Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

If you watch the Iowa legislature in action, you will see some truisms time and again. 

Such as: Each political party is in favor of transparency and accountability—until they gain the majority. Then those politicians see many reasons why transparency and accountability are problematic.

Another: If you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.

And then there is today’s truism: Don’t ask a question if you are afraid of the answer.

Iowa House and Senate Republicans have agreed to increase the allocation for Governor Kim Reynolds’ office by more than 20 percent, even as many state agencies are receiving status quo budgets for fiscal year 2024, which begins on July 1.

Senate Appropriations Committee chair Tim Kraayenbrink acknowledged during floor debate on April 26 that Republicans do not know how the governor’s office plans to use an additional $500,000 standing appropriation for FY2024.

It was an extraordinary moment, but not a surprising one. For years, Reynolds’ staff have avoided disclosing how the governor’s office was covering expenses that greatly exceeded the funds allocated by the legislature, by nearly $900,000 in fiscal year 2020 and roughly the same amount in fiscal year 2021.

The Reynolds administration has also made it increasingly difficult to uncover details about the governor’s office spending through open records requests. Budget reports for fiscal year 2022, which ran from July 2021 through last June, were provided in a different format from previous years, concealing how much other state agencies provided to compensate Reynolds’ staffers. In response to a records request, the governor’s office claimed to have no invoices for such payments.

Nevertheless, documents obtained by Bleeding Heartland indicate that other state agencies contributed about $670,000 to cover salaries and benefits for Reynolds’ staffers during fiscal year 2022. The governor’s office was able to cover another $115,000 in expenses by continuing to understaff the Office of State-Federal Relations, for which other state agencies are charged a fixed fee.

In other words, even an additional $500,000 appropriation, bringing the governor’s office general fund budget to $2.8 million for the coming fiscal year, probably would not be enough to cover all expenses.

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

A Polk County District Court ruled on April 28 that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) improperly approved Supreme Beef’s nutrient management plan.

Supreme Beef LLC is an 11,600-head cattle feeding operation in Clayton County. It sits at the headwaters of Bloody Run Creek, one of the most treasured trout streams in Iowa and officially designated as an Outstanding Iowa Water.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Robert Kennedy, June 1966

The waters of our civil society are a bit choppy right now. Why? It’s undoubtedly a blend of currents of varying strengths, crossing at various points. The result: social tension, a sense of heightened anxiety, probably the birth pangs of significant societal change, which seems almost inevitable.

I’m looking today at the results of a recent poll commissioned by the Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center.

All four Iowans in the U.S. House voted on April 26 for a plan to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion for the coming year, in exchange for “aggressive caps on federal spending” over the next decade.

The House approved the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 by 217 votes to 215, meaning House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had no votes to spare.

The speaker secured passage of his bill by making concessions on biofuels subsidies on the eve of the vote. McCarthy had previously indicated he was not open to altering the bill, but a group of Republicans from the Midwest—including Iowa’s Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04)—insisted on changes.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The Iowa Senate passed the agriculture and natural resources spending bill on April 25 with a provision Democrats said could limit the acquisition of public lands.

Senate File 558 passed the Senate 33-16, appropriating more than $43 million in funds for the state’s agriculture and natural resources departments. The funding figures were approved via amendment, as the Senate Appropriations Committee passed spending bills without numbers in early April.

Senate Democrats criticized Republicans for releasing the amendment filling the blanks on the bill the morning of its debate on the Senate floor, without allowing time for review or public comment. State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott said the bill’s provision on public lands is “very concerning.”

Scott Syroka is a former Johnston city council member.

Does anyone remember voting for Rosalind Brewer? That’s the Walgreens CEO with the power to decide what kind of health care millions of Americans, including countless Iowans, get to access. The latest battle over reproductive rights shows us how.

Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it was hitting pause on an early April decision by Trump-appointed federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk to suspend approval of mifepristone previously granted by the Food and Drug Administration more than two decades ago.

If you’re not familiar yet, mifepristone is a safe and commonly used pill in abortion care. It can also be used to treat medical conditions like uterine fibroids (noncancerous growths in the uterus) as well as Cushing syndrome, a condition caused by prolonged exposure to high cortisol levels.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, pundits argued this meant that access to mifepristone would continue to be available to all Americans. Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, went as far as to say, “…nothing is going to change with respect to mifepristone access until and unless the court both takes the case on the merits and sides with the challengers.”

