May 22, 2013

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Speaker says of ending 2013 session today: “I think we’ll get there.”

May 22, 2013 By

A flurry of votes are likely today in the Iowa House and Senate as a key legislator says there is a “very real possibility” the 2013 legislative session may conclude today. House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, a Republican from Hiawatha, delivered a sort of status report yesterday afternoon.

“Members in both chambers, members of both parties are working hard to try to figure this out and making excellent progress,” Paulsen said.

But Paulsen admitted there are a few “outstanding” issues to resolve, including some disagreements over abortion policy and spending, and a few more problems may “pop up” today.

“But I believe we’ll get there,” Paulsen said.

Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs won’t predict when legislators may complete their work, but he is expressing optimism.

“There are hopeful signs all over the place,” Gronstal told reporters.

Last Thursday Gronstal and Paulsen announced a compromise plan that would cut property taxes and income taxes, but lawmakers have yet to vote on it. 

“We took two plans and merged them together,” Senator Matt McCoy, a Democrat from Des Moines, said late last week. “Sometimes you need to remind people that elections have consequences.”

Senate Republican Leader Bill Dix of Shell Rock said Republicans will vote yes, even though the GOP opposes the Democratic proposal included in the bill will increase a tax credit so more low-income Iowans won’t owe state income taxes.

“(That proposal) troubles myself and a number of members, but we’re still prepared to vote for it in spite of that — recognizing that we need to work in a bipartisan way,” Dix said.

Senator Rob Hogg of Cedar Rapids is among a group of Democrats who intend to vote against the tax plan.

“I’m opposed to the current property tax proposal because it would cost state and local government $3.8 billion in revenue over 10 years,” Hogg said Tuesday. “It’s just way too costly if we don’t have an alternate source of revenue for government to meet our obligations to the people of the state.”

Governor Terry Branstad, a Republican who’s been pressing for commercial property tax reduction since 2010, angrily disputes those numbers.

“This information being put out by the League of Cities is just flat our inaccurate and inappropriate,” Branstad said during his weekly news conference on Monday.

Branstad said under the compromise plan, cities and counties will get almost $400 million in state funds over the next four years to cover lost commercial property tax revenue, plus the plan allows tax assessments on residential property and farmland to rise three percent each year.

Critics point to another section of the plan which creates a new class of property called “multi-residential” for things like apartments and complexes that cater to senior citizens with assisted living and other services. The plan eventually will cut property taxes on “multi-residential” property in half, and city officials say that will be a huge loss for city budgets.

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“Hopeful signs” that “tomorrow” may be last day fo 2013 legislative session

May 21, 2013 By

CapitolKey legislators suggest private deal-making sessions at the statehouse today are producing results.

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, a Republican from Hiawatha, has been meeting with top Democrats and with the governor’s staff.

“Taking care of issues, having the conversations we need to have,” Paulsen said early this afternoon, “I think there’s a very real possibility that we are done tomorrow.”

According to Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs, there are “hopeful signs” that the end of the 2013 legislative session is near.

“There’s lot of people with lots of concerns and it’s our job as leaders to work through the things that separate us and find common ground,” Gronstal told reporters this morning.

Unlike Paulsen, Gronstal isn’t going so far as to suggest the legislate may resolve all outstanding issues tomorrow.

“I”m not going to put artificial timelines on myself,” Gronstal told reporters. “It’s our job to find common ground and to get done. That’s what I’m working on.”

Small groups of legislators, staff and a few lobbyists are still discussing ways to resolve the differences on education reform. As has been the case for weeks, the two major sticking points are whether to extend new rights to parents who home school their kids — like letting them teach driver’s ed to their own children — and whether to establish new evaluation standards for public school teachers.

There are unresolved items of disagreement in the state budget plan, too, but Paulsen is optimistic.

“I feel we have an excellent opportunity to get Iowans’ work done tomorrow and that’s what we’re working towards,” Paulsen told reporters.

This is the 128th day of the 2013 legislative session. Legislators are paid an annual salary of at least $25,000 — leaders get paid more – plus legislators got daily expense money, but those payments ended three weeks ago.

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Lawmakers try to link issues involving lakes and passenger rail

May 21, 2013 By

Two eastern Iowa lawmakers — one Democrat and one Republican — are trying to insert a last-minute deal into a catch-all budget bill that will be among the last items to be voted upon in the 2013 legislative session, but they face strong opposition.

The deal is being touted by Representatives Bobby Kaufmann, a Republican from Wilton, and Dave Jacoby, a Democrat from Coralville. It would ensure Iowa comes up with the $5.5 million in matching funds to keep a federal grant for passenger rail expansion — something Democrats have been supporting. The other half of the deal would impose new limits on the authority Iowa governments have in condemning property for lake development, a proposal that has cleared the Republican-led House several times, but has stalled in the Senate.

Senator Rob Hogg, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, supports passenger rail expansion, but doesn’t think now’s the time to make it tougher for governments to acquire land for lakes and, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he blocked senate consideration of that proposal.

“In general, I think the kind of deal-making that’s being suggested there is not really the best way for the legislature to work,” Hogg said today.

The top Republican in the House has repeatedly said passenger rail service from Chicago to Iowa City and, eventually, to Omaha likely would wind up being a financial drain on the state, like Amtrak is to the federal government. Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs suggests Kaufmann, the Republican who’s now pushing to link these two proposals, waited too long to show support of passenger rail.

“It certainly would have been nice if some of them had spoken up at some point in time in the last two years in the House,” Gronstal said this morning.

And Representative Chuck Soderberg of Le Mars — the Republican who heads the House Appropriations Committee — suggested the time for deal-making on this rail project has passed.

