Yesterday the Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill that would restrict where abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy can be performed in Iowa. The bill is aimed at stopping Dr. Leroy Carhart from opening a new clinic in Council Bluffs without adding new restrictions on a woman’s right to have a late-term abortion. However, Republican leaders in both chambers of the state legislature spoke out against that approach yesterday. Details and next steps in this controversy are after the jump.

UPDATE: Added comments from anti-choice Democratic State Senator Tom Hancock below.

Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Joe Bolkcom announced today that he will introduce new legislation designed to stop Omaha-based Dr. Leroy Carhart from opening an abortion clinic in Council Bluffs.

Follow me after the jump for background on Bolkcom’s new proposal and prospects for House File 657, the 20-week abortion ban the Iowa House approved earlier this year. Bolkcom has been assigned to floor-manage House File 657 if and when the upper chamber debates that bill.

UPDATE: Added comments from Governor Terry Branstad and Bolkcom below.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Bolkcom revealed further details on the new bill; his statement is at the end of this post.

Before this year’s legislative session began, I thought the Democrats in the Iowa Senate would more easily find common ground with Governor Terry Branstad than with the Republican-controlled Iowa House. Branstad dealt with a Democratic or divided legislature for 14 of his 16 previous years as governor, while most of the House Republicans weren’t serving in the legislature at that time.

This week Branstad proved me wrong, rejecting key provisions of a compromise bill that passed both chambers unanimously and a Democratic offer to meet him halfway on biennial budgeting. Follow me after the jump for more on those stories.

In the first major breakthrough on tax policy this legislative session, a bill containing tax cuts and supplemental appropriations cleared an Iowa House and Senate conference committee Monday, then passed both chambers unanimously.

Details are after the jump, along with recent news on efforts to reach a compromise on the state budget for fiscal year 2012.

The Iowa Senate confirmed six of Governor Terry Branstad’s appointees to state offices and boards yesterday, but Democratic senators indicated that two of the governor’s picks may not receive the two-thirds vote needed in the upper chamber. Meanwhile, Branstad suggested at his weekly press conference that race may be a factor in opposition to Isaiah McGee as director of the Iowa Department of Human Rights.

Follow me after the jump for more on who was confirmed yesterday and the battles coming later this week.

UPDATE: On April 12 the Senate rejected McGee as well as William Gustoff, one of Branstad’s appointees to the state Judicial Nominating Commission. Senators confirmed Teresa Wahlert with two votes to spare and three members of the Environmental Protection Commission. Details on the April 12 votes are below.

Nine Iowa Senate Democrats have signed an open letter asking their colleagues to shelve a pro-nuclear power bill this session and to create a legislative commission “to thoroughly investigate all of the issues including the need for a nuclear power plant, the costs and impact on utility rates, financing and liability issues, safety and waste disposal issues, and renewable energy alternatives.” The senators who signed were Daryl Beall (district 25), Dennis Black (district 21), Joe Bolkcom (district 39), Dick Dearden (district 34), Robert Dvorsky (district 15), Gene Fraise (district 46), Jack Hatch (district 33), Rob Hogg (district 19) and Pam Jochum (district 14). The full text of their letter is after the jump. Excerpt:

Specifically, we have the following concerns:

* There is very little known about how much a new nuclear power plant would cost or how it would

impact utility rates, especially for seniors, working families, and Iowa businesses.

* The proposed technology – small modular reactors – is unproven and has not been approved by

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

* There are significant safety and financial liability concerns, especially after the nuclear disaster in Japan. United States Senator Joseph Lieberman has called for “putting the brakes on” the construction of new nuclear power plants “until we can absorb what has happened in Japan.”

* There are potential issues with the creation of a permanent government bureaucracy to permit, monitor, and regulate any new nuclear power plants.

* There are unresolved siting issues about where the plant or plants would be located and how the property would be acquired for the construction of the plants.

MidAmerican Energy is only in the first of what was represented to be a three-year study on the feasibility of constructing a new nuclear power plant in Iowa. When that bill was passed, it was contemplated that Iowa would take at least three years to make any decision about new nuclear power plants. There is no rush.

Speaking to the Des Moines Register yesterday, Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen predicted the bill will pass this year. Iowa’s only current nuclear power plant is in Paulsen’s district. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal supports the bill.

