The Iowa legislature has convened for a rare Saturday session and it’s possible the debates and voting could last through Sunday.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Klimesh, a Republican from Spillville, said lawmakers are close to striking final agreements on a $9.6 billion budget, as well as a top priority for the 2026 legislative session: property tax reform. “We ‘ve had great conversations with the governor and the House the last couple of days,” Klimesh said. “I think we’re moving closer to that consensus we’ve been trying to achieve.”
Representative Brent Siegrist of Council Bluffs is the longest serving Republican in the House. This is his 24th session. Siegrist, who is 73, served as House Majority Leader and House Speaker in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “You do tend to have to have a couple of blow ups towards the end, just to make sure everybody understands what the lines are, if you will. I think we’ve seen a few of those this week. They’re friendly, but they’re significant and they’re serious because you have some differences between the House, the Senate and the governor,” Siegrist said, “and that kind of gets you to the point where, ‘All right, it’s time to go home.'”
This is the last batch of bills Governor Kim Rey nolds will be signing into law. Siegrist sees paralells between this year and the 1998 legislative session, when Governor Terry Branstad was not seeking re-elecion and preparing to exit the office. “Governors tends to want everything they want on their way out and that complicates things a little bit and so I think there’s a little bit of that going on,” Siegrist said, “the governor wanting things she wants, but we don’t have the votes for it.”
Branstad and Siegirist both took breaks from electoral policies and later returned. Branstad won a fifth term as governor in 2010. Siegrist, who exited the legislature after the 2002 session, put his name back on the ballot in 2020 and has served for the past six years.