“I know we don’t have $5.5 million built in the budget,” Soderberg said this morning.

A handful of legislators are at the statehouse today and no votes are scheduled in either the House or the Senate. Instead, key lawmakers are meeting behind closed doors to try to make final decisions on spending, taxes and policy proposals.

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Senator Grassley to question former IRS leader

May 21, 2013 By

The man who resigned amidst scandal as the head of the Internal Revenue Service last week will appear this morning before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wants Steven Miller to explain how the tax collection agency ended up targeting conservative political groups for such close scrutiny.

“I want records of communication on the issue between the Internal Revenue Service and the White House or any other organization in government,” Grassley says. “It’s part of getting to the bottom of how targeting came about and how it was handled inside the administration.”

The IRS is the focus of a Congressional investigation after it was revealed the agency was inappropriately singling out conservative organizations, including tea party activists and anti-abortion groups, for special probes about their tax-exempt status.

“The IRS is the most-feared federal agency and this situation builds on public mistrust,” Grassley says, “especially as the IRS will have even more power starting in January because a big part of its job is going to be enforcing the new health care law.” Grassley, a Republican, says he also wants to question Miller and others to learn what President Obama knew about the situation and when.

“The president might not have been well-served by his aides who didn’t tell him about the situation right away,” Grassley says. “That also then raises questions of what else the White House chief of staff and counsel are keeping from the president and why the president is running the White House in the way that allows this sort of non-communication to happen.”

Grassley says members of Congress have been asking about the IRS’ targeting for more than a year and got no response.

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Ag Secretary says progress is good but work remains in planting season

May 21, 2013 By

For the first time this spring, farmers were able to get into the fields every day last week and the U.S.D.A. crop report says they planted nine-million acres of corn and soybeans. But Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says there’s still a lot of work to be done to finish the planting season.

“Hopefully if we can get some weather at the end of this week and through the weekend , farmers will work on holidays, if the weather’s fit, maybe by next week we can be mostly wrapped up on corn production and have a good dent in the soybean production,” Northey says.

The crop report out Monday showed 71-percent of the corn has been planted, which is behind the five-year average of 92-percent. Only 16-percent of the beans have been planted. Northey is still optimistic for the growing season despite the slow start.

“We certainly caught up on planting , now again we don’t get those days back, as far as heat and growing the crop, and we had some very cold weather and our early planted crop is behind,” Northey says. On the plus side, Northey says soil moisture levels in all but the extreme northwest counties have improved and are more than 90 percent adequate or surplus.

Farmers are projected to plant 23 million acres of corn and soybeans this year.

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Landowners in lake path hope legislature acts to limit eminent domain

May 21, 2013 By

A group of southern Iowa landowners is hoping a last-minute effort from lawmakers could roll-back construction plans for a lake near Osceola. Doug Robins of Osceola says the farm ground that’s been in his family since 1971 may go under water if lawmakers don’t act.

“We thought the 2006 law was going to solve everything and two weeks later they came up with the loopholes to get around it,” Robins says.

The City of Osceola and other local governments in the area are planning to build a 900 acre lake for drinking water and as a water supply for businesses, like a meat processing plant in Osceola. Developers hope to start buying land for the project this year, but Republican Representative Bobby Kaufmann of Wilton is making one last attempt to forbid Iowa governments from using eminent domain to acquire land for lakes that would be used from recreation.

“This is a good, bipartisan issue and it’s unconscionable to me that we could even think of adjourning knowing that we could save all these folks’ livelihoods,” Kaufmann says.

Kaufmann is trying to get the proposed restriction written into a huge budget bill that’s still pending in the legislature, but it’s unclear if that will happen. Cindy Sanford of Osceola is among the landowners who’ve been meeting one-on-one with legislators to make their case against the lake.

“We’ll lose our home and 172 acres, which is everything we own,” Sanford says. “We’ve owned it — my husband and I — for 24 years and we raised our kids there.”

Kathy Kelley and her husband won’t lose their home, but they stand to lose 50 acres of surrounding timber land to the lake, “which is why we built our house there 30 years. It is totally a recreation parcel for us, which will totally take the pleasure out of why we bought that place and live there.”

Kelley says she and her husband personally have spent $15,000 fighting the proposed lake, which she charges is more about recreation than about finding a new water supply. Lake supporters say Osceola is growing and the current water supply isn’t adequate to meet demand.

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Review of senate sexual harassment policy set for summer

May 20, 2013 By

Top Senate leaders say a former senate aide’s allegations of sexual harassment will be investigated if she files a formal complaint, but even if she doesn’t, senate policies governing sexual harassment will be reviewed soon.

“This summer we’re going to sit down as leaders and make sure that we have a very strong policy and procedures on sexual harassment and other issues,” Senate President Pam Jochum, a Democrat from Dubuque, said today.

Kirsten Anderson was fired Friday from her job as communications director for Senate Republicans and she went on a Des Moines TV station Sunday morning to say she had complained about how women were treated by other senate staff and by legislators, too. Her boss says Anderson was fired for doing “substandard work.” Jochum said at this point, there’s nothing to investigate since Anderson hasn’t filed a complaint.

“It really is a personnel issue,” Jochum told reporters.

Mike Marshall is the secretary of the senate, a senate employee who helps manage staff as well as the debate in the senate. He told reporters today that the senate’s written policy regarding sexual harassment is “about 20 years old” and there have been periodic training sessions with videos detailing what is and isn’t appropriate in the workplace.

“It has been, in the past, provided for staff on a mandatory basis and then, individual senators on a voluntary basis,” Marshall said.

Anderson, the woman who alleges the capitol work environment was “toxic” during her five-year tenure there, was being paid nearly $60,000 a year when she was terminated.

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