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♪♪ For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond.

Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, March 15th edition of Iowa Press.

Here is Kay Henderson.

♪♪ Henderson: If you aren't keeping track at home, this is the end of week ten of the 2024 Iowa General Assembly.

The group of people who are sitting at this table today have been there every one of those weeks and we have assembled them to tell you what they have been taking notes on and what they have been reporting to you, the Iowa general public.

Our guests today are Skylar Tallal, she is the Statehouse Reporter for the Sinclair stations in Iowa including CBS2 in Cedar Rapids.

Stephen Gruber-Miller is the Political Reporter for the Des Moines Register.

Also joining us, Caleb McCullough, he is the Des Moines Bureau Chief for the Lee Enterprises newspapers in Iowa, including the Quad City Times.

And Erin Murphy is the Des Moines Bureau Chief for the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Erin, one of the things that happened in January on the first week of the legislature was the Governor outlined her priorities and one of her priorities was an overhaul of the Area Education Agencies.

That issue, that policy debate has sort of sucked all of the oxygen available for debates about other things.

Where does that stand at the end of week ten?

Murphy: Yeah, it's also sort of ground to a halt as far as front-facing public debate.

It was heavy early on in the session with public hearings and legislative hearings and new amendments and proposals coming out and that seems to have ground to a halt.

And I think we're at the stage now where the sausage is being made in the old smoke-filled back room now because we haven't heard about it in a while.

But it is still very much dominating the session, even from behind the doors.

The Senate passed a version that is very similar to the Governor's proposal in that it changes the way -- Henderson: Out of committee.

Murphy: -- out of committee, not off the floor, that it changes the way that the AEAs are funded.

The House passed a version that went much less aggressive than the Senate version, keeps more of the current structure in place while making some changes.

And so now, like I said, those parties, the three legs of the tripod have to come together and agree on one bill that they could all sign off on.

And that's what we're waiting to see.

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, and I would say for folks who are hopeful that something will happen or concerned that something will happen, it is far too soon to say that the session is going to end without action on this.

I think it's clear, the House Speaker Pat Grassley told us yesterday he thinks they're having good conversations.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver said he thinks that they're hopeful that they can get something done.

So, we don't know what it will look like, but I think those two and the Governor are hashing things out and we may see action in the coming couple of weeks.

Henderson: Well, and there are related issues here because when the Governor rolled out this policy proposal, she included in it her call to raise beginning teacher pay and actually the pay also of veteran teachers who have been in the classroom in Iowa for at least 12 years, Caleb.

McCullough: Yeah, and that's a fascinating way that this has all played out is that the House decided to run that teacher pay, their own version of a teacher pay bill separately, which ended up getting nearly unanimous support.

Democrats were in favor of it, which obviously if that was in the AEA bill they would not have been in favor of it.

Whereas the Senate seems to be expecting to keep those two proposals together.

And so, whether we're going to be able to find an agreement between legislators and how much to increase teacher pay and for whom is going to be part of this discussion with those AEAs.

Gruber-Miller: And the Senate has given themselves the control here because they did not advance the House teacher pay bill separately.

So, that separate proposal is dead.

If teacher pay is going to happen, the Senate is going to do it as part of that AEA bill.

Henderson: And Skylar, there were other elements in that teacher pay proposal that the House passed that were not in the Governor's plan.

Tallal: Yeah, so there were some extra funds and things like that, that went to help support staff, things like paraeducators, bus drivers, those sorts of things, to try to get that minimum wage up for them to $15 an hour.

Right now, schools are having trouble finding those paraeducators and things like that.

So, they were trying to get that to help them.

Henderson: Speaking of schools having trouble, school districts have to put their budgets together.

What sort of predicament are they in?

Because another element of this is by early February, by law the legislature should have decided on the general level of state spending per pupil, calculated on a per pupil basis for schools and that is not done.

Murphy: And not only that, depending on when you're watching this program, the deadline for schools to have their budgets certified either just passed earlier Friday or passed a couple of days ago.

Yeah, they're way behind the ball and what legislators keep telling us is that, and this ties back to how we talked about at the top that the AEA thing is just consuming everything else in its orbit, the legislators tell us, especially in the republican majority, that these things are all tied together because they're all school funding pieces and so we have to figure them, we can't just do one and then the other and then the other, they have to reach a collective agreement and that's why we're still sitting here talking about school funding much later than we usually are.

Gruber-Miller: And it's another indication that they probably will be getting something done on AEAs because if they didn't feel the need to tie those things together, they could have been done with school funding.

Henderson: Well, let's talk about things being tied together or operating as separate planetary systems, Stephen.

