Iowa legislative leaders made significant progress toward avoiding a government shutdown this week. After the Senate approved new budget bills on Tuesday and Wednesday, negotiators reached new compromises on Thursday. Conference committees cut deals on two-year budgets for economic growth, justice and agriculture/natural resources. The Iowa Senate then passed those three compromise bills on Friday with bipartisan majorities. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal expressed confidence that the House and Senate can finish work on the budget in time for the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Early next week I’ll publish more details on the budget compromises taking shape. To my knowledge, statehouse Democrats and Republicans are still far from agreeing on property tax reform, which Governor Terry Branstad has said must get done this year.

Branstad won a major victory by getting legislators to pass a two-year budget. Senate Democrats had previously warned that biennial budgeting would facilitate a “power grab” by the governor. On Friday the Iowa Senate unanimously approved a bill to address that concern, limiting how much money the governor can transfer between legislative sessions.

The Rebuild Iowa Office, a temporary agency created by then-Governor Chet Culver after the historic 2008 floods, closed this week as scheduled. Lynn Campbell published a good piece about the office and its work. The closure isn’t timely, as western Iowa deals with major flooding along the Missouri River.

“We still feel that there is a need for a recovery office of some sort – they can call it whatever they want – to continue to focus on all these disasters that are happening over and over again,” said Ron Randazzo, Rebuild Iowa’s strategic planner. […]

Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division now will be the lead agency for the state’s disaster response and recovery.

But Susan Judkins Josten, RIO’s intergovernmental affairs director, said the Legislature hasn’t acted on a transition plan and hasn’t required the homeland security division to change its operations. The state also doesn’t have plans to retain the knowledge developed by RIO.

Leading Iowa Republicans aren’t worried. House Speaker Kraig Paulsen told Campbell that he never supported creating a separate office to handle disaster recovery efforts. Governor Terry Branstad was scathing in comments to Rod Boshart:

“I think it really turned out to be kind of an ineffective agency and I think the Legislature was right in their decision in 2009 to sunset it,” the governor said. “All RIO did was paper shuffling and coordination. […]”

Branstad said he believes his administration has established a better system of direct accountability and management by having the state’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management agency take the lead on dealing with disasters such as the current flooding along the Missouri River, while other state agencies address funding issues with the federal government, public safety and other issues.

“In my opinion there’s been money wasted in having an extra layer” that has now been eliminated, the governor said. “When you have to go through a coordinating agency and you have the paperwork involved, it just slows things down. I think the change will be for the better, speed things up, cost us less, be much more efficient and make it possible for people to get straight answers quicker.”

Democratic State Senator Rob Hogg praised RIO officials for keeping the focus on flood prevention efforts as well as disaster recovery. I share Hogg’s concern that in RIO’s absence, no state agency will push for better floodplain management in Iowa. Branstad did virtually nothing on that front after Iowa’s 1993 flooding (at the time the worst ever) and hasn’t pushed for action since returning to office.

In happier news, New York became the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage last night. Four Republicans in the GOP-controlled state Senate voted for the marriage equality bill, which Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo immediately signed into law.

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

I expected 2009 to be a relatively quiet year in Iowa politics, but was I ever wrong.

The governor’s race heated up, state revenues melted down, key bills lived and died during the legislative session, and the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Varnum v Brien became one of this state’s major events of the decade.

After the jump I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from January through June 2009. Any comments about the year that passed are welcome in this thread.

Although I wrote a lot of posts last year, there were many important stories I didn’t manage to cover. I recommend reading Iowa Independent’s compilation of “Iowa’s most overlooked and under reported stories of 2009,” as well as that blog’s review of “stories that will continue to impact Iowa in 2010.”

A friend alerted me to this news release from the Rebuild Iowa Office. I’ve posted the whole release after the jump, but here is an excerpt:

Five Iowa communities affected by the tornadoes and floods of 2008 will receive assistance in recovering stronger and smarter through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) program.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Rebuild Iowa Office (RIO) and the Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED) recently announced that New Hartford, Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids, Coralville and Iowa City have been chosen to receive expert technical assistance to help with growth and redevelopment.

This is good news, because rebuilding with smart growth principles in mind will bring economic and environmental benefits to those cities.