Matt Chapman is a resident of Midwest Country Estates park in Dallas County and co-chair of the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents’ Network.

On a party-line vote this week, the Iowa Senate approved House file 2562, a bill on manufactured housing parks that the Iowa House passed earlier this month. The bill is headed to Governor Kim Reynolds’ desk, and she is expected to sign it. UPDATE: The governor signed the bill on May 17.

At iowafairhousing.com you will see the “residents’ bill of rights” we wrote in 2019. The site has more details, but the bullet points are as follows –

1. Rent protection from gouging
2. Good cause eviction standards
3. Fair fees
4. Fair legal leases
5. Resident rights if park is for sale

Unfortunately, House File 2562 would enforce none of those rights.

Matt Chapman closely follows Iowa legislative affairs, especially bills like the one discussed here. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowa Senate Republicans have approved another bill targeting people receiving public assistance, such as Medicaid or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

Senate File 2272, which passed along party lines February 26, would require the state to contract for extra screening, looking for evidence of Iowans enrolled in more than one state. Labor and Business Relations Committee chair Jason Schultz introduced and floor-managed the bill. He has been attempting to pass versions of this legislation for years and sponsored five bills in a similar vein in 2019.

The vendor that would receive the contract, LexisNexis, does similar work in other states, often flagging 15 percent of beneficiaries as possibly fraudulent. In the five southern states that have adopted this screening, further checks have confirmed dual participation by just 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of enrollees, on average.

Matt Chapman closely follows Iowa legislative happenings. -promoted by Laura Belin

The Iowa Senate Local Government Committee has approved a bill that would prevent municipalities from banning discrimination against tenants based on their source of income.

Senate Study Bill 3178 is yet another attack by the majority party on some of the most vulnerable Iowans. Section 8 housing vouchers are for those with nowhere to go, and they only cover half of the rent on apartments or houses.

Matt Chapman closely follows Iowa legislative affairs, including bills targeting people on public assistance programs. -promoted by Laura Belin

Two bills related to oversight of Iowans on public assistance were in subcommittee on January 28 at the state capitol.

Matt Chapman is a Democratic activist in Waukee. -promoted by Laura Belin

A few years after the great recession kicked in, I was listening to the latest Ry Cooder album while mowing my lawn and came across the song “No Banker Left Behind.” It spoke perfectly to the mood of the time, and I remember shutting the mower off and going inside to listen to it a couple more times.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill had passed a year earlier, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created (an idea Elizabeth Warren came up with). At that time, Professor Warren was asked to help set up the bureau, made a temporary chair, and given some liaison responsibilities. But she was never given the role of director.

Luckily for us, efforts to recruit Warren to run for the Senate instead paid off. Now she is campaigning to be our first woman president.

Matt Chapman brings us up to date on a company’s plan to impose exorbitant rent hikes on him and his neighbors. -promoted by Laura Belin

When Havenpark Capital Partners bought up five manufactured housing parks in Iowa, they brought tension, anger and fear along for the ride. On a Friday afternoon before any of us knew they had bought our Waukee community, a notice was posted on all 300 doors in Midwest Country Estates that the rent was going up 69 percent in 60 days. Residents in the other four communities received similar notes.

Matt Chapman has been helping to organize neighbors since residents of his mobile home park recently received notice that rent will go up by some 69 percent in June. -promoted by Laura Belin

The evictions have started where I live at Midwest Country Estates in Waukee. The new owners, Havenpark Capital, have a business model devoid of any compassion or even a passing concern for the elderly and vulnerable in the mobile home park they purchased. They made a promise to the shareholders, and apparently there is no room for empathy when dividends are being maximized.

Matt Chapman closely follows Iowa legislative happenings, including bills affecting Iowans on public assistance. -promoted by Laura Belin

Iowa Senate Republicans on March 19 approved new work requirements for tens of thousands of Iowans on Medicaid or receiving food assistance. Senate File 538 would instruct the Iowa Department of Human Services to request a federal waiver for the Iowa Health and Wellness Plan, our state’s version of Medicaid expansion. Approximately 170,000 adults receive Medicaid through that plan, and roughly 61,000 of them also receive Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) benefits.