But that statement is not true. Access to mifepristone was already restricted for millions of Americans prior to Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision, so the Supreme Court’s stay on his ruling only prolongs a status quo of continued restrictions for too many. Corporate monopolies like Walgreens are the reason why.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

I thought the often-repeated desire to weed out waste, fraud and abuse from government spending was something Republicans, Democrats, and independents could all agree on in Iowa.

Boy, am I naive.

A bit of recent Iowa government history illustrates this contradiction between our elected officials’ statements and their actions.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

International Women’s Day—a day for celebrating women’s achievements.

Two months before the unanimous vote naming Susan Clark Junior High, a school board member wrote to me: “You might want to create a Wikipedia page for Susan Clark. It’s quite difficult to find information on her online.”

I tried and failed. Several tries have produced the same verdict: there’s already a page for the 1868 Iowa Supreme Court ruling in her name, and that’s enough.

Reshaping K-12 education has been a major theme of the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session. In January, Republican majorities quickly approved Governor Kim Reynolds’ plan to divert hundreds of millions of public dollars to private schools. In March, the House and Senate passed a “bathroom bill” prohibiting transgender people from using school facilities that align with their gender identity.

Last week, House and Senate Republicans finished work on another two major education bills. Senate File 496 will impose many new restrictions on public schools, while Senate File 391 will lower standards for teachers and librarians and relax several high school curriculum requirements.

The Senate approved both bills on straight party-line votes. Four House Republicans (Michael Bergan, Chad Ingels, Megan Jones, and Hans Wilz) joined Democrats to vote against Senate File 496. Ingels and all Democrats present opposed Senate File 391.

Reynolds is certain to sign both bills and claim victory for her stated goals of empowering parents and giving school districts more flexibility. This post will explain how key provisions changed before final passage, and which parts of each bill didn’t make the cut.

Republicans who control the Tennessee House of Representatives used their supermajority this month to expel two Black lawmakers for “disorderly behavior.” State Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson had helped lead a protest against gun violence in the House chamber, disrupting legislative work for a little less than an hour.

The power play was quickly revealed as a miscalculation. Jones and Pearson gained national acclaim and many new supporters. They were back at work within a week, after local government bodies reappointed them to the state House.

Meanwhile, the overreaction generated a tremendous amount of negative media coverage. Many reports noted that Tennessee Republicans had ousted two young Black men, while a third Democrat who took part in the same protest (an older white woman) barely survived the expulsion vote.

The episode also brought greater scrutiny to Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers. This week, a vice chair of the House GOP caucus resigned from the legislature after a Nashville-based television station uncovered evidence that he had sexually harassed at least one intern. An ethics committee had investigated that matter in secret, and the House speaker had imposed no consequences for the grotesquely inappropriate behavior.

Watching all of this unfold, I wondered whether anything like this scenario had happened, or could happen, to an Iowa lawmaker.

Joseph Howe is a political strategist and former Libertarian Party of Iowa state chair with experience working on campaigns as a state director such as Gary Johnson 2016 and Rick Stewart 2022. He also served as the Polk County co-chair for Rand Paul’s campaign in 2016. In addition to his political work, Joseph is a financial services operations manager and resides in Beaverdale with his wife Amanda and son John.

Iowa Republican legislators,

I am writing as a fellow proponent of limited government intervention and individual freedom, to express my concerns about House File 716, the bill aimed at regulating political parties’ caucuses, which was recently introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives.

It is important to remember that the true purpose of a caucus is to organize county parties. That can get lost in the media attention around presidential candidates and the money involved. The caucus process is the first step in organizing at the county and precinct level, which is critical to building strong and representative political parties. Would most Iowans who truly support limited government put money and prestige ahead of small “r” republican principles?

The Iowa House and Senate finished work this week on several priority bills for Republicans, and leaders are closer to agreement on the next state budget.

The accelerating pace raises the prospect that the Iowa legislature may adjourn for the year close to the session’s scheduled end date of April 28. Stalemates over policies related to education and COVID-19 vaccines pushed the last two legislative sessions well into overtime; the 2021 session ended on May 19, and last year’s work wrapped up on May 24.

This piece highlights where things stand with high-profile bills approved in either the House or Senate this week, and other legislation that will likely be part of late deal-making. Forthcoming Bleeding Heartland posts will focus on many of those bills separately.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring.