MidAmerican Energy President William Fehrman is expected to attend an Iowa Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on the bill later today. Fehrman has said the bill would help MidAmerican attract investors for a nuclear construction project. Critics point out that the legislation would lead to higher utility bills for hundreds of thousands of Iowans and would tilt the field so far in favor of expanding nuclear power that less costly energy efficiency and renewable energy projects might not be pursued.

On the other hand, even before this week’s crisis at the Fukushima facility in Japan, financing was not coming together for proposed nuclear power plant projects in the United States. So one could argue that even if this bill becomes law, MidAmerican probably won’t attract the investor support needed to build nuclear plants here. In that case, why let the company charge its Iowa customers more now to pay for anticipated future construction costs?

Meanwhile, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ranked the 104 nuclear power plants across the country in terms of earthquake risk. Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear reactor is 26th on that list. Yesterday several U.S. Senate Democrats urged the head of the NRC to conduct a thorough review of all nuclear reactors in this country, especially those in earthquake-prone areas.

In Germany, political leaders have decided to temporarily shut down seven of the country’s oldest nuclear reactors in order to conduct a safety review. The prime minister of Spain has also called for a review of all that country’s nuclear power plants. A nuclear energy expert whose name I didn’t catch pointed out yesterday on CNN that baseload demand for electricity is relatively low in the spring, so it wouldn’t cause problems on the grid to shut down U.S. nuclear power plants for a month or two during a safety review.

UPDATE: Fehrman told the Iowa Senate subcommittee that “MidAmerican Energy customers would see their power bills rise 10 percent over a decade to pay for the investor-owned utility’s share of a proposed Iowa nuclear plant.” He confirmed that the plant would be completed no sooner than 2020, and that Iowa ratepayers would not get their money back, even if the construction never moved forward.

Sen. Swati Dandekar of Marion said Iowans are concerned about paying for a project that may cost more than the utility thinks, given the nation’s record on cost overruns at nuclear plants.

“There is no doubt there is a history of cost overruns in this industry,” Fehrman said. “We’ve asked for more oversight of this project, and that’s in the bill.”

MidAmerican is pushing legislation that would set some of the rate-making principles to be applied to the plant, in effect telling investors how the utility would recover its expenses.

Also on Thursday, the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club and the American Association of Retired Persons came out against the bill.  From an AARP statement:

“AARP believes it is unfair to consumers and bad policy for the Iowa General Assembly to enact legislation that would allow utility companies to charge consumers in advance for costs of a new plant before it is in service, and require consumers to continue to have to pay even if the plant development is canceled, or goes over budget [….] AARP is concerned about this legislation, not because of the question of nuclear power, but because we oppose raising rates for consumers already struggling to afford their utility bills for a plant yet to be built, where we don’t know the actual cost to build, and may or may not even be built in Iowa.”

Still the self-styled taxpayer watchdog groups are missing in action on this bill.  

Several Iowa elected officials commented on expanding nuclear energy production Monday in light of the deteriorating situation at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. Two Iowa Republicans and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal indicated that they don’t want the cascade of events at Fukushima to derail efforts to build new nuclear power plants in Iowa. However, Democratic State Senator Joe Bolkcom called for a “pause” to more closely scrutinize the impact of a nuclear energy bill that has been on a fast track in the Iowa House and Senate.

Details and context are below, along with Representative Steve King’s comments about federal policy on nuclear power.

Republican elected officials are sending a mixed message about Iowa’s finances. Before the 2011 legislative session began, Republicans were outraged about a so-called “unaffordable” union contract that would give state workers modest raises, at a cost of about $100 million a year for two years.  Barely a week into the session, a party-line Iowa House vote approved a broad “deappropriations” bill, in which about a third of the savings came from cutting Iowa’s preschool grant for four-year-olds. The universal voluntary preschool program was expected to cost $70 million to $75 million per year (according to Legislative Services Agency estimates), or up to $90 million by some other estimates.

Since then, House Republicans have passed House File 185, which allows zero growth in K-12 education budgets for the next two fiscal years. That was an unprecedented move. In nearly 40 years, the Iowa legislature has never approved less than 1 percent allowable growth for school district budgets: not during the farm crisis, not during the recessions and budget crunches of the early 1980s, early 1990s, 2001-02 or 2009-10. Now, we are told, our dire fiscal condition doesn’t leave any room to spend $65 million to allow school districts to increase their budgets by 2 percent.