If the waiver were approved, Medicaid recipients would face new reporting obligations for “community engagement.” If not part of an exempted group, they could lose coverage due to paperwork errors, even if they were working the requisite number of hours per week. Nonpartisan analysis estimated this bill would cost the state budget nearly $5 million the first year after the waiver and nearly $12 million each subsequent year.

During floor debate (beginning at 11:53:20 of this video), Republicans characterized the bill as a way to hold Iowans accountable. Democrats offered two amendments that would have extended that accountability to large employers and the for-profit insurers known as managed-care organizations (MCOs), which oversee Iowa’s privatized Medicaid.

Matt Chapman has closely followed this year’s legislative proposals affecting Iowans on public assistance. He previously reported on a separate bill with a $40 million price tag. -promoted by Laura Belin

A Republican bill seeking to impose new work requirements on some 170,000 Medicaid recipients in Iowa would cost the state budget nearly $5 million more the first year and an additional $12 million every year thereafter, according to analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. Any savings to the state would be “minimal.”

Matt Chapman has closely followed this year’s legislative proposals targeting Iowans on public assistance. -promoted by Laura Belin

A bill requiring more frequent reviews of Iowans’ eligibility for public assistance programs would cost the state an additional $40 million during the first two years alone, according to analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. The federal government would be on the hook for an additional $35 million during the same period.

Matt Chapman: Lobbyists tend to disassociate advocating for a bill from the impact of that legislation. I couldn’t disagree more. -promoted by Laura Belin

Spending over two years at the Iowa legislature, watching committee meetings and floor action, I’ve picked up on the theme of decorum. It is necessary when powerful people of different ideology need to come to a consensus. There are times when that divide is too great and the decorum deteriorates. That is usually centered around hot-button topics.

President Ronald Reagan and then House Speaker Tip O’Neill had the six-o-clock rule. It was a designed to put partisan politics aside at the end of the day. They were bitter enemies, yet kept decorum and treated each other as equals. After six o’ clock, policy discussion was ended. They recognized that allowing each other to voice their position was the bedrock of this democracy.

In more recent history, when the debates are over, the debaters tend to go to their own corners.

Matt Chapman has attended Iowa House and Senate subcommittee meetings nearly every day. These bills were among the most significant he has tracked lately. -promoted by Laura Belin

Over the past week, Iowa Senate subcommittees considered five bills drafted to address fraud in Iowa public assistance programs. Each bill would direct revenue generated by Iowa taxpayers to private vendors, who are charged with finding fraudulent claims. If investigation supports the claims of fraud, those funds could be recovered, and criminal charges filed.

Matt Chapman: “The need to control women is what this is about, and the rage stems from a perception of impotency, caused by that lack of control.” -promoted by Laura Belin

It was impossible to miss the sea of white the Democratic women of the U.S. House wore to the State of the Union address on Tuesday. It was a nod to the suffragettes, who paved the way to winning the right to vote on August 26, 1920, and a celebration of the record-breaking diversity of the 116th United States Congress sworn in on January 23, 2019, almost one hundred years later.

Yet reminders of how far there still is to go echoed throughout the chamber. While President Donald Trump acknowledged the record-breaking number of women legislators elected, it took a moment for the modern-day suffragettes to stand and applaud. His praise was unwelcome, due to his history of misogyny.

Matt Chapman reports from the first legislative hearing on a constitutional amendment to change Iowa’s felon disenfranchisement system. -promoted by Laura Belin

Despite record low temperatures outside, the room was packed for the January 31 Iowa House Judiciary subcommittee meeting to consider House Study Bill 68, a constitutional amendment proposed by Governor Kim Reynolds.

Like last year, Matt Chapman will periodically report on Iowa House and Senate happenings during the 2019 legislative session. -promoted by Laura Belin

An Iowa Senate subcommittee voted 2-1 today to prohibit the Board of Regents from establishing or continuing tenure at the state’s post-secondary educational institutions.

When U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Donald Trump’s wall “an immorality,” right wing pundits pounced. They conflated Pelosi calling the wall immoral with the message that all Democrats want open borders.

The president defended his monument by claiming the country needs a “powerful wall” to deter the next migrant caravan on its way, news he most likely saw on FOX. In reality, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies are humanitarian and Mexican immigration has been streamlined to encourage the refugees and migrants looking to come to the US to stay in Mexico.