This session has sort of revealed a different legislative philosophy between the Iowa House, which is led by Pat Grassley, the Speaker, and the Iowa Senate, which is led by Jack Whitver, the Senate Majority Leader.

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, and I think those differences are always there, they're just particularly pronounced this year.

And everything in a nutshell happened yesterday when Pat Grassley gave a press conference and told everybody, House republicans have all of these priorities, we're really proud we pushed them all through, we're passing a lot of bills that we think are important.

And we walked across the Capitol to a press conference with Jack Whitver, the Senate Majority Leader, and he said, here's the quote, "we don't need that many bills, in my opinion, to make Iowa strong".

They just don't feel the need to be passing as much legislation in the Senate.

So, we have seen a real flurry of activity.

We've seen some late nights of debate on the House side, passing things that really got almost no consideration over in the Senate.

Murphy: Yeah, and we're hearing that from, Stephen described the conversation at the highest level of leadership, we're hearing that from the committee level leadership, that kind of frustration and disconnect between the House and the Senate right now, one side sending way more bills over to the other.

So, it's going to be interesting to see how that impacts the process moving forward.

Now those committee chairs, their work load lightens up now because of the funnels and their work is done.

But it will be interesting to see how that plays out as we try to shut down the session in the coming weeks and months.

Gruber-Miller: And the bad blood has begun.

You hear grumblings from the rank-and-file lawmakers, well the Senate didn't take up my bill.

And you hear grumblings over in the Senate, well the House sent me all these bills but I didn't have any time to deal with them.

So, sometimes things dying in the funnel allows lawmakers to focus on the priorities that remain.

But if you kill too many things, there might be people who are looking for ways to get their priorities back on the agenda.

McCullough: And I think you saw that early in the session as well.

Going into the session the House was very public with these are our priorities, they had several of them, several policy bills and changes in that way, whereas in the Senate, Whitver as we mentioned really his main priority going in was tax cuts and accelerating and deepening those tax cuts that were passed last year, sorry two years ago.

And so, we see that coming out where the Senate is less interested in kind of policy changes, major overhauls to various things that are happening versus the budget side.

Henderson: And I hate to bring this up, but as someone who has been covering the legislature since the last century, there is often a little rivalry between the House and the Senate and it manifests itself in different ways, it doesn't matter sometimes if there are republicans in both chambers or if there are democrats in one and republicans in the other or democrats in both.

Sometimes they just don't get along.

And they are on opposite sides of the Capitol, maybe for a reason.

Let's talk about this, what we refer to as the funnel deadline.

There are several of these during the session to sort of whittle away at the total agenda that legislators will address as the session winds down.

Caleb, what in your view might have been the most notable thing to not advance by today's deadline?

McCullough: Yeah, I think one of the big notable kind of a couple of bills here relating to education that came out of the House.

That was one of their priorities they said going in was take a look at our higher and lower education standards and processes.

So, they had a bill for K-12 education that would put curriculum written by a conservative think tank emphasizing conservative values into social studies education in the state.

That drew a lot of opposition from democrats and from history professionals in the state and nationally wrote in saying that was going to take agency away from the state's teachers and professionals in setting up curriculum.

And so that did not advance in the Senate.

And then another bill looking at higher education would have codified some of the rules that the state Regents set last year rolling back some DEI efforts at the state's public universities.

Murphy: And DEI is?

McCullough: Diversity, equity and inclusion.

And so, that would also have capped tuition costs in the state.

So yeah, those were some big priorities from House republicans that didn't really get much of a hearing in the Senate.

Henderson: Skylar, what do you see as maybe a notable bill that failed this year?

Tallal: So, one of the bills was in the House actually, which would have raised penalties for terminating a pregnancy without consent.

This is kind of controversial because it changes language to death of an unborn person.

It would have actually outlined in Iowa code what unborn person means from fertilization.

This was something democrats worry would impact IVF, contraception, and House republicans didn't share those same concerns.

However, after it passed the House and went to the Senate, the Senate tabled it with IVF concerns.

Henderson: So, anybody else have some notables?

Murphy: The same Senator who tabled that bill, Senator Brad Zaun, tabled another one that had to do with immigration.

And actually, there was a couple of immigration bills and this was fascinating to me, there was one that the Senate passed that the House didn't take up and then one that the House passed that the Senate didn't take up.

The Senate bill had to do with the e-verify program and requiring businesses to use that to verify that their workers are legal residents.

The House bill addressed human smuggling.

There were some charities and shelters that were concerned about that.

