As lawmakers seek to end session, some priority bills still lack consensus

Lawmakers have been able to act on many of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ and Republican legislative leaders’ top priority issues this session, but there are still several bills – and budgets – left to consider before adjournment.

Tuesday marks the 100th day of the 2024 legislative session, the end goal date for lawmakers to conclude business for the year. While session can – and often does – extend beyond this stop date, it marks the end of per diem expenses being paid for legislators. From Tuesday on, lawmakers will have to pay for costs like mileage, lodging and certain meals related to their time at the Capitol.

Legislators are hoping to finish session soon, as many of the highest-profile measures discussed this session, like changes to Iowa’s Area Education Agencies and increasing teacher pay, making illegal immigration a state crime and adding new reporting requirements on foreign farmland ownership have all been signed into law.

But before lawmakers head home, they must pass appropriations bills funding the state government for the upcoming year. On Monday, House lawmakers met and approved the Education Appropriations budget in a subcommittee meeting, as well as budget bills including Agriculture and Natural Resources, Justice Systems and Judicial Branch and Administration and Regulation by the full Appropriations Committee.

There are also several policy bills that Republican legislators have said they hope to pass before adjournment. House Speaker Pat Grassley told reporters last week that leaders from the House and Senate have been making “a lot of progress” in meetings to discuss budget targets and other remaining bills.

“We’ve had some good conversations between the House and the Senate,” Grassley said. “Our budget chairs are kind of working behind the scenes to see where some of those differences would be before we settled on specific budget targets.”

Spending differences

There’s a difference of roughly $82 million between the House and Senate budget targets released in March, with the House proposing a $8.955 billion state budget target for Fiscal Year 2025 and the Senate seeking a $8.872 billion target.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Gary Mohr said in March that many of these differences were due to funding requests made by representatives for local programs and services.

There are also still several policy bills yet to be finalized – and in some cases, yet to be discussed on the floor in either chamber. One of the largest measures outstanding is legislation to speed up individual income tax cuts and implement a flat income tax:

Income tax changes

In late February, the Senate Ways and Means Committee approved Senate File 2398, Reynolds’ proposal to lower the state’s individual income tax rate – currently, with the highest income bracket rate of 5.7% – to a flat rate of 3.65% in 2024 retroactively, with an additional cut to 3.5% in 2025. The bill, nor any other proposals building off the 2022 income tax cuts, have moved in the weeks since.

While progress has stalled, Grassley said in April that lawmakers still intend to take action on income taxes in the 2024 session.

“I think, feel confident we’ll be able to achieve speeding up the tax cut before we head home,” Grassley said. While nothing has been “settled” on the final version of the bill, he added, “I feel pretty confident that we’ll be able to find resolution.”

Some lawmakers are advocating for a different means to cutting to Iowa’s income taxes than what was proposed by the governor – and creating a path toward completely eliminating the tax.

Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, and Sen. Dan Dawson, R-Council Bluffs, the respective House and Senate chairs of the Ways and Means committees, introduced a proposal earlier in the session to drop the income tax rate to a flat 3.775% in 2026 and another decrease to 3.65% by 2027.

The legislation also creates a system for gradually lowering the state’s income tax rate using money from Iowa’s Taxpayer Relief Fund, creating a trust using a one-time $2.6 billion transfer from the fund and putting 5% of that money to individual income tax reductions each year.

The legislation, Senate Study Bill 3141 and its House companion, have not been considered by subcommittees. However, these measures are still eligible for consideration – exempt from the funnel deadlines as a tax bill – and could be included as amendments in other legislation, like budget bills or the governor’s income tax bill.

Boards and commissions

Among the top policy issues remaining is the governor’s plan to cut or merge Iowa’s system of boards and commissions. The Senate passed Senate File 2385 in a 30-14 vote earlier in April, a bill that closely follows the governor’s and Iowa Boards and Commissions Review Committee’s recommendations with some changes. The original plan would have cut 111 of Iowa’s 256 existing boards and commissions – 43% of the existing panels in Iowa, while the Senate version eliminates 74 boards and commissions and merges nine current boards into three new bodies.

The House had advanced House File 2574, an event more confined version, cutting or merging 49 panels in February. But the House is now considering the Senate version of the bill to approve or amend.

Many of the changes in both versions of the bill include cutting or restructuring the panels overseeing professional licensing of different industries, as well as those looking into issues impacting marginalized communities in Iowa. The language approved by the Iowa Senate would eliminate the commissions on the Status of African Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Persons with Disabilities and Women, as well as the Commission of Native American Affairs.

On Friday, Iowa-Nebraska National Association for the Advancement of Colored People launched a campaign urging their members to contact House lawmakers to make changes to the bill or to vote down the bill.

Betty Andrews, state area president for the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, said on a “call to action” meeting Friday that she felt “like I’m fighting for my life.” She said the changes proposed to Iowa’s Civil Rights Commission would remove critical components of government engagement and accountability granted to the commission by the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 1965.