Yet on February 16, the Iowa House approved House File 194 on a mostly party-line vote. The bill would cut Iowa’s individual income tax rates by 20 percent, which the Legislative Services Agency estimates would cost $330 million during fiscal year 2012 and more than $700 million in each of the next three fiscal years.  How Iowa can afford that loss of revenue and what services would be cut to keep the budget balanced, House Republicans don’t say.

Meanwhile, Governor Terry Branstad plans to lay off hundreds of state workers to cut labor costs and sent state legislators a draft budget with no allowable growth for K-12 schools for two years. This week Branstad offered a preschool plan that would support fewer children at a lower cost ($43 million per year). He and his Department of Education director, Jason Glass, have repeatedly said Iowa cannot afford to continue the preschool program as currently structured. Yet Branstad’s plan to cut corporate taxes in half would deprive the state of at least $100 million in revenues. He has proposed about $450 million in commercial property tax cuts, with the idea that state government would reimburse local governments for much of that lost revenue. If our budget constraints are so severe, how can we afford those policies?

More context on the state budget is after the jump, along with details on the Iowa Senate’s resistance to Republican tax and education funding proposals.

The Iowa Senate Democratic caucus on November 14 re-elected Mike Gronstal as majority leader and Jack Kibbie as Senate president. Five senators will serve as assistant majority leaders: Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City, Bill Dotzler of Waterloo, Wally Horn of Cedar Rapids, Amanda Ragan of Mason City, and Steve Sodders of State Center. Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson got Iowa Republicans excited on Saturday by tweeting that Horn would challenge Gronstal, but according to this Des Moines Register report by Jennifer Jacobs, “No one mounted a challenge for either leadership role, several senators said.”

More Iowa Senate news is after the jump.

For 25 years, American Rivers has released annual reports on “America’s Most Endangered Rivers.” Only one waterway in the Midwest made the group’s top ten list for 2010: Iowa’s Cedar River, which came in at number 5. American Rivers comments:

The Cedar River harbors globally rare plant communities, provides critical habitat for fish and wildlife, and is a popular destination for paddlers and anglers. However, outdated flood management and poor watershed planning are impacting public health and safety by causing pollution and increasing the risk of flood damage. The Army Corps of Engineers must prioritize lower cost, non-structural flood management solutions on the Cedar River. These natural solutions will help reduce flood damage, improve water quality, restore fish and wildlife habitat, and provide recreational opportunities and economic benefits while saving taxpayer dollars.

Go here to download a factsheet with more information about the Cedar River and why it’s “endangered.”

Perry Beeman posted the full press release from American Rivers at the Des Moines Register’s blog. Excerpt:

“We have an opportunity to learn from the devastating floods of 1993 and 2008 and rebuild smarter and stronger. We need to incorporate non-structural, natural solutions that provide flood protection, improve water quality, enhance fish and wildlife habitat, and provide recreational opportunities and economic benefits to local communities,” said Sean McMahon, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Iowa.

“It is time for Iowans to insist that state and federal flood protection policies work to reduce flood damage by moving people and structures out of harms way, allowing the flood plain to perform its natural function to absorb and slow the river’s flow during future floods,” said Susan Heathcote with Iowa Environmental Council.

“The newly-organized Cedar River Watershed Coalition has recognized the need to take a holistic approach to watershed management by reaching across city and county jurisdictions to take a whole watershed approach to flood mitigation and river restoration.  This innovative group of concerned individuals and communities is committed to working together to reduce the impacts of flooding in the watershed and to improve water quality in the Cedar River,” said Rosalyn Lehman with Iowa Rivers Revival.

By 2008, the Cedar River had had two 500-year floods within 15 years. Rain falls on a radically changed landscape: plowed fields have replaced tall grass prairies; streams and creeks have been straightened; 90 percent of wetlands have been destroyed; floodplains have been filled and developed; and flows have doubled in just the last half century. Even without factoring in possible effects of climate change, which would exacerbate the problems, the landscape changes will bring more frequent and severe floods. The communities along the Cedar River deserve better, 21st century flood protection solutions to ensure public safety and river health.

The Cedar River, a tributary to the Mississippi River, provides drinking water to more than 120,000 residents, and roughly 530,000 people live and work in the Cedar River watershed. The primary land use in the watershed is agriculture and the river is a popular place for boating and fishing. The river is home to globally rare plant communities and fish and wildlife, including two species of endangered mussels.

