Catching up on the week’s news at the statehouse, the Iowa Senate rejected two of Governor Terry Branstad’s nominees for the Board of Regents on Monday, and the governor withdrew two other nominees who were headed for trouble in the upper chamber. Details on the votes and thoughts about the implications are after the jump.

Governor Terry Branstad has invested a lot of political capital in education reform. His staff organized a large conference on the topic in 2011, featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other nationally-recognized speakers. Later that year, the governor rolled out an ambitious blueprint for education reform, which was a focus of his “Condition of the State” speeches to state lawmakers in 2012 and 2013. Branstad wants something bigger and better than the narrowly-focused education reform deal approved last spring. To encourage legislators to work harder on this issue, the governor has even held up K-12 school funding decisions that should have been made a year ago under Iowa law.

Iowa House and Senate members are now negotiating over education reform bills approved in each chamber on party lines. But Branstad’s past use of his line-item power is standing in the way of broad legislation.  

Democratic State Senator Jeff Danielson has not ruled out running for Congress in the open first district next year. I contacted Danielson after State Senator Liz Mathis confirmed on Saturday that she will not seek to replace Bruce Braley. Danielson responded on April 7, “I’m not actively seeking any other office at this time. I’m focused on the work of the Cedar Valley in the [legislative] session.” When I asked whether he might consider a Congressional bid after the session ends, Danielson responded yesterday, “I am keeping all options open for 2014.”

Danielson represents Iowa Senate district 30, covering most of Cedar Falls and part of Waterloo in Black Hawk County. He was just re-elected to a third four-year term in 2012, so he would not have to give up his current position to run for Congress next year. If he won the Democratic primary and the general election in IA-01, there would be a special election in Senate district 30 in early 2015. Republicans have a slight voter registration advantage in that district, but no-party voters have a plurality.

Danielson’s district includes the University of Northern Iowa campus, so he has been a vocal advocate for higher education funding in the Iowa Senate. He has also been a leading voice for better disclosure of campaign contributions. He supports a federal constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and limit corporate campaign gifts. In Danielson’s latest re-election campaign, he focused on bipartisan work to support main street businesses and fully fund services Iowans depend on. He also emphasized his commitment to “protecting health care choices for women.”

In an ideal world, evidence that more than half of Midwest rivers and streams can’t support aquatic life would inspire policy-makers to clean up our waterways. Rivers that are suitable for swimming, fishing, and other recreation can be a huge economic engine for Iowa communities.

We live in Iowa, where most of our lawmakers take the Patty Judge view: “Iowa is an agricultural state and anyone who doesn’t like it can leave in any of four directions.”

Yesterday the Iowa House approved a bill to relax manure storage regulations for large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). All of the House Republicans and two-thirds of the Democrats supported this bad legislation. Details on the bill and the House vote are below.

The FAMiLY Leader’s strange obsession with the Iowa Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth is well-established. Last year, the socially conservative organization led by Bob Vander Plaats was so focused on getting Governor Terry Branstad to drop his affiliation with this conference that they were too “busy” to protest as the governor wined and dined the future Communist ruler of China (world leader in coerced abortions).

The FAMiLY Leader was at it again last week, throwing a fit over the 8th Annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth scheduled for April 3. For this post, I don’t want to focus on the “ludicrous” concerns raised by people like Chuck Hurley (“Stop coming after my kids and other people’s kids with evil propaganda”). I don’t want to focus on how Branstad “ducked rather than draw fire from name-callers” with this weak response to the controversy.

Today I’m more interested in sixteen Republican lawmakers who showed their solidarity with the FAMiLY Leader by making an idiotic promise they can’t possibly keep.

Last night the Iowa Senate approved Senate File 296, a bill to expand Medicaid, on a strictly party-line vote of 26 to 23. You can listen to the entire Senate debate (approximately 90 minutes) at Radio Iowa. I’ve posted highlights from the debate after the jump, along with the full list of 52 organizations that have registered their support for Senate File 296. Some corporations and organizations have have registered their lobbyists as undecided on Senate File 296, but at this writing, not a single organization is registered against the Medicaid expansion.

School districts across Iowa are flying blind with less than a month left to certify their budgets for the coming fiscal year. Although Iowa’s state revenues are rising and expected to grow more next year, administrators have no idea whether K-12 district budgets may increase, and if so, by how much.

Students and teachers will pay the price for the decision by Iowa House Republicans and Governor Terry Branstad to hold school funding hostage to education reform.