A GOP lawmaker’s outrage rings hollow when we’ve repeatedly seen Iowa Republicans push policies they never campaigned on. -promoted by Laura Belin

On the Iowa House State Government Committee’s agenda for January 22, a presentation by Iowa Public Employees Retirement System (IPERS) CEO Donna Mueller and a special announcement by the committee’s Republican chair Bobby Kaufmann was scheduled for 11:00 am.

Kaufmann had stated at a forum in December, “There will be zero IPERS bills, period. End of story. End of discussion. No tweaks, no changes.” James Q. Lynch from the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that Kaufmann also plainly stated in his newsletter, “I said it before the election and I will say it again: There will unequivocally not be changes to IPERS.”

Matt Chapman reacts to Governor Kim Reynolds’ remarks after being sworn in on January 18. You can watch her speech here and read the prepared text here. -promoted by Laura Belin

Governor Kim Reynolds gave her inaugural speech Friday and touched on social media in an interesting way. To my ears, it seemed to conflate the worst of these platforms–comments sections where so many of us turn for affirmation in destructive ways–with informational content from people reporting political facts in real time, from where they are happening.

Matt Chapman had a “visceral reaction” to the governor’s campaign ad about mental health. -promoted by desmoinesdem

If you watch Jeopardy! or the local news, you have been seeing a lot of campaign commercials for Governor Kim Reynolds. The first three were biographical in content, and the latest attacks Fred Hubbell over his leadership of the Younkers department store chain. (Iowa Starting Line pointed out that ad featured local GOP activists posing as people affected by store closures.)

The fourth Reynolds campaign spot, “Leader,” gaslights Iowans on our state’s inadequate mental health system.

Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet and the cancellation of her show are a macro example of what is happening in our everyday lives, folks feeling empowered to share openly what they used to hide: bigotry. After a visit from someone I have known for forty or so years, I was surprised how he had suddenly embraced right wing talking points.

Last night’s highly irregular Iowa House proceedings inspired Matt Chapman’s latest commentary. The chamber’s rules do not normally permit debate past midnight, but Republicans approved an amended version of a terrible energy bill a little past 5 am. A forthcoming Bleeding Heartland post will discuss the substantive changes to the legislation, which goes back to the Iowa Senate. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Senate File 2311, the Aliant Energy/Mid-American omnibus energy bill, was trotted out in the Iowa House after a more than eight-hour caucus after 10:00 pm last night. Much like last year’s bill that busted the unions for 180,000 public employees, this cowardly approach of sneaking legislation through while working Iowans are sleeping seems to be on par with the GOP’s values.

Matt Chapman, who closely follows legislative happenings, reports on an Iowa Senate debate you can watch beginning at 8:19:30 on this video. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The March 21 debate on Senate File 2117 started off with a bang.

After watching Iowa House Republicans advance an unconstitutional abortion ban, Matt Chapman has a “modest proposal.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

Toward the end of the second “funnel” week, when most non-appropriations bills must be approved by one chamber and by a committee in the other chamber to remain viable, House Republicans amended a fetal body parts bill to ban almost all abortions in Iowa after a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

Selling fetal body parts is not legal or happening in Iowa. That issue was merely a distraction, a vehicle to advance the true Republican agenda: taking away women’s rights to control their own bodies.

Matt Chapman reports on the lengthy Iowa Senate debate over a bill that is terrible on many levels. You can watch the proceedings on video here, beginning around 9:07:30. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Republicans approved Senate File 2311, the omnibus energy bill, on March 6 after yet another late-into-the-evening debate this session. I guess the logic is the later it gets, the worse the legislation seems to be.

Matt Chapman reports from today’s Iowa Senate committee hearings on a massive tax bill published the previous day. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Senate Republicans dropped Senate Study Bill 3197 on February 21, scheduling a subcommittee on the tax plan first thing the following morning and a full Ways and Means Committee to consider the bill shortly after lunch. They had employed a similar shock-and-awe tactic last week to get Senate Study Bill 3193 through the legislature’s “funnel” on the last possible day. That bill, modeled after a Florida law deemed unconstitutional, called for drug testing Medicaid and food assistance (SNAP) recipients, along with quarterly instead of yearly recertification and work requirements.