“For us to go back from 2024 to 1965 is problematic,” Andrews said.

The Senate version of the legislation proposed shifting the commission to an advisory role. The bill would give the commission’s current duties and powers to the Iowa Office of Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Commission director, such as the ability to investigate and address complaints on issues such as workplace violations of the Civil Rights Act.

“Instead of being commissioners that the director reports to, these commissioners become advisors to the director,” Andrews said. “With the director having the power to ignore their requests or their comments, or even prevent those comments from being shared with the legislature for (recommending) legislation, or with the governor for action.”

Andrews and other NAACP advocates met with lawmakers at the Capitol to discuss the legislation Monday, urging Republican legislators to consider amending the bill. She said some lawmakers who supported the measure said the bill is a means to make government more efficient, as well as “trying to make it better for diverse voices” in Iowa.

“And the question becomes, how can it be better if you’re removing them from the table?” she said.

Andrews said the assessment done by the Boards and Commissions Review Committee in 2023 was not a sufficient basis to make the changes proposed in the legislation. The information gathered did not consider the “the effectiveness of the model” of state panels, she said, and said that ideally, lawmakers would instead pursue a study committee to take a deeper look at the work being done by these bodies.

In addition to problems with changes to the Civil Rights Commission, Andrews said the proposals to eliminate commissions of specific marginalized groups, like those on the status of African Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders and Persons with Disabilities would lead to those communities being reduced to a “monolith,” with each community being represented by one person on the Human Rights Board.

“Each of those communities is important, and each of those have a voice,” Andrews said. “Their voices are different — within the communities, they’re different. And so, when they reduce these (commissions) to one representative per community, they are actually silencing voices. And in order for Iowa to be a welcoming state, we really need to consider how we involve our citizens in the process, how we involve representation from our citizenry in the process.”

Boy Scouts settlement

The Senate moved quickly to advance Senate File 2431 through the committee process, approving it unanimously in April 10 to send to the House for consideration.

That speed is because there’s a time limit on the issue at hand. The bill contains a narrow exemption on the state’s statute of limitations for filing child sexual abuse lawsuits, specifically for “claims against the bankruptcy state of a congressionally chartered organization.” This exemption would allow former Boy Scouts in Iowa to participate in the national Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy settlement that involves more than 82,000 men nationwide who said they were sexually abused while in the organization as children by troop leaders.

Child sexual abuse survivors in this settlement have the ability to recover funds through the Scouting Settlement Trust. But Iowans involved could receive less money from these settlements, as payouts are determined in part using their state’s statute of limitations on child sexual abuse claims. Attorneys involved in the settlement say that Iowa has until April 19 to change its state law on the statute of limitations, or that Iowa victims will receive less compensation than those in other states.

Sen. Tim Kraayenbrink, R-Fort Dodge, said in a committee meeting on the bill that he and other legislators were working to ensure that it makes it to the governor’s desk before April 19.

“This needs to be signed as quickly as possible to give the Iowa Boy Scouts that were offended the opportunity to come to some sort of justice,” he said. “It’s not going to, you know, change their past, but at least we can do something positive for them at this point.”

The bill has not yet been taken up or assigned a subcommittee in the House. Grassley said on Thursday that House Republicans are having conversations on the bill, but that there were some concerns about the “significant change” it would make to Iowa’s current statute of limitations.

Current Iowa law requires that child sexual assault victims file a lawsuit by age 19, or within four years of coming to the understanding of their abuse in childhood resulting in injuries and suffering. Grassley said that he is having discussions with members of the Judiciary Committee and others to see what impact, or future implications, the legislation could have on existing law.

“This is a much bigger deal than I think it’s being perceived to be,” Grassley said. “And I would say, probably everyone would say from all sides — it’s a big deal. But changing this is a fundamental change the way we do things, the way we’ve typically done things now when it comes to statute limitations. So I don’t think this is something we can just rush through. That being said, I understand the clock is ticking as well.”

Eminent domain

While a Senate subcommittee unanimously approved a bill that would give landowners more opportunities to challenge eminent domain requests from carbon dioxide pipeline companies earlier in April, there has not been further action on the bill.

House File 2664 gives landowners the ability to seek judicial review of requests made earlier in the state’s pipeline permit process, as well as the ability to challenge decisions made by state regulators. These actions have the potential to impede the process of pipeline construction without having to cover costs related to the pipeline companies’ financial losses due to delays.

Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, said he supports the bill, but that it would likely be amended before reaching the Senate floor to include changes such as limiting litigation so that pipeline projects could not be obstructed indefinitely in court, and so that the measure would only apply to carbon dioxide pipelines, instead of all hazardous liquid pipelines as is currently covered by the legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Pam Jochum said in a news conference Thursday that Democrats have not heard from Senate Republicans on whether there are plans to continue advancing the bill, despite multiple requests for updates.

“We’re still waiting to see if the Senate Republicans are even going to actually bring this bill to the floor, but I will say that we have heard loud and clear that Iowans want us to address eminent domain.”