Anyone who follows the Iowa legislature has frequent occasion to wonder how someone that ignorant got elected to the Iowa House or Senate. But every once in a while, a spectacularly clueless act grabs our attention. Last week a little-known first-term state representative made himself a contender for the title of Iowa’s most clueless lawmaker.

UPDATE: Not so fast–see today’s news, added at the end of this post.

Yesterday Rob Portman of Ohio became the first sitting Republican U.S. senator to endorse marriage equality. In a guest editorial for the Columbus Post-Dispatch, Portman explained that he reconsidered his opinion on gay marriage after his son came out of the closet.

As a rule, I welcome any public support for marriage equality from Republican ranks. It’s nice to see a current elected official join the long list of campaign professionals and former GOP office-holders who support civil marriage rights. Still, something about Portman’s comments yesterday rubbed me the wrong way.

Iowa Senate Democrats offered Governor Terry Branstad a compromise this week to address his concerns that the federal government will not keep its promises to fund the Medicaid expansion provided under the 2010 health care reform law. Follow me after the jump for details on their latest offer and a cost comparison of Medicaid expansion and Branstad’s “Healthy Iowa Plan.”

Governor Terry Branstad traveled to Fort Madison yesterday to discuss a fertilizer plant project involving the largest tax incentive package in Iowa history. Previewing a likely theme of his re-election campaign next year, Branstad spun questions over his administration’s handling of the Orascom deal into an attack on Iowa Senate Democrats and the Koch brothers.

Expanding Medicaid in Iowa would add nearly $2.2 billion to the state’s economy, create an estimated 2,362 jobs, and save state government about $1.6 billion, according to a new study. For now, Governor Terry Branstad is sticking to his alternative plan for covering some low-income Iowans, but Senator Tom Harkin predicted last week that federal officials will not approve a waiver for Branstad’s approach.

Follow me after the jump for details on those stories and more about Medicaid in Iowa. I’ve also enclosed a moving personal statement State Senator Mary Jo Wilhelm delivered today about Iowans who can’t afford health insurance.

Iowa received a mediocre “C” grade on the Sunlight Foundation‘s new Open Legislative Data Report Card, designed to compare “how state legislatures make their data publicly available.”  

During 2011 and 2012, the Iowa Senate was our state’s firewall against the social conservative agenda. The Republican-controlled Iowa House passed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, sweeping limits on abortion rights (twice), a “stand your ground” bill and a constitutional amendment that would invalidate virtually all restrictions on guns. All of those bills died in the Democratic-controlled state Senate.

Social issues have never been a priority for Iowa House leaders. They blocked a floor vote on a “personhood” bill in 2011 and steered clear of extremist crusades like impeaching Iowa Supreme Court justices and replacing gun permit laws with “constitutional carry.” Still, I expected House Republicans to cover the usual bases during this year’s legislative session.

Instead, almost every high-profile bill on so-called family values failed to win House committee approval and therefore died in the legislature’s first funnel deadline last Friday. That includes some mainstream conservative efforts as well as freak show bills like ending no-fault divorce or barring county recorders from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Most amazing to me, House Republicans no longer have the votes to pass a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman.  

Democratic State Senator Tom Courtney is recovering from successful heart surgery performed last Thursday, the Des Moines Register’s William Petroski reported today. Courtney chairs the Iowa Senate Budget Subcommittee on Justice Systems and serves on several other committees. I’m sure the whole Bleeding Heartland community joins me in wishing him a speedy recovery.

While Courtney is recuperating, Democrats lack the 26th vote they need to pass controversial legislation in the Iowa Senate. However, Courtney’s absence should not be too disruptive as long as he is able to return by April 5. That is the second “funnel” deadline, by which time most non-appropriations bills need to be approved by one chamber and by a committee in the other chamber in order to stay alive. The first “funnel” approaches this Friday, March 8. Most bills that have not cleared at least one committee in one chamber by that date will be dead for the 2013 legislative session. But bills need not be approved by the full Iowa Senate to make it through the first funnel.

MARCH 11 UPDATE: Courtney told the Des Moines Register that he plans to return to the Iowa Senate this week.

Governor Terry Branstad announced his administration’s alternative to Medicaid expansion this morning at his regular weekly press conference. The “Healthy Iowa Plan” would cover approximately 89,000 Iowans with income below the federal poverty level. In contrast, Medicaid expansion would cover up to 150,000 Iowans with income below 133 percent of the poverty level.

Details on the new plan are after the jump. Early reaction from Senate President Pam Jochum suggests that the Iowa Senate will not be inclined to approve this proposal. I also question whether the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will grant a waiver for Branstad’s plan. Federal officials have already denied requests from Branstad and other governors to allow a smaller Medicaid expansion than what the 2010 health care reform law provides.  