In opening comments on his tax proposal, Senate Ways and Means Chair Randy Feenstra said SSB 3197 was “bold” and would save Iowans an average of $1,000 in taxes. You can watch the whole meeting on video here.

Senator Pam Jochum, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said she was looking forward to input from EMS and firefighters, among others, since this bill would end deductions. She was also concerned that there was no fiscal impact statement and wanted to be sure it fit the budget. Jochum asked Feenstra if he had any data he could share.

A personal commentary by Matt Chapman to coincide with the “Day on the Hill” for our state’s National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter. NAMI Iowa’s “mission is to raise public awareness and concern about mental illness, to foster research, to improve treatment and to upgrade the system of care for the people of Iowa.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

In the last few years I have found myself politically active and seem to be trying to make up for years of not having the right to vote and taking it for granted when I did participate. I would like to share where my focus is and relate how I came to feel so intensely about these issues. You never know when you may find your voice, and if it took me until my 50s, so be it.

Citizen lobbyist Matt Chapman (no relation to Senator Jake Chapman) digs into the politics behind a bill that has been called “the utility attack on Iowa’s clean energy leadership.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

The subcommittee hearing on Senate Study Bill 3093 was scheduled for room 315 on the south side of the capitol. Although it is a good-sized room, and the temperature was 15 degrees outside on February 1, lobbyists were packed in like sardines, and it was suffocating. Iowa Senate Commerce Committee vice chair Senator Michael Breitbach joked before the meeting, “if anyone passes out you can just lean on” the people crammed in next to them.

It would not be an exaggeration to say there were sixty people in that room. Seventy five even. SSB 3093 has more than a hundred lobbyist declarations already.

Committee chair Jake Chapman was late; you could hear the groans when someone said he was getting on the elevator and would be a few minutes. Chapman was seated and vice chair Breitbach was running the meeting. He said we would go through the legislation by section and would be considering only objections, because of time constraints. That suggested lobbyists backing the bill would keep quiet. It was also a clue that a trap was being set.

Matt Chapman is a concerned citizen living in Waukee. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The Waukee school board approved a settlement for almost $1 million to former human resource director Terry Welker on Monday. Two other lawsuits for wrongful termination are pending and one was dismissed in 2014.

The plaintiffs in these lawsuits are former district employees, who allegedly faced retaliation after reporting that Chief Operating Officer Eric Rose had used school property at home, allowed unauthorized individuals to use school facilities, and altered time cards.

While the crimes themselves are petty, the settlement is not and will give ammunition to lawmakers with an appetite to re-write Iowa’s education system.

Matt Chapman is a concerned citizen living in Waukee. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The Waukee School Board is set to approve a wrongful termination settlement at its January 22 meeting. Although the agenda does not name the case or provide details, a source with knowledge of the situation indicates that the district will settle with Terry Welker, who was human resources director for the Waukee Community School District until his job was eliminated.

Welker’s lawsuit was one of at least four charging that staff who filed complaints against Chief Operating Officer Eric Rose had their jobs cut or their duties assigned to less experienced employees, among other retaliations.

Matt Chapman’s advice to activists engaging with potential allies on the left: “If your conversation starts out by denigrating someone they worked hard for, you can’t expect them to listen.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

I have read quite a bit and have noted a few workshops on how to talk across the aisle. A lot of folks who canvass or have political conversations to influence voting habits focus on talking to others on the political left, since trying to convince hard-right voters seems like a waste of time.

The strategy for trying to break through to Republicans was to take the facts out of the conversation and focus on the morality of positions. The idea was that people who hold Christian values as their moral compass should be persuadable on issues such as poverty, bigotry, and a host of other issues.

I want to focus on how we communicate on the left from moderate Democrats to progressives and other allied parties, including the Green and Socialist parties as well as independents all across the spectrum.

Matt Chapman has been holding our elected officials accountable and asking important questions about access to health care. -promoted by desmoinesdem

As health care reform has been flailing around the House and finally landed in the Senate I would like to share and hear points of view on the roadblocks the majority party is dealing with to pass the American Health Care Act.

