMS” program. The concept draws on a Texas program that was rife with fraud and misspent funds. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services hasn’t started doling out that money yet.

Reynolds spent some time telling the story of a woman who considered terminating her fourth pregnancy, but decided to have the baby and now volunteers at a crisis pregnancy center. I’m glad she made a choice that was right for her family. All pregnant Iowans should be able to chart their own futures. Unfortunately, crisis pregnancy centers often use deceptive tactics or provide inaccurate medical information to pressure desperate clients.

The governor briefly touched on “tort reform to stop the out-of-control verdicts that are driving our OBGYN clinics out of business and medical school graduates out of state.” I will have more to say about that in a forthcoming post, but it’s laughable to blame the OB/GYN shortage on lawsuits. Iowa’s malpractice insurance rates are low and stable.

OB/GYNs don’t want to work here (or in other red states) in large part because Republican politicians keep trying to interfere with best medical practices.

Fentanyl crackdown

Although the governor has shown a remarkable indifference to Iowans who lost their lives to COVID-19 (the death toll now exceeds 10,400), she has more compassion for those who died from drug overdoses.

Few would disagree with Reynolds here: “The opioid crisis is a human tragedy taking place across this country, and fentanyl has taken center stage.”

Many harm reduction strategies can address these tragedies, but Reynolds is advocating only two: enhanced criminal penalties “for manufacturing and distributing fentanyl in any amount,” and making a drug that reverses the eects of an overdose more widely available.

Major government restructuring underway

The last big reorganization of state government happened during the 1980s, following a process that involved many stakeholders. Reynolds’ staff have been working quietly on a new plan, and she promised Tuesday night, “I’ll be introducing a bill that will improve the services we deliver and streamline our operations by taking us from 37 cabinet agencies to 16.”

I learned about this “realignment” effort some time ago and have submitted some public records requests related to the restructuring, but haven’t received any documents yet. It will be interesting to see who was and was not involved in the closed-door discussions.

Reynolds also said she had just signed an executive order that “puts a moratorium on new rulemaking while directing state agencies to assess whether their existing rules—each and every one—are worth the economic cost. Only those that meet this standard will be reissued. The rest will be repealed.” The governor’s office hasn’t released the text of that executive order.

One wonders why Reynolds didn’t breathe a word about these government restructuring plans during last year’s campaign. In that respect, she’s following in the footsteps of her mentor Terry Branstad, who kept his plans to privatize Medicaid (a program serving nearly a quarter of Iowans) secret during his 2014 re-election bid.

2023 LEGISLATIVE SESSION UNDERWAY

The state legislature convened on January 9 with an unusually large number of new faces. At Bleeding Heartland, I published my annual “Who’s who in the Iowa House” and “Who’s who in the Iowa Senate” posts. I like to bookmark these, so I have easy access to one page with details about Republican and Democratic leadership, as well as background on chairs, vice chairs, and ranking members of all the standing committees.

Education panels in both chambers are scheduled to meet on Wednesday, January 11, raising fears that they will ram through the governor’s school voucher bill without any time for public input. The proposal is as good as a done deal in the Senate. House Speaker Pat Grassley will run the bill through his new “Education Reform Committee,” rather than through the regular House Education Committee.

Even with a large 64-36 Republican majority in the lower chamber, it’s not clear whether House leaders have 51 votes for school vouchers now.

JANUARY 9 EDITION OF “CAPITOL WEEK”

Dennis Hart and I do our weekly KHOI Radio show live on Monday nights, and even without knowing the details about Reynolds’ speech, we had plenty to talk about this week. Here’s the audio file:

Topics we covered:

• Governor Reynolds’ priorities for the legislative session, and her remarks at a GOP breakfast shortly before the Iowa House and Senate convened;

• A brief summary of opening remarks by Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver and House Speaker Grassley;

• Some background on Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair (she’s new to that role, since Jake Chapman lost his re-election bid);

• How Iowa House Republicans plan to handle the voucher bill;

• GOP plans to cut property taxes and how that would affect local governments;

• The huge number of new legislators (24 new faces in the Iowa House and fourteen in the Senate); some turnover is typical after a redistricting cycle, but this year it’s unusually high;

• What Reynolds might be able to offer rural Republican legislators to bring them around on the voucher bill;

• Rumors that the Iowa Senate will move the voucher bill quickly, to put more pressure on the House;

• A brief summary of opening remarks by Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls and House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst;

• The possibility that Republican backbenchers will demand votes on abortion legislation, even though leaders don’t plan to pursue it this session;

• Prospects for legislation related to eminent domain and carbon dioxide pipelines;

• Previewing topics likely to come up in Reynolds’ Condition of the State address, and why the speech is happening during prime time;

• A conservative PAC launching a big tv ad buy featuring the governor pushing her school choice plan;

• The Iowa Capitol Press Association canceling its annual pre-legislative forum after Reynolds and GOP leaders refused to participate; keep in mind that the governor still has not held a press conference since last July, and hasn’t even scheduled an informal media availability since the November election;

• The Iowa Democratic Party’s latest appeal to the Democratic National Committee, asking the DNC to reconsider leaving Iowa out of the early state group for presidential selection;

• The epic battle to elect a speaker of the U.S. House, and how Iowa’s four Republicans handled themselves (I wrote in more depth about this at Bleeding Heartland, and speculated about possible committee assignments for Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn, and Randy Feenstra);

• Some challenges facing the new U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy;

• Senator Joni Ernst moving up in GOP leadership (I wrote about this at Bleeding Heartland);

• Senator Chuck Grassley becoming the longest-serving current senator, as well as the longest-serving Republican the U.S.Senate has ever seen;

• Important early moves by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (I had more to say about this at Bleeding Heartland too, and I think Bird’s incredibly inexperienced hire for solicitor general hasn’t gotten enough attention in the mainstream Iowa media);

• Secretary of State Paul Pate’s proposed bill to reform Iowa’s recount process, and why some changes are necessary;

• A quick word about COVID-19 trends in Iowa.

Whew! I don’t think any other Iowa politics podcast covers as much ground as Dennis and I do in our 30 minutes.

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