Baxter and Guth Legislative Updates

House Happenings—March 24, 2022

We are finishing week 11 at the Capital.  We have now prioritized our bills and working on the essentials that have good support.  Many of these bill have been three to five years in the making.  Sometimes it takes several years to get legislation right.  Even bills that seem to pass fast have often been worked on in previous sessions.

Let me highlight some legislation that passed the House this week. Let me start with SF2245 that I personally floor managed in the house. 

SF2245 creates a personal use exception to the state licensing provisions in the Iowa Meat and Poultry Inspection Act based on two such exemptions in the federal Acts regarding the inspections of meat animals.  This legislation would clarify that a person could slaughter their own livestock for personal use (including non-paying guests and nonpaying employees) without being inspected or paying meat slaughter/processing license fee.  Meat slaughtered in this manner may not be sold to another person.  This measure previously passed the Senate on February 22, 2022 by a unanimous vote of 48-aye in that chamber.

Eminent Domain Pause

By far the biggest issue at my forums has been the potential abuse of eminent domain by a private company to put carbon pipelines across Iowa.  This week, House Republicans put an amendment on the Administration and Regulation Budget that would stop the Iowa Utility Board from scheduling a hearing on the pipeline before February 1, 2023.  This move will force the company to deal in good faith with land owners while preventing the Iowa Utility Board from doing anything without the legislature being in session. 

Making Unemployment a Re-Employment System

• We’re facing a workforce shortage in Iowa and across the country. We need our state’s unemployment system to serve as a reemployment system.
• This week, the House passed HF 2355, which makes a number of reasonable reforms to Iowa’s unemployment insurance system.
  • This bill shortens the amount of time Iowans can collect unemployment from 26 weeks to 16 weeks. Four months is a reasonable amount of time to expect Iowans to be able to find work, especially in this job market.
  • If unemployment is due to plant closure, the weeks are reduced from 39 to 26.
  • This bill does not change who is required to search for employment in order to receive unemployment benefits. However, if you are required to be looking for employment, the percentage of benefits you receive, if you refuse a job offer, will decrease.
• As Governor Reynolds said, the unemployment safety net has become more of a hammock. We need to ensure that government is not incentivizing Iowans to remain out of work, but instead incentivizing folks to return to the workforce as quickly as possible. 

Increasing Transparency with Pharmacy Benefit Managers  HF2384

• This week, the Iowa House passed legislation to create a framework for pharmacy prescription drug reimbursements from Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs).
• PBMs serve as the middle man of the pharmaceutical industry and many states across the country are looking at ways to reform the industry and provide additional transparency.
• This legislation will protect our rural pharmacies so they can continue to provide essential care for their communities and aims to lower the cost of prescription drugs for the consumer.
• This bill was over four years in the making, since 2018 56 small town pharmacies have closed in Iowa.

Education Transparency that Works for Parents AND Teachers

• Concerns regarding inappropriate books in school libraries and left-leaning curriculum in the classroom have led parents to speak up and demand a greater say in their child’s education. We’ve heard their concerns and we’re taking action.  
• This week, we passed HF 2499 through the House Appropriations committee.
• The Iowa House is working hard to deliver a policy that increases transparency in education for parents AND is workable for our teachers.
• Transparency will provide accountability to prevent teachers and administrators from using their roles in schools to indoctrinate students into their political thinking.
• Iowa House Republicans believe that parents matter. And that they deserve to know what their child is being taught in the classroom. 

HF 2499, as amended:

• School districts and teachers are required to post the syllabus, textbooks, related core materials and a list of instructional materials to an online portal parents can access.
  • Most teachers are already using a platform like Canvas or Google Classroom and this requirement will be easy to meet. Schools that don’t already have a classroom management software system will have until July 1, 2023 to get up to speed. 
• House Republicans’ bill as amended will allow teachers to update their postings throughout the year, within 7 days of using the material, rather than submit all materials twice a year.
• This change allows flexibility for teachers to provide their students with material on current events and find material that is the most engaging.
• This bill also requires a catalogue of every book in the school library to be available online. A parent can then tell the school if there are any books their child is not allowed to check out.

• If a district is noncompliant, the school has 14 days to correct the violation. If they fail to do so, a civil penalty will be assessed against the district. The teacher who is not compliant will also be referred to the Board of Educational Examiners for potential sanctions on their license.

The View From Here by Senator Dennis Guth

Week 11 brought lots of the “folks from back home” to the Capitol. I had three RECs, Farm Bureau from three counties, a high school student job shadowing, and 80+ junior high students from Eagle Grove. Also, my pastor journeyed to Des Moines from Britt to help open the Senate in prayer. That’s well over 120 people from my district that came to participate in state government.

National Ag Week is March 21-27. The Senate recognized this by passing a resolution honoring the 84,900 farms in Iowa. We rank first in the nation in production of corn, hogs, and eggs as well as in soybeans some of those years. We are fourth in number of cattle and calves fed, not to mention poultry, dairy and ag machinery. The agriculture industry is a large part of Iowa’s economy and I want to recognize all the hard work invested in food, feed, fiber, and pharmaceuticals in the state.

An interesting bill we passed this week was Joint Resolution 2005. This deals with the line of succession for the offices of governor and lieutenant governor. In the event a sitting governor is unable to finish the term this resolution would designate that the lt. governor becomes the governor. The new governor would then select a new lt. governor to serve the remainder of the term. This should help keep the governor’s office running effectively if a vacancy arises and it clarifies the language currently in the Iowa Constitution. The constitutional amendment must pass in the House and the Senate in two consecutive Iowa General Assemblies and then go to the people of Iowa for a vote. The same language must be passed in 2023 or 2024 before it is put before the people for a vote.

I floor managed a bill that dealt with unemployment benefits. The House had attempted to pass a bill dealing with a different aspect of unemployment benefits as part of a much broader bill. When that bill failed to pass, it was decided to preserve the unemployment part by amending it to the simple bill that I was floor managing. If we had not done that, this issue would have been dead until the next year. The result was that we had to wait for amendments to be written, analyzed by both parties and then debated. We started the bill at 10:30 AM, paused until 4PM, then finally passed it at 6:45 PM. Getting a bill from an idea to a law is often not a simple process.

I will be having forums April 2 at Algona City Hall, and April 8 at the Garner Library at 8AM and Britt Library at 9:45 AM.