When I was a kid, Mom warned, “Make sure you keep a screen door between you and the Fuller Brush man. They won’t leave, and all they do is to sell, sell, sell.”

I remember that caution as I’m reading House File 654, the bill Iowa House Republicans recently approved. Among other things, the “firearms omnibus” would encourage public schools to implement age-appropriate gun safety instruction from grades K-12, “based on the eddie eagle gunsafe program developed by the National Rifle Association.”

It’s not the curriculum I question, it’s the messenger and what’s behind bringing the NRA into Iowa’s public schools.

Once in the door, they’ll “sell, sell, sell.” And the NRA is not just peddling brushes. 

They’re selling gun culture.

Iowa Senate debate on a proposal to relax child labor regulations stalled late in the evening of April 17, after the Republican floor manager Adrian Dickey and Majority Leader Jack Whitver refused to answer a Democratic senator’s questions about an amendment published earlier in the day.

After hours of delay, the Senate resumed its work and approved the child labor bill (Senate File 542) shortly before 5:00 am on April 18, with Republicans Charlie McClintock and Jeff Taylor joining all Democrats in opposition.

The snag in last night’s proceedings is not limited to one controversial issue.

According to Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, Whitver told him Senate Republicans would no longer answer questions during floor debate, in light of a recent Iowa Supreme Court decision. That ruling (known as LS Power) has also made Iowa House Republicans more cautious about answering questions in public, a debate on a firearms bill revealed last week.

The majority party’s new approach could leave Iowa lawmakers less informed as they vote on complex legislation. Floor debate may be the only time Democrats can clarify their understanding of certain provisions, since managers’ amendments containing big changes sometime appear just hours before a vote on final passage. Over the next few weeks, Senate Republicans are expected to unveil their spending plans for fiscal year 2024 right before lengthy budget bills are bought to the chamber floor.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Last week was one to savor. But it also was a week to reflect on how far we still need to travel to have true citizen engagement in our state and local governments.

First, some savoring.

The Iowa League of Women Voters honored me and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, the nonprofit, nonpartisan education and advocacy organization I lead. The annual Defending Democracy Award means so much—knowing it comes from the organizational descendants of the women who pushed for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote and who rallied in countless places across America, including right here in Bloomfield (Davis County), to make that happen.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring.

Way back in 1996, Alanis Morrissette asked, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?” She might have been thinking about a “black fly in your Chardonnay,” but today her question is relevant for Iowa Republican legislators.

Here’s a good definition of the term: “Irony occurs in literature and in life whenever a person says or does something that departs from what we expect them to say or do.”

Ronald Reagan hasn’t roamed the Oval Office for 34 years, yet even now, you’ll hear GOP candidates quote the Gipper: “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” 

They love to quote it. They just don’t love to do it.

The Iowa Supreme Court has allowed an open records lawsuit against Governor Kim Reynolds to proceed. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice David May, the court said concerns about executive privilege or non-justiciable political questions did not prevent plaintiffs from pursuing a claim that the governor’s office violated the open records law, known as Iowa Code Chapter 22, by failing to provide public records in a timely manner.

The court also confirmed that government officials and entities cannot sidestep the law’s requirements by ignoring records requests for an extended period. In addition, the decision clarified that electronic records (like other kinds of public records) must be produced within a reasonable time frame.

Amy Adams is a mom of three and a former educator living in rural NE Iowa. Currently, Amy works as the Partnerships Director for Progress Iowa. 

Whether it’s at local school board meetings or in Congress, the words “parents’ rights” are everywhere. As a mom and as a former educator, I certainly have expectations about parents’ rights. Like many, I want my kids to go to quality, safe schools where each will have opportunities to grow and learn.

But looking closely at the legislation passed here in Iowa and the U.S. House of Representatives, these so-called parental rights bills are far from what most families want or need for their children and their schools.

Governor Kim Reynolds, her staff, and security detail used a non-public elevator and “walked down the secure hallway” where Iowa Supreme Court justices have private offices before attending the April 11 oral arguments in a major abortion-related case.

“Neither the justices, supreme court staff, or Judicial Branch Building security knew or gave permission for the governor or Iowa State Highway Patrol to access the supreme court’s non-public office space” at that time, according to Molly Kottmeyer, counsel to Chief Justice Susan Christensen.