Governor Chet Culver has rejected the legislature’s bid to get rid of two administrators within the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
Robert Garrison spent 32 years as a state trooper, including eight years as head of the Iowa Highway Patrol. He retired from that post in 2007 and took another job in state government as chief of prison security for the Department of Corrections. This past March, Garrison moved to another agency. He was hired to be chief of the law enforcement division in the Department of Natural Resources.
Critics, including sportsmens’ groups and some D.N.R. staff, questioned Garrison’s qualifications to lead conservation officers who enforce the state’s hunting and fishing regulations. Legislators inserted language in a budget bill that would have eliminated Garrison’s position in the D.N.R. It would have gotten rid of his deputy, too.
But Governor Culver used his item veto authority to reject those moves, saying the legislature was improperly trying to infringe on executive branch authority.