A Terrace Hill mystery: why doesn’t Governor Terry Branstad have more details to share about his proposed alternative to expanding Medicaid in Iowa?

Answer: Outside consultants are still working up a plan for him. CORRECTION: Branstad rolled out his “Healthy Iowa Plan” on March 4.

This week New Jersey’s Chris Christie became the eighth Republican governor to recognize that only a chump would turn down 100 percent federal funding to provide Medicaid coverage to low-income constituents. But Governor Terry Branstad doubled down on his determination not to allow Medicaid to expand in Iowa.

While some advocates are hoping Republican legislators will help pass a Medicaid expansion bill by a veto-proof majority, that scenario appears extremely unlikely. A prolonged standoff between Branstad and Iowa Senate Democrats seems unavoidable.

While more than 80 nationally prominent Republicans have signed on to a brief encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to support marriage equality, Iowa Republican legislators continue to march lockstep behind efforts to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling.

This weekend in Des Moines, Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy showed how pro-choice elected officials should talk about abortion rights and the “personhood” movement.

The Iowa Senate Ethics committee (unofficial slogan: “See no evil, hear no evil”) met yesterday to consider an ethics complaint filed against Republican Senator Kent Sorenson. Five of the six committee members voted to table two serious allegations raised by Peter Waldron, who was a consultant for Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign while Sorenson was the campaign’s Iowa chair in 2011.

State Senator Kent Sorenson has made news lately leading the charge to restore the death penalty for some crimes in Iowa. I wonder whether that popular cause will be enough to save his political career, in light of recent claims by Republicans who have worked closely with him.  

Iowa Senate President Pam Jochum does not plan to run for the open seat in Iowa’s first Congressional district but is considering a run for governor in 2014, she confirmed in a telephone interview today.

As Iowa legislators consider what to do with the state’s nearly $1 billion budget surplus, Republicans are advocating a $750 income tax credit for “every average Iowa family.” But that credit would do nothing for lower-income Iowans who have the largest state and local tax burden. The latest report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows yet again that in Iowa and across the country, the bottom 20 percent of households by income pay the largest percentage of their income in state and local taxes (mostly property, sales and excise taxes).

The full report is available on the institute’s website. For the Iowa data, click here or here. Some charts, facts and figures on Iowa’s regressive tax system are after the jump. In my opinion, the bulk of Iowa’s surplus should go toward restoring and improving state services that have been underfunded for many years. The most valuable tax policy change would be increasing the earned income tax credit that benefits working families. Cutting personal income taxes should be way down the priority list, especially since high-income Iowans can already use a wide range of deductions to lower their income tax bill.

State Senator Mark Chelgren celebrated his 45th birthday last week with cupcakes for fellow senators and a promise that he will try to change an obscure part of the Iowa Constitution.

Legislators often introduce bills solely to make a political statement, but even in that context, Chelgren’s effort is an impressive feat of irrelevant grandstanding.  

Traditionally, Democrats and Republicans in the Iowa legislature have argued over the amount of state education funding. Now it’s a battle just to set an allowable growth level for K-12 school districts. Last year’s legislature failed to meet a deadline for approving allowable growth for fiscal year 2014, covering the 2013/2014 academic year. As a result, school districts have no idea how much they will be able to increase their budgets for the fiscal year beginning on July 1, or whether they will be able to increase their budgets at all.

Yesterday the Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate voted along party lines to set allowable growth at 4 percent for the coming fiscal year. Governor Terry Branstad and statehouse Republicans want to put off any decision on allowable growth until the legislature passes another education reform bill. After the jump I’ve posted background and more details about this issue.

Representative Bruce Braley braved some pretty bad winter weather this morning to meet with Iowa House and Senate Democrats at the state capitol. I haven’t seen any details about his remarks, which were closed to the public and media. No doubt he is trying to gain early backing for a U.S. Senate candidacy. State Senator Steve Sodders posted on Facebook and twitter today, “Great morning speech today by Congressman Braley…I’m a supporter.” Sodders represents Iowa Senate district 36, which is part of the first Congressional district where Braley just won a fourth term in the U.S. House.

I’ll update this post later if any news leaks about the substance of Braley’s meetings today. My money’s on no serious Democratic primary opposition once he launches his Senate run. He told reporters that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Chair Michael Bennett have encouraged him to run for the seat Senator Tom Harkin is vacating.

Iowa Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham went to the statehouse yesterday to advocate for more tax credits to use as business incentives during the next fiscal year. She inadvertently revealed that in the negotiating department, she could benefit from wisdom that President Ronald Reagan borrowed from a Russian proverb.

