Monday, February 19th will mark Session Day 43, almost halfway to the end of the 100-day scheduled session. 

First Funnel Arrives

On Friday, February 16th, we reached the first legislative funnel deadline. The funnels are procedural mechanisms employed by the Iowa Legislature to winnow away policy bills that are not showing forward progress. Policy bills that were not passed by a committee by this past Friday are dead for the year. By March 15th, policy bills will need to be passed by committee in the opposite chamber in order to remain alive. Bills dealing with taxes and spending are exempt from the funnel. 

Now that you know the technical explanation of the funnel week, here’s the practical explanation: About a week and half of pure insanity. To reach the funnel, legislators hold hundreds of subcommittees on bills, sometimes over a dozen at any given moment, scattered in every last corner of the Capitol building. As subcommittees pass bills, they go onto full committee meeting agendas that often exceed 20 bills. This makes for some long and contentious committee meetings as legislators try to close out the week.

Second Funnel Preparation

The second funnel will arrive in four weeks on March 15th, and it is much less chaotic since a lot less bills will be in play. By the second funnel deadline, policy bills will need to have been passed by committee in BOTH chambers. In order to prepare for that, this week and next week, the House and Senate will start debating bills in the chambers in order to give the second chamber time to advance them through the subcommittee and committee process. 

Budget and Appropriations Work Starts

The end of the first funnel flurry of activity also signals the soft start of the tax and budget discussions between the chambers. We will soon see an early-March meeting notice for the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC), where the 3-person panel will update their December predictions about State revenues and expenditures. Between the December and March estimates, the Legislature will use the lower of the two estimates.

While the Legislature cannot officially begin assembling appropriations bills until after that REC meeting, behind-the-scenes discussions will begin immediately between the Governor and House and Senate leaders. Any tax bill or spending initiative will alter the overall budget picture, so they need to agree to some basic principles before they can start to move forward, even if it’s just to nail down an overall number for acceptable tax reductions or an overall spending target. Despite all three decision-making bodies being currently controlled by the same political party, there are always a fair amount of disagreements that need to be worked through. This is the same every year, no matter who is in charge.

Filing Deadline Coming

The second funnel’s arrival on March 15th will also mark an important political deadline – the final date for legislators to file their campaign paperwork for the upcoming elections. On this day, we’ll become aware of a number of legislative retirements as well as determining which candidates will have primary and/or general election opponents.

• MEGA Sites Still Stalled
  The MEGA Sites bill (SF 574), remains stalled in the House Ways & Means Committee, partially just because the focus over the past two weeks has been on the first funnel and the MEGA Sites bill is funnel-proof. Please take a moment over the week ahead to weigh in with your House member in support of SF 574, especially if they happen to serve on the Ways & Means Committee. You can find information about the MEGA sites program (HERE). You can find out who your Representative by going HERE and typing in your home address. A list of the House Ways & Means Committee members is HERE.
• Land Redevelopment Trusts
  Legislation to allow for the creation of land redevelopment trusts will hopefully get some more attention now that the Legislature's focus can shift away from the bills subject to the funnel deadlines. SF 182 and HF 2246 could use some help from PDI members. Be sure to ask your legislators to help us get this legislation to the finish line. More details about the proposal are HERE.
• Infrastructure Revolving Fund
  Legislation (SF 2133) to create an Infrastructure Revolving Fund for vertical infrastructure projects survived the funnel deadline by being advanced unanimously by the Senate Commerce Committee. PDI is supporting this bill and we look forward to continuing to work on moving it forward. This fund could close a key gap in housing infrastructure costs that PDI heard about from several members during our roundtables last Fall.

Key Issues Moving Post-First Funnel:

Some of the key issues that advanced through the funnel and will continue moving forward are:

• AEA Reform – Much news has surrounded this issue for the past month. Legislators were able to keep a version of the Governor’s proposal alive for future discussion, with the Senate’s bill more closely resembling the Governor’s proposal. This issue will clearly continue to evolve, so if this is one you have been watching, keep up your advocacy.
• School Funding – The bill enacting Iowa’s School Supplemental Aid (SSA) for schools is typically done early in session. This year, the Legislature has gone past the deadline due largely to outlying questions about AEA Reform, Teacher Pay, and similar issues that touch school funding. The House passed a 3% increase out of committee this week, a half percent higher than the Governor’s 2.5% proposal. The Senate advanced a ”shell bill” without the final numbers in order to have a bill that can be amended on the Senate floor.
• Teacher Pay – The Governor’s AEA bill included a provision to raise starting teacher salaries in Iowa to $50,000 (from $33,500) and to ensure a teacher with at least 12 years of experience would have a minimum salary of $62,000. The House’s proposal would increase teacher pay to $47,500 in Year One and then $50,000 thereafter. The House’s bill would also raise the minimum wage for all educational support staff to $15/hour (including paraprofessionals, bus drivers, etc.) and provide a $22 million Teacher Salary Supplemental that school districts could use to raise salaries as they see fit.
• Election Changes - The House and Senate this week advanced through the funnel legislation that would ban ballot drop boxes and ranked-choice voting. The election bill would also require absentee ballots to be received by the county auditor on the day BEFORE the election and would limit the challenges Iowans can make to a federal candidates’ eligibility to appear on the ballot.
• Public Lands - The Senate Natural Resources Committee advanced SSB 3129 this week, legislation that would prevent the Department of Natural Resources from both acquiring land at an auction and acquiring land from a not-for-profit organization that won the land at an auction. The bill has been renumbered SF 2324 and can be debated in the Senate at any time. Similar legislation in the House did not survive the funnel deadline.
• Hands Free and Speed Camera Bans – The House and Senate have both advanced legislation through committee that would require drivers Iowa to use their cell phones only in voice-activated or hands free modes. The bills also contain a total ban on cameras used to enforce traffic laws and would require the removal of existing systems. This issue will be hotly contested in the weeks ahead as most insiders predict the votes are there to pass the hands free part of the bill, but no one knows yet if there are enough votes to ban and remove camera systems as a tool for local governments.