Monday's "Capitol Week," and "Office Lounge" this Friday

Loads of Iowa legislative news

Mar 28, 2023

∙ Paid

Heads up: March 31 is the last Friday of the month, which means the Iowa Writers Collaborative “Office Lounge” Zoom meeting is happening over the lunch hour.

Doug Burns of The Iowa Mercury will moderate this month’s conversation. The “Office Lounge” is open to paid subscribers to any of the Iowa Writers Collaborative newsletters. Paying subscribers to my Substack will find the Zoom link at the end of this post, just after the list of collaborative authors. If you subscribe to someone else’s newsletter, you should receive the link from them before Friday.

Also, a quick reminder that I have another free email newsletter, which links to all recent articles and commentaries published at Bleeding Heartland. Every week, I write some things we don’t discuss during the radio show. For instance, last Friday I published a deep dive on why Brad Zaun is the most endangered Iowa Senate Republican for the coming election cycle: “Is Brad Zaun repeating Jake Chapman’s mistake?”

Now, we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Dennis Hart and I tried to keep up with the Iowa House and Senate as the second “funnel” deadline approaches. We

Remember, you can listen to any “Capitol Week” episode for free, anytime, on KHOI’s website. Here’s the March 27 show:

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Feel free to share this post with anyone who might enjoy KHOI’s show about Iowa politics.

Recap of what Dennis and I covered this week:

A brief update on former President Donald Trump and how he lashed out last week against the Manhattan prosecutor who may soon indict him;
Governor Kim Reynolds pre-emptively declared that if Trump is indicted, it would be a “politically charged prosecution” (I don’t expect Iowa Republicans to engage with the reality of any of Trump’s alleged crimes);
Little-known business person Perry Johnson launched television commercials in Iowa promoting his bid for the GOP presidential nomination;
What the second “funnel” deadline (coming up on March 31) means;
Reynolds signed two bills targeting transgender youth: a “bathroom bill” applying to schools and a ban on gender-affirming care for Iowans under age 18 (I had more to say about that at Bleeding Heartland);
Reynolds’ approval rating has slightly dropped, according to the latest Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom;
The Iowa Poll found a strong majority of Iowa adults believe abortion should be mostly or always legal; I believe Republicans are going to be in a bind next year if the Iowa Supreme Court doesn’t agree to reinstate the 2018 law that would ban around 99 percent of all abortions;
In a scrambled bipartisan vote, the Iowa House approved a bill that would restrict the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines (here’s the roll call vote on House File 565);
What was removed from the pipeline bill before final passage in the House, and why I still believe this legislation won’t make it through the second funnel in the Senate;
A House subcommittee advanced Senate File 326, which would allow pharmacists to dispense hormonal birth control
The House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would strengthen penalties for distributing fentanyl; Democrats tried to amend House File 595 to allow the use of fentanyl test strips, but Republicans voted that proposal down out of deference to law enforcement groups;
The House also approved House File 625, which would increase penalties for firearm possession; six Democrats opposed that bill, likely because a nonpartisan fiscal analysis determined it would be costly to implement and would likely have a racially disparate impact;
The House unanimously passed House File 547, which would allow victims of domestic abuse to get out of a lease without penalties, but many Democrats were unhappy with a last-minute amendment to that bill;
In another large bipartisan House vote, the lower chamber approved House File 265 on licensing certified professional midwives; Bleeding Heartland guest authors Bethany Gates and Rachel Bruns have explained in much more detail why this legislation is important, and I would add that I consider access to midwifery care a reproductive rights issue;
A wild Iowa House debate over Senate File 443, which would require certain Democratic-leaning counties to elect county supervisors in a specific way; which ended in an unusual way (the House majority leader pulling the bill from the floor without a vote on final passage);
Iowa House Republicans released their overall state budget target ($8.58 billion) for fiscal year 2024; it’s a little higher than what Governor Reynolds and Senate Republicans want to spend, because House Republicans want to increase the Medicaid reimbursement rate for nursing homes;
Democratic State Representative J.D. Scholten and Republican State Representative Bobby Kaufmann introduced a bill (House File 577) that would ban Major League Baseball blackouts;
What the Iowa Senate changed last week before approving the governor’s wide-ranging education bill (Senate File 496) along party lines, and what remains in the bill;
By another party-line vote, the Iowa Senate approved Senate File 494, which would establish an asset test for people on federal food assistance;
More findings from the latest Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register: a majority of Iowa adults don’t support the governor’s plan to put books removed in one school district on a statewide restricted list (the Iowa Senate removed that provision and replaced it with a ban on all books depicting sex acts in school libraries);
According to the Iowa Poll, most respondents think public schools align with their family’s values; the poll showed no consensus over whether parents have the right amount of control over what’s taught in schools;
A slight plurality of respondents (almost within the margin of error) support the law recently enacted, which caps non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits (I covered that bill in detail last month at Bleeding Heartland);
Secretary of State Paul Pate is following the lead of other Republican-controlled states and leaving the Electronic Registration Information Center,
In a classic Friday afternoon news dump, the governor’s office announced that Iowa ended its contract with Workday to handle the state’s accounting system; I’ve been trying to find out what this means for Iowa State University, which switched to Workday years ago, with disastrous consequences;
What I’m watching this week in the Iowa legislature. I forgot to mention the trucking industry “tort reform” bill, which the House will debate on Tuesday. (The Senate passed a version of the bill along party lines earlier this month.)