In response to the devastating floods of 2008, the Iowa legislature passed a bill in 2009 requiring the Water Resources Coordinating Council to draft recommendations on “a watershed management approach to reduce the adverse impact of future flooding on this state’s residents, businesses, communities, and soil and water quality.” The WRCC submitted those recommendations in November 2009.

Unfortunately, Iowa legislators proved unwilling during the 2010 session to take even baby steps on floodplain management. A bill much weaker than the WRCC recommendations passed the Iowa Senate but never made it out of subcommittee in the Iowa House. The League of Cities, among others, lobbied against the measure. But don’t worry, if any of those cities experience a catastrophic flood, their lobbyists will urge legislators to send plenty of state taxpayer money their way.

I would like to see more cities adopt Davenport’s model for co-existing with a river:

In a nation that spends billions annually on structural flood protection (and billions more when the levees fail) Davenport is the national model for a more cost effective and environmentally responsible approach. We are the largest city in the nation on a major river without a system of levees and pumps for “flood control”. We’ve never had them.  And we don’t want them. Instead of viewing the grand Mississippi as just another storm sewer, we treat it appropriately, with a broad floodplain in (99%) City ownership, now the focal point of our “River Vision” plan. The River Vision plan, developed in conjunction with our southern shore partner, Rock Island, Illinois, is the only bi-state riverfront brownfield redevelopment plan of its kind in the nation. Developed with the extraordinary public input of more than a thousand citizens, the plan is guiding the riverfront revitalization of the historic core of the Quad Cities, and has garnered the nation’s “Most Livable Small City” award from the US Conference of Mayors.  In the historic 2008 Iowa floods, Davenport outperformed every city in the state. We even continued to play baseball at our riverfront ballpark as it became an island in the river. In 2009, our unique approach to floodplain management merited review by the National Academy of Science.  A nine minute video of Davenport’s resilience through the 2008 floods is accessible online.

The University of Iowa’s Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, in cooperation with other groups, has organized a series of seminars on “The Anatomy of Iowa Floods: Preparing for the Future.” The first of the free seminar series took place in Des Moines in March. After the jump I’ve posted the schedule and agenda for future seminars in Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Waverly this month, and in Mason City and Ames in July.

If you care about protecting Iowa waterways, please consider joining any or all of the following groups: Iowa Environmental Council, Iowa Rivers Revival, Nature Conservancy in Iowa, and the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

John Deeth attended the League of Women Voters’ forum in Coralville on Saturday, and he buried an interesting nugget toward the end of his liveblog:

Chris Bonfig asks about HF 2420; Mascher, Dvorsky, Schmitz, Lensing, Bolkcom yes; Jacoby, Marek no. Jacby: “The first part of the bill is marvelous, the [second] part needs some work.”

House file 2420, formerly known as House Study Bill 702, is the reworked “fair share” legislation. The idea behind “fair share” is that employees who don’t belong to a union would have to reimburse the union for services provided, such as collective bargaining and handling grievances. A “fair share” bill passed the Iowa Senate in 2007 but stalled in the Iowa House, where the Democratic majority was 53-47 at the time. The current Democratic majority is 56-44, but none of organized labor’s legislative priorities passed during the 2009 legislative session because of opposition from a “six-pack” of House Democrats.

This year’s “fair share” proposal has been scaled back and would apply only to state employees. (Many labor advocates agree with Iowa AFL-CIO president emeritus Mark Smith, who has argued that the measure should apply to all private sector and public sector unions.) Iowa Republicans and business groups are fiercely opposing “fair share,” even though it would not apply to private businesses.

State Representative Dave Jacoby represents a relatively safe district in Johnson County. If he just announced at a public forum that he’s not backing HF 2420, I don’t see much chance of the “six-pack” members supporting the bill. That would leave House Democrats short of the 51 votes needed for passage.

When Jacoby praised the first part of the bill but not the second part, he appeared to be supporting reimbursement for grievance services but not for bargaining services, which are more costly for the union to provide. Click here for the full text of HF 2420. It states that “reasonable reimbursement” for bargaining services “shall not exceed sixty-five percent of the regular membership dues that the nonmember would have to pay if the nonmember were a member” of the union. The bill caps reimbursement for grievance services at ten percent of the union’s regular membership dues.

In February, Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested that a new “prevailing wage” bill is more likely to pass this session than “fair share.” In 2009 the “six-pack” sank a prevailing wage bill, but this year House Labor Committee Chairman Rick Olson prepared a compromise version that would require payment of prevailing wage on a smaller number of projects. Olson told the Cedar Rapids Gazette that the “softer” version of the prevailing wage bill addresses the objections raised last year by conservative House Democrats.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

The legislative session begins this week, and budget issues are likely to dominate the proceedings.

