Iowa lawmakers target education, medical malpractice awards, and more

Feb. 13 "Capitol Week" is online

Feb 16, 2023

My father taught me never to begin a presentation with an apology, but I do regret being so late to share Monday night’s radio show with Substack readers. I spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday following legislative debates and committee meetings, and copy edited a bunch of guest submissions over at Bleeding Heartland. All of those will be linked in the next Evening Heartland newsletter, which goes out a couple of times a week via email.

You can check out any episode of KHOI’s “Capitol Week” at any time on the radio station’s website.

If you’re looking for more Iowa politics content, Julie Gammack and Rekha Basu have just launched a new podcast: “What the hell happened to Iowa?”

Back to the matter at hand: legislative news dominated the February 13 edition of “Capitol Week”:

1×

0:00

-30:02

Please consider sharing this post with others who might enjoy listening to “Capitol Week,” KHOI’s 30-minute show about Iowa politics.

Topics Dennis Hart and I covered:

The Iowa legislature approving and Governor Kim Reynolds signing a 3 percent increase in per-pupil funding for K-12 public schools;
Why this law doesn’t provide a 3 percent funding increase to all school districts; many districts will receive less state funding next year than this year, due to declining enrollment (even though many of their costs are fixed or increasing);
The Democratic proposal to increase per-pupil funding by just under 6 percent for next year, and how House and Senate Democrats arrived at that number;
A House Republican subcommittee advanced a bill (House Study Bill 138), which would relax testing requirements for private schools that receive funding through the new school voucher plan;
Des Moines Public Schools pondering budget cuts, as Iowa’s largest school district will likely need to reduce next year’s budget by nearly $10 million;
Last week’s Iowa House Government Oversight Committee hearing, where five Moms for Liberty representatives to testify about removing books from schools (the Government Oversight Committee hasn’t been very active in recent years, but Republicans have convened several meetings to focus on alleged problems in public schools);
An Iowa Senate subcommittee advancing a bill (Senate File 159) that would remove instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through 8th grade;
Governor Kim Reynolds’ new education bill (Senate Study Bill 1145), which contained some expected pieces (restricting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, limiting access to challenged library books), but also some new pieces (removing from the 7th to 12th grade curriculum information about HIV, HPV, and a vaccine to prevent HPV);
Putting these education bills in context: is Iowa a leader or a follower in the national trend of Republicans targeting public schools;
Some speculation on whether Reynolds aspires for a higher office (I’ve long believed she wants to be governor for life and isn’t looking to hold federal office, though she enjoys positive attention from nationwide conservative media);
Last week’s remarkable Iowa House and Senate debate over the medical malpractice bill, House File 161 (I’m still working on a deep dive about these votes, because I found the split in the Republican caucuses fascinating);
Explaining the key points of that bill and the differences between economic and noneconomic damages for those injured or killed due to a medical error, and punitive damages (which are rarely awarded in this kind of case);
A little about the twelve House Republicans and five Senate Republicans who opposed the medical malpractice bill, even though it was a high priority for leadership (there was very little overlap between this group and the twelve Republicans who opposed the school voucher bill last month);
Reynolds’ surprising statement at a Cato Institute event in Washington, DC: she wants to eliminate Iowa’s personal income tax (Tom Barton covered this for the Cedar Rapids Gazette);
Why it would be challenging for Iowa to replace income tax revenue, given that we don’t have a large tourism industry or fossil fuel extraction, which generates a lot of revenue for most states that don’t have an income tax;
One angle of the governor’s massive state agency reorganization bill (Senate Study Bill 1123): how it would affect the Iowa School for the Deaf and the Iowa Department for the Blind (I wrote about this in more depth at Bleeding Heartland, because blind Iowans turned out in large numbers Monday to object to the proposal);
The Iowa Senate approving a bill (Senate File 171) that would give the governor more influence over judicial selection by changing the composition of district-level judicial nominating commissions (I wrote about this at Bleeding Heartland as well);
New Iowa House Republican Luana Stoltenberg announcing that she wants to pass a “personhood” or “life at conception” bill, which would ban all abortions;
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird signing on to a multi-state legal effort to undo FDA approval of mifepristone, a drug used in most medication abortions (I covered this in depth at Bleeding Heartland too);
Last week’s Zoom-bombing, which may prompt the Iowa Senate to stop allowing virtual participation in subcommittee meetings;
Some Iowa Republican reaction to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address (I had a different angle on this on my website, where I am able to editorialize);
Kari Lake’s Iowa visit (read more about this in articles by Sarah Watson and Brianne Pfannenstiel).