Governor Terry Branstad indicated yesterday that the Iowa Department of Transportation will review its policy on driver’s licenses for immigrants with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. He also suggested that if the Iowa legislature addresses this issue, he would sign a bill allowing approximately 5,000 undocumented immigrants with this status to receive Iowa driver’s licenses and non-operator IDs.

UPDATE: On the afternoon of January 23, the Iowa DOT announced it will issue driver’s licenses to immigrants with deferred status. The full official statement is at the end of this post.

Forty years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v Wade. Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I’ve posted many links about abortion rights and availability below.  

One of the most unpleasant members of the Iowa legislature may have committed an ethics violation, according to a former consultant for Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign.

Advocacy groups and some Iowa lawmakers are challenging the Iowa Department of Transportation’s policy against issuing driver’s licenses or other identification cards to those granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady delivered the annual Condition of the Judiciary speech to Iowa House and Senate members yesterday. As he did in 2011 and again last year, Cady appealed to lawmakers to fund the judiciary at an adequate level. Highlights from his case are below.

Iowa is one of the states where Michelle Rhee, ALEC, and a Republican Governor have joined forces in support of an agenda of education “reform” that is all about funneling public dollars to corporate welfare. Governor Terry Branstad announced Round #2 of the fight over education reform in a January 14th press conference.  Round #1 ended in a compromise bill in May 2012, which scaled back the Governor's initial proposals. With the beginning of the legislative session, the battle resumes.

More below the fold.

Governor Terry Branstad just finished delivering his annual Condition of the State speech to Iowa House and Senate members. He unveiled a new property tax reform plan, which would cut commercial property taxes by 20 percent over four years. Previously the governor had called for cutting commercial property taxes by 40 percent. Branstad also urged legislators to approve the key points of education reform proposals he released yesterday. Finally, he outlined three policies that, in his view, would help Iowa become the healthiest state in the country.

Links and more details are after the jump. I will update this post later with more information and reaction. The video of Branstad’s speech will be available on IPTV.org and will be broadcast statewide on Iowa Public Television at 6:30 pm on January 16.

The Iowa House and Senate began their 2013 session yesterday with the usual welcoming speeches from legislative leaders and the ritual of choosing desks for each lawmaker in the chambers. Judging from this photo, returning legislators get first dibs.

As was the case in 2012, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage were absent from the opening-day speeches. Republican leaders emphasized the need to cut both property and income taxes. Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen also claimed credit on behalf of Republicans for Iowa’s improving fiscal condition. House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer spent a fair amount of time criticizing Congress before calling for state action to improve education and cut taxes. House Speaker Pro Tem Steve Olson repeated some themes of last year’s election campaign and quoted U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Bill Dix concentrated on tax reforms.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal focused on education and workforce training programs to address “Iowa’s skill shortage.” Senate President Pam Jochum focused on health-related issues: improve mental health services, helping elderly people stay in their own homes, and expanding Medicaid, which she described as “the biggest opportunity for this session to make a positive difference for Iowans.” Iowa House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy emphasized the need for bipartisan work on a range of issues: education, mental health care delivery, the transition to a new maximum security prison, and protecting natural resources.

Follow me after the jump for excerpts from the opening-day speeches by legislative leaders (as prepared for delivery). I included the full text of Jochum’s remarks, because her personal journey says a lot about who she is. Jochum also paid a lovely tribute to former Republican State Senator Pat Ward, who died last year.  

The Iowa legislature’s 2013 session opened today. After the jump I’ve posted details on the Iowa Senate majority and minority leadership teams, along with all chairs, vice chairs, and members of standing Senate committees. Where relevant, I’ve noted changes since last year. Click here for a similar post on the new Iowa House.

Democrats hold a 26 to 24 majority in the upper chamber. The huge experience gap between the Iowa Senate caucuses is striking. Only seven of the 24 Republicans have served as lawmakers in either the House or Senate for more than four years, whereas 19 of the 26 Democrats have more than four years of legislative service. Click here for details on the tenure of all 50 Iowa senators.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

After the jump I’ve posted a bunch of links about finances and spending, large and small.

Catching up on some news from late December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources have negotiated a draft work plan on inspecting and issuing permits to confined-animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Iowa by the end of calendar year 2018. Follow me after the jump for background and details.

Iowa has a lot of strengths as a place to live, but good public transportation isn’t one of them. In most of our cities and towns, adults need to drive to get to work, school, or shops for necessities.

That’s going to be a lot more difficult for approximately 5,000 Iowa residents who were brought to this country as undocumented immigrants during childhood.