I think it could be a teachable moment, as while the left is energized more than ever, I think we have to be prepared when we get in power. If we’re united, not only could we reverse a lot of damage that is now being done, we could use this opportunity after the census to hold on to power for a while. The teeter-totter effect of parties in power needs to be stopped.

Matt Chapman reflects on Senator Chuck Grassley’s town hall in Greenfield on June 2. A video of that event is at the end of this post. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I have had a chance to ask Representative David Young, Senator Joni Ernst, and Senator Chuck Grassley about the American Health Care Act and the cuts to Medicaid that would occur if it passed. Out of the three, none would even come close to addressing it.

Matt Chapman has been a committed citizen lobbyist on many issues this year, including health care reform. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I have always been laser-focused on Medicaid and health care access for the poor. And when Iowa Dems twisted Terry Branstad’s arm until he cried “Medicaid Expansion!” I was elated. So in my bubble, the worst thing going on seemed to be the privatization of Medicaid or “Branstad’s Revenge.”

With the private insurance companies all pulling out of Iowa, now that I am aware of the astronomical raises in premiums, I feel a little shame at my blissful ignorance. All I can tell you is at 51 years old the Affordable Care Act gave me dental insurance for the first time in my life. And I’ve had the same doctor for five years. Before the ACA, the folks around the poverty line would have to drive sometimes 200 miles just to see a doctor. And rarely the same one twice. For dental they line up at Broadlawns (the Polk County public hospital) at six in the morning and hope they’re in bad enough shape to get in.

But what really made me aware was after the Drake forum with Senator Joni Ernst in March.

Matt Chapman closely followed and participated in the Iowa legislative debate over blocking county-level minimum wage increases. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I came across a Des Moines Register article in my Facebook feed that was 856 words long. It was a rebuttal to a letter to the editor about Jethro’s BBQ planning to open a restaurant in Ames.

The rebuttal is authored by Bruce Gerleman, Iowa view contributor and owner of all the Jethro’s BBQ.

I took offense at this response, and I’ll tell you why. And I hope that since I am just a low wage worker, if my response is 856 words long, the Register will publish my view as well.

First-person accounts of meetings with elected officials are always a good read. Thanks, Matt Chapman. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Friday afternoon, leaders of the Indivisible Central Iowa Leadership had a 30 minute meeting with Representative David Young. Tyler Higgs, Jess McCord, Bill Ekhardt, Jordan Hobfoll, Marie Herring, Mark Brooks and myself attended.

The topics scheduled for discussion were the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and its replacement with the American Health Care Act as well as the border wall with Mexico, two of the new president’s signature campaign promises during the election.

There is a transcript below with most of the Q & A. David Young is very approachable and easy to have discussions with. Like most political animals, getting some of the more controversial positions pinned down before a vote is taken can be difficult. If the goal is not to obfuscate but more a testing of which way the political wind is blowing, I think that’s a sign that positions can be moved. It is up to us then, either by having discussions or by just showing up to vote to get what we want and expect from our elected leaders.

Matt Chapman shares comments he delivered at today’s Iowa House public hearing on Republican budget proposals. -promoted by desmoinesdem

So here we are again in public comments for the seventh time this year, discussing laws that are disproportionately pro-wealthy and anti-worker. These laws are also mostly split along party lines. And I have to hand it to your strategist, as the most damaging laws against workers, many who voted Republican in 2016, were gotten out of the way earlier in the session. And at the end of the session, we have the most divisive legislation brought to the fore in an attempt to appease the very voters you enraged with the destruction of Chapter 20, the union-busting bill.

This will be the governor’s legacy. Will it be yours as well? Let’s compare him to Governor Robert Ray.

Matt Chapman wades into what is sure to be an intense debate over how Democrats should communicate with Iowans about this disastrous legislative session. -promoted by desmoinesdem

It’s no surprise that bills to regulate women’s rights and the gun omnibus were passed in the first week of April, right before the budget and when the end of session is looming.

These are very divisive laws, supported by the majority of the Republican base. The same folks who many of whom were hurt by laws stripping workers of bargaining rights, mandatory wage raises and even watering down workers’ compensation.