But it was interesting to me because you talk about immigration as a topic and obviously that is one that republicans very much rally around and are concerned about and here you had the two chambers, each with an immigration bill, and the other side didn't take them up for whatever reasons and they each stated concerns they had with the bills.

But that one maybe surprised me a little bit just given that you would think an immigration bill going between two republican majority chambers would be shooting fish in a barrel.

But for various reasons those ones didn't pass.

Henderson: And Stephen, none of these bills that have been mentioned were on the Governor's priority list.

She gave legislators 19 bills that she wanted to see passed.

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, you're stealing my thunder.

She had a lot of bills that she proposed this year and I wanted to highlight a couple of them that did not make it through the funnel.

One was the Governor introduced a bill that would put definitions of man and woman into state law in ways that would allow the state to separate transgender women out from other women in facilities like prisons, domestic violence shelters, things like that.

It would also require transgender people to put on their birth certificates their sex at birth as well as their current gender identity.

That bill was announced to much concern from LGBTQ groups, it got a committee hearing, but then it was never taken up on the House floor.

And another priority of the Governor's that did not advance, yet again, was her proposal to expand birth control access.

This is something that she has been trying to do since she got elected in 2018.

She has several years now introduced these bills.

The Senate has passed the bills a few times, but there has always been opposition in the House.

You've seen, I think Pat Grassley said philosophical differences among republicans, some of whom have concerns about birth control, see it as not a way to lessen abortions, but see it as a concern itself.

Henderson: And let me throw another one in here that may have surprised some people given how easily it passed the House.

It was a bill that would have expanded disability and death benefits for firefighters to cover any cancer-caused illness and it was really spurred by the death of a Des Moines firefighter who passed away from a cancer that was not on the list.

And so, after his memorial service in February, that firefighter's family, his widow and dozens of firefighters came up to a House committee meeting, it passed easily, but it never was taken up in a Senate committee and that has surprised some people.

Any other surprises out there?

Murphy: I was just going to add to that.

That one surprised me too and it's interesting and I wonder, I've had the thought since that I can't help but feel, and I don't know if it's similar, but I can't help but feel parallels to it at the federal level where they had to work really hard to get help for folks who had illness from cleaning up at Ground Zero after 9/11 and then more recently with soldiers who served near burn pits overseas.

And I wonder if we're seeing something similar here at the state level?

I don't know.

It was an interesting one though.

Henderson: Any others?

Gruber-Miller: I'll throw in one more that was also on the Governor's agenda, a bill to give state employees paid parental leave when they give birth will not advance.

And it's just interesting because the Governor has been trying to put forward this agenda that she is calling a pro-family agenda, saying that she supports life before and after birth, and there have been some of these proposals, like birth control, like paid leave, that have just not gotten traction among her party.

Henderson: And a couple of you were with me as we were interviewing a legislator about a bill that died allegedly.

And a member of the House said, well as you know, nothing is ever dead in this building.

So, that is one that might be adapted and attached to another budget bill as the legislature sort of crafts a budget and some of these may be revived in some fashion.

So, turning now to one of the topics that has been discussed under the Golden Dome, Skylar, school safety.

A lot of debate time in the Iowa House spent on that subject.

Tallal: Well yeah, and following the school shooting at Perry High School this past January, House republicans have really wanted to do something to further protect students while they're at school.

There's two bills right now that are currently alive.

The first one is teachers and staff would have to go through extensive training and then would be able to carry guns.

And I think the really interesting part here is that they would be given immunity from civil and criminal charges, which in the past we've had some school districts who have wanted to implement these different programs, but they have had trouble finding insurance companies that will cover them.

And so, this may be a way for republicans to be able to bring those insurance companies to cover them.

Henderson: And that other bill that the House passed, maybe this past week, I don't know, the weeks are sort of running together, introduced a technology I had never heard of, this technology they're going to do a pilot project on, gun sensing technology.

If you have cameras in your school, this software would be able to detect someone showing a gun within seconds and set off an alarm.

Any surprises on how this school safety debate has played out?

Gruber-Miller: I think one of the things we've seen I think is perhaps expected political divisions between democrats and republicans here.

Democrats very concerned about the idea that there could be guns in school buildings, warning of risks associated with that, republicans saying, listen there's a lot of training involved here, we want to be careful, and it would also be up to the individual school district whether they want to have that policy.

So, those political divisions are playing out in the House.

But then, going back to the divisions we're seeing between the House and the Senate, Majority Leader Jack Whitver was telling us yesterday, Iowa law does already allow schools to have policies that arm staff members.

But, as Skylar was just saying, they're having issues getting insurance and that is what is sparking these bills.

