Iowa legislature heads into home stretch, plus more caucus news

May 2 "Capitol Week" is online

May 02, 2023

Before I get to this week’s show, a quick heads up: Julie Gammack hosts Zoom calls most Mondays during the lunch hour for subscribers to her Iowa Potluck newsletter. This coming Monday, May 8, her guests on the zoom will be Bob Leonard and Chris Jones. Bob recently interviewed Chris for his Substack: the must-read post is called “Iowa Water Quality Monitoring in Peril.”

Chris has a book coming out soon, called The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality. It’s a compilation of blog posts he wrote while employed at the University of Iowa. Last month, Chris announced he would retire from his university position as a research engineer, effective May 16.

I hope you will consider signing up for Julie’s Substack and joining next Monday’s call.

Now on to what Dennis Hart and I discussed on the latest edition of “Capitol Week.” (Normally, I try to finish this Substack post on Monday night, but I was wiped out after finishing a major investigative piece for Bleeding Heartland late Sunday.)

Remember, you can find any of our 118 episodes on KHOI’s website. We were back to our usual 30 minutes on May 2, after a couple of longer programs during KHOI’s spring fundraising drive.

For some reason, Substack isn’t letting me upload the sound file for this week’s program, but you can listen here.

Topics on our agenda:

The Iowa House approved an amended version of House File 716, Bobby Kaufmann’s bill regulating the Iowa caucuses. Kaufmann introduced a significant amendment that addresses concerns his original bill was unconstitutional. The revised bill gives the state central committees of the Iowa Democratic Party and Republican Party of Iowa much more leeway to set rules for the caucuses, including when participants must be registered with the party. However, if precinct caucuses select delegates for the presidential nominating process, those who participate must be present in person.
President Joe Biden announced his re-election bid last week, and we discussed what recent nationwide polls say about a possible rematch between Biden and Donald Trump;
Trump plans to bigfoot Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by coming to Iowa for an event on May 13, the same day DeSantis will attend a fundraising picnic for U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra;
Dennis and I are equally skeptical about prospects for any other Republican to overtake Trump in the Iowa GOP caucuses; we discussed how the rest of the field is shaping up;
We also mentioned Biden’s competitors for the Democratic nomination: Robert Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson;
Iowa’s Republican members of the U.S. House held out for concessions on biofuels before backing Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bill to extend the debt ceiling (I covered this in more depth at Bleeding Heartland);
More Congressional news: Representative Zach Nunn rolled out a plan last week to address cybersecurity at schools;
Late last week the Biden administration approved an emergency action to allow drivers to buy E-15 gasoline (that’s a 15 percent ethanol blend) during the summer; Donnelle Eller wrote this up at the Des Moines Register;
On to legislative news: Republican leaders in the House and Senate announced a deal on property taxes Monday afternoon. The Senate unanimously approved the amended House File 718 on Tuesday morning, and the House is expected to take it up later today; Governor Kim Reynolds has indicated she supports the bill;
The House and Senate have been approving more budget bills, and I took a minute to describe how different the appropriations process has been this year, compared to how Iowa lawmakers worked on the state budget for decades;
We talked about the child labor bill, which is Senate File 542 and House File 647; Senate Republicans approved the bill a few weeks ago, but the House hasn’t yet debated it (that may occur later today);
Another unresolved bill is House File 654, which would allow Iowans to keep firearms in locked vehicles on school grounds and college campuses; it hasn’t been brought to the Senate floor yet, and is a good example of why I always encourage people to read the lobbyist declarations;
The bill limiting State Auditor Rob Sand’s ability to conduct independent audits is now through the House and the Senate; we talked about what’s in Senate File 478, which the governor is expected to sign;
Last week the Senate unanimously approved an amended version of House File 604, which would require school districts to adopt policies dealing with violent students;
The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced House File 707, which would make more Iowa families eligible for child care assistance; Tom Barton covered this for the Cedar Rapids Gazette;
The Senate approved the agriculture and natural resources budget last week; Robin Opsahl covered some of the controversial provisions in Senate File 558, relating to public lands and water quality;
The Iowa Senate is trying again to regulate local government’s use of traffic cameras; Caleb McCullough reported on what’s in Senate File 489;
The Iowa Senate Ethics Committee considered two ethics complaints last week; they tabled the complaint against Republican State Senator Mike Bousselot and dismissed the complaint against Democratic State Senator Molly Donahue;
We briefly discussed my deep dive about the governor’s office budget, which I published Sunday night at Bleeding Heartland. That post was more than six months in the making; I focused on how Republicans are increasing the governor’s office appropriation by more than 20 percent, “no questions answered,” and on how difficult it has been to obtain basic information about how the governor’s office is covering its expenses;
Finally, we discussed how Kim Reynolds appeared on “real woman” koozies that Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched last week as a fundraiser. Due to KHOI’s non-commercial license, Dennis and I have to avoid editorializing on the show. But I was disgusted by the move and how Reynolds bragged about it on her social media. I recommend Todd Dorman’s latest column on “culture war koozies.”

One last point: if you would like to receive occasional emails with links to all articles and commentaries recently published at Bleeding Heartland, please subscribe to my other newsletter. It’s also free.

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