It will be interesting to see if this strategy works. My advice to anyone outraged by this session (and I acknowledge that it is too soon to do this now) would be to try to avoid the divisive issues. We have common ground with all workers in Iowa, and if we spend a lot of energy on guns or women’s rights, we will have a hard time trying to get change in our state.

Matt Chapman comments on an important bill finalized this week. For what it’s worth, I do not believe Jake Highfill’s claim that Governor Terry Branstad supports a $10 an hour minimum wage. Branstad has expressed support for “a modest increase over a period of time.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

An unfortunate precedent was set when Governor Terry Branstad signed House File 295 on Thursday.

Although 23 Republican-controlled states “now preempt local efforts to increase the minimum wage,” this week Iowa became the “first state government in the U.S. to take away raises from low-wage workers who already received them,” according to the National Employment Law Project.

As Iowa lawmakers consider proposals to allow the use of cannabis derivatives for some medical conditions, Matt Chapman makes the case for going further to legalize smokeable marijuana. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I illegally used marijuana for pain for years and it would be disingenuous to say I didn’t enjoy the side effects. It would also be disingenuous to say I don’t like the effect of hydrocodone or don’t like the effect of a large dose of ethanol as well. But to use ethanol every evening to take the edge off of pain and to get some good sleep would be a disaster.

And while it is under prohibition and illegal to use, it gave me a lot of relief and helped stave off the point where I could not take the pain any longer. I would use it in the evening. And before I went to bed I would use some along with amitriptyline and would sleep well. And I have no problem publicly discussing this as I had to choose which medication I would use and hydrocodone was the winner.

Matt Chapman covers yesterday’s Iowa Senate debate on the voter suppression bill. John Deeth explained the key points of a Republican amendment changing that bill in several important ways. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On Thursday the Senate passed along party lines the controversial voter ID bill, House File 516, and sent it to the House for approval.

Forget about Democratic amendments to accept other forms of ID such as Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare cards. Republicans voted that down.

Forget about the amendment that would restore the early voting window to the current 40 days instead of 29 days. Republicans voted that down.

Forget about the amendment that would remove the need for signatures to be examined by poll workers, which will reduce access to the polls by creating long lines and the potential for biased decision making by poll workers.

And forget about the provision that would allow two persons in the booth, since we only print ballots in English, and non-native speakers may need help understanding the ballot.

And forget about the claim that provisional ballots will be provided if you have no ID. You will have 48 hours to show up at your auditor’s office with a photo ID anyway.

And forget about the fact that the education and contacting of eligible voters is woefully underfunded.

But don’t forget about Senator Nate Boulton’s comments during closing arguments, or those of other senators disgusted by social injustice. (You should go to the archived footage and watch.)

All you need to know about the validity of the reasoning behind this bill is to listen, read or watch the closing arguments by the bill’s (I won’t say author because I think we all know who wrote this) floor manager, Senator Roby Smith.

Matt Chapman recounts an interesting detour during the Iowa Senate’s floor debate on March 14. Republican Senator Jake Chapman (no relation) tried to add “personhood” language–which never made it out of committee–to a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. -promoted by desmoinesdem

CALLING ALL WONKS

An interesting thing happened when Senator Jake Chapman overreached last night. Go to this link below and you can view the whole afternoon/evening session. I will give you time stamps so you can go right to where the events written occur.

Senators were debating Senate File 471, a 20-week abortion ban.

Chapman finishes up his comments (that you really don’t want to hear) about a story from the past. I will never get those minutes back in my life so please don’t waste yours.

He basically was trying to tack his personhood bill to Senate File 471 through amendment 3142.

Thanks to Matt Chapman for sharing his story. Bleeding Heartland welcomes first-person accounts of interactions with Iowa lawmakers. -promoted by desmoinesdem

At the March 11 legislative forum in Waukee with Senator Charles Schneider and Representative Rob Taylor, I wanted to talk about House File 517, as that gun bill had passed the Iowa House and been sent to the Senate.

Before the event started, I had written a more detailed version of my concerns and included an article from Michigan I had quoted to illustrate some flaws in the House version. I gave a copy of both of them to Mr. Taylor and Mr. Schneider and wanted to ask Mr. Taylor if the legislation would permit long guns to be present at political forums and polling places.

I also asked for him to explain the exemptions from the civil liabilities clause that was in the bill.