McCullough: And another interesting piece of that, one of those school safety bills, was a grant program to allow the state to pay for schools to pay for guns and for training for teachers to carry guns if they choose to.

So that originally would have dedicated $3 million to that grant program.

That was eventually, the dollar amount was taken out, but the grant program will still exist if that bill does become law.

So, that would just be funded through the budget process.

So, we won't know until later how much money will be dedicated for that, if at all, but that has also caused some concern from democrats.

Henderson: We have about five minutes left for our conversation.

Stephen, the Governor in January gave legislators a big tax policy plan that she wanted to see enacted.

What is going on?

Gruber-Miller: Yeah, so the Governor wants to speed that up and take it down to 3.5% next year and put some of those cuts in this year.

There are other parts of the bill, including lowering unemployment taxes for businesses, lowering child care center taxes, the property taxes that they pay.

The House and Senate republicans have their own plan.

Every year we see a couple of competing tax bills.

They would like to eventually zero out Iowa's income tax all together.

I think they're going to really get started on this process, this negotiation process of what tax bill to do, really in the coming weeks here.

Now that we're through the second funnel, they can focus more on the budget and on tax policy.

So, that's what we'll see.

Henderson: Skylar, a bill that cleared the Senate, it was actually the first bill passed, didn't get a hearing in the House.

What happened?

Tallal: Yeah, so that bill just to kind of recap a little bit would have allowed state agencies to hire private CPA firms to audit them instead of the State Auditor.

There was a lot of controversy there with democrats.

Rob Sand is the only dem elected to statewide office, so democrats were saying they were maybe trying to take some of his power away.

But it ultimately came down to republicans in the House thinking it would just cost too much.

Murphy: And the reason there being that private accountants, CPAs, are going to charge more for those services, for those audits -- Henderson: Two, approaching three times as much.

Murphy: -- exactly, than the State Auditor's office does.

And so, Skylar is absolutely right, it was interesting to hear this philosophical debate about separation of powers and political considerations and then it came down to dollars and cents is why it died.

Henderson: At this time last year, the legislature had already passed and the Governor had signed a major piece of legislation establishing state-funded education savings accounts for private schooling.

Two years ago, they passed that major tax plan that reduced the state income tax so the Governor could announce it to the nation when she was asked to give the response to President Biden's State of the Union speech.

What is law so far this year?

Murphy: There's literally one new law at this point.

And step aside Iowa Farm Bureau because there is apparently a new lobbying superpower in the Iowa legislature and it is the Lake Panorama Association because they asked for a bill to help them regulate their members' conduct on the lake when they're boating, for lack of a better, a succinct way, and that is the only bill that is law right now.

Henderson: Well, moving from boating to voting.

Do you like that segway?

Come on, people.

(laughter) Henderson: What do we know about the 2024 legislative work product right now and how that may relate to the general election debate as legislators run for re-election and others try to win seats in the House and Senate?

Caleb?

McCullough: Yeah, I think we're seeing a pretty clear indication of that right now.

The biggest issues in the 2024 election are going to be the border, abortion rights, crime and we're seeing these things play out in the legislature as well.

One thing that we've already mentioned was that bill that some worried would affect IVF treatments and that was stopped in the Senate.

And you can't discount the fact that that's going to be a major focus of this election.

And so, people are, I think, aware of what is going on in the electoral process and we're seeing a lot of bills dealing with immigration regulation so that lawmakers when they go to the voters can say hey, here we're working on addressing the crisis at the border.

And the same thing with crime.

There has been bills to address looting and organized retail theft.

And so, we're seeing a lot of that happen.

Gruber-Miller: And I want to add in two more, which have been pretty much annual focuses, education and taxes.

I mean, the republican agenda on education, they have passed some sweeping changes to Iowa's system.

They have allowed the state to give money to parents to have their students attend private school.

I think we can expect to hear about that on the campaign trail.

They have passed a number of other education changes.

And they have also, on taxes, been cutting those taxes and I would think we'll be hearing the pros and cons of those things.

Murphy: And not that I suspect anybody really needs it, but if you need any confirmation that we'll hear about abortion and fertility treatments, etcetera, on the campaign trail, for those of us who have reported on that this week, it was not very long before we were hearing from democratic statehouse members about how Brad Zaun may have stopped this bill, but he has a voting record on abortion and personhood, etcetera, etcetera, in the past.

And Brad Zaun is one of those in a competitive Statehouse district too.

Henderson: Well, come Monday we will all be back at the legislature hearing more about these and other topics.

Thanks to all of you for joining us today and sharing your reporting.

You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org.

For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching.

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