Some state tax credits will be scrapped and others curtailed if lawmakers enact recommendations released on Friday by a commission Governor Chet Culver appointed. State Senator Joe Bolkcom, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee in the upper chamber, has vowed to pass as many of the recommendations as possible. I expect major pushback from corporate lobbyists against many of the proposals, however.

House Speaker Pat Murphy is not ruling out significant layoffs of state workers. It really is unfair to balance the budget mostly on the backs of state workers, especially since demand for state services increases during a recession.

I was surprised to see Culver’s chief of staff, John Frew, suggest a scaled-back version of “fair share” legislation could pass this session. If Democrats don’t have the votes for a prevailing wage bill, I can’t imagine they’ll get 51 votes for fair share, but I hope I’m wrong.

Kathie Obradovich previews other issues that are likely to come up during the legislative session.

Democratic leaders insist a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is off the table, but Republicans will use every trick in the book to try to bring the issue to the floor.

Roxanne Conlin plans to visit all 99 counties in her Senate campaign, just like Senator Chuck Grassley has been doing every year for the past three decades.

In other news, Iowa may be on the verge of coming out of the deep freeze. I read today that the highest temperature recorded anywhere in Iowa since January 1 was 20 degrees Fahrenheit one day in Keokuk (southeast corner of the state). How are you surviving the cold? I’ve been wearing slippers, wool sweaters and extra layers. My kids still insist they are comfortable running around the house in pajamas and bare feet. Our dog could walk for miles, even on the days when it’s been below zero F when I’m out with him.

This thread is for anything on your mind this weekend.

Key Democratic lawmakers will push for new limits on payday lending during the Iowa legislature’s upcoming session, which starts on January 12. State Senator Joe Bolkcom, who chairs the Senate Ways and Means Committee, called for restricting the “loan shark rates” the industry typically charges. The Iowa Catholic Conference also supports limiting the interest rate for payday loans to 36 percent. That’s welcome news. Although 36 percent interest is still quite high, it’s a lot better than the 300 to 400 percent interest rates payday lenders are in effect currently charging customers.

In 2007, the Iowa legislature had smaller Democratic majorities yet managed to pass a bill capping interest rates on car-title loans at 21 percent. (Former Governor Tom Vilsack and Attorney General Tom Miller had advocated that reform for a long time, but Republican leaders refused to allow a vote in the Iowa House when they controlled the chamber.)

In theory, it shouldn’t be hard for House Democrats to find 51 votes out of their 56-member caucus to pass payday lending reform. However, at yesterday’s press conference with Senator Bolkcom, State Representative Janet Petersen expressed doubt that an interest rate cap could pass the House Commerce Committee, which she chairs.

I hope we’re not in for another round of a few Iowa House Democrats blocking legislation that would serve the public interest. More thoughts on this issue are after the jump.

Shortly after the film tax credit scandal broke in September, Governor Chet Culver promised a “comprehensive review” of all tax credits. On Thursday we learned more about how this review will be conducted. Recommendations are likely before the state legislature convenes in January 2010.

Join me after the jump for additional details and analysis.

I missed this story earlier in the week, but caught it at the Huffington Post on Friday:

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy sidestepped a court ruling this week, which had ordered it to consider whether the state should reclassify marijuana as having medical value. […]

The effort to reclassify marijuana in Iowa is led by the American Civil Liberties Union and local medical marijuana users. […]

The pharmacy board was fully informed by assistant attorney general and counsel to the board Scott Galenbeck of its job. “Judge Novak’s ruling states,” Galenbeck read to the board, “‘The board must determine whether the evidence presented by petitioner is sufficient to support a finding that marijuana has accepted medical use in the United States and does not lack accepted safety for use in treatment under medical supervision.’ A couple sentences before that the judge stated if the board believes that evidence presented by petitioner was insufficient to support such a finding it should have stated such in its order.”

The board had previously rejected the ACLU effort. The civil liberties group appealed to the district court, setting up this week’s rematch.

Yet the Iowa board, instead of asking whether it has “accepted medical use in the United States,” asked whether Iowa should approve of it, which is not a question for the board but for the Iowa legislature.

A bill to legalize the medical use of marijuana was introduced in the Iowa Senate this year. More details about that are after the jump.