We want to start this update by re-sharing an alert you saw earlier this week. The Governor's Education Reform Bill, SSB 1076, has a division that would be detrimental to teacher librarians. We need ILA members to express their concerns with legislators about Division II of SSB 1076.

Link to the Letter Template to use in sending a message to your legislators

Monday, January 30th, will mark the 22nd day of the 110-day session, exactly one-fifth of the way into the session. This part of the session, up until the first funnel, is always focused on getting bills introduced and starting to move some of them through the subcommittee and committee process. 

Lots of Bills, But Many More Coming

As of Friday, January 27th, the House had introduced 261 bills and the Senate 267 bills. This is a fraction of what we anticipate seeing proposed this session. Legislators have until February 10th to have their bill requests submitted. Bills will continue to be introduced well past that date, however, since drafting each bill takes a while, especially complicated bills that require multiple drafts. 

First Funnel

By March 3rd, all policy bills (everything except tax and spending bills) will need to be voted on and passed by their respective committee in order to stay alive for the session. As many of you know, this is referred to as the “first funnel” deadline, a procedural mechanism that Iowa uses to winnow down the number of eligible bills to focus only on those making forward progress. 

School Choice

The first few weeks of session are usually very light on floor debate. This year has been similar with the exception of the Governor’s School Choice bill (HF 68) which was debated by both the House and the Senate on Monday, January 23rd, and signed into law the next day.  We summarized the school choice bill in the last update, so we won’t rehash that here. The Governor does have more information for those interested available at THIS LINK. 

The major drama surrounding the bill’s debate was whether it would garner the necessary 26 Senate votes and 51 House votes required for passage. Last year, a similar proposal by the Governor was unable to muster 51 House votes. This year’s package passed with some room to spare – 55-45 in the House and 31-18 in the Senate. The House did use a special rule that had to be passed prior to debate on HF 68 which allowed the bill to skip consideration by the Appropriations and Ways & Means Committees. Typically, this is required for bills that contain provisions dealing with spending, taxes or fees.

Governor Reynolds signs the School Choice bill into law in front of dozens of cheering supporters. Tuesday, January 24th, 2023.

Shift Focus

With School Choice now completed, the Legislature is able to shift focus toward a number of other initiatives they hope to tackle this session. Those include allowable growth for schools, tort reform, government realignment, rollback calculations, and many others.

Allowable Growth

Legislators in both chambers will be working to get allowable growth for schools signed into law within the next couple of weeks. They are required to get this done during the first month of the session, but this debate has been delayed in previous years. 

The Senate currently has a bill (SSB 1081) that would increase school funding by 2% next year. The Governor budgeted for a 2.5% increase, but the House has not yet released their proposed increase. 

Tort Reform

One of the Governor’s top priorities this year is tort reform, a topic the Legislature has pursued unsuccessfully in the past, including just last year. This year’s efforts seem to be shaping up around tort reform for the commercial trucking industry and medical malpractice, but to address them in different bills. Both chambers have bills starting to move on the issue, but both have a long way to go to enactment.  

Government Realignment

As we discussed in the last update, the Governor also wants to pass a major government realignment bill this year that brings Iowa more into line with what she has seen in other states. The bill has not yet been formally introduced, but many legislators and lobbyists have seen draft copies of the 1,573 page bill. It would make several changes to state government, including bringing the number of department heads from 37 down to about 16. Keep an eye out for that bill to become public very soon.

Rollback Recalculation

Another bill (SSB 1056) the Legislature will be discussing and trying to get resolved quickly revolves around how the property tax rollback on residential property is calculated. Unfortunately, this issue will have a negative impact on a lot of local government budgets, which is why the Legislature is trying to pass it early enough for cities and counties to make changes to their calculations for the upcoming year. 

This issue is complicated, but stems from a provision in the 2013 property tax bill to convert multi-residential properties (like apartments) from being taxed as commercial enterprises to being taxed as residential. Residential and commercial properties in Iowa are taxed on a percentage of their value; the percentage, or rollback, on residential property tends to be in the 44-57% range from year to year while the commercial rollback is set at 90%. That’s why it’s advantageous for an apartment building owner to be able to pay residential taxes on their investment instead of commercial taxes.

Converting multifamily properties from one to the other required setting up a temporary special multi-residential tax class and then phasing this in over a period of years. After the conversion was completed last year, the multi-residential classification was eliminated and those properties were recognized as residential properties for taxing purposes. Unfortunately, when the Dept of Revenue calculated the residential rollback, the change altered the calculation to cause it to be 1.9% higher than it should have been (56.5% instead of 54.6%). 

Legislators will discuss SSB 1056 in subcommittee on Monday. Passing the bill in its current form will cause a drop in revenue for a number of communities. However, failing to pass it this year and needing to pass it instead next year could make the problem much worse if, as predicted, the new correction ends up being 3 or 4 times this year’s 1.8% shift. Several news outlets detailed this story – You can view the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s explanation HERE. 

What’s with the Scaffolding?

If you have a chance to visit Iowa’s beautiful Capitol this year, you’ll notice a lot of scaffolding around a few of the four smaller domes. Capitol Facilities Administrator Mark Willemssen, along with Scott Allen and James Peters from OPN Architects, presented to the House Transportation & Infrastructure Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday, July 25th to provide an overview of the current project. 

Willemssen walked through the timeline of renovation projects in the building that led up to the current project. Exterior renovations to the building were made roughly from 1983 to about 2000. Following those upgrades, the team at the Capitol was better able to assess damage inside the building as everything dried out after years of moisture penetrating the building. Brick dust identified in 2011 and 2012 showed a need to make major upgrades to the main dome; those were completed from 2016 to 2018. 

During the large dome renovation, the team noticed that the four smaller domes would all need to be repaired due to failing bricks and other problems caused by years of snow and rain getting into the building. Further, the smaller domes are all one layer of brick behind the copper you see from the outside. If a brick fails, you can literally reach your hand through and feel the backside of the copper. The large dome, on the other hand, is three layers thick at the base and then tapers to one layer closer to the top. The large dome and all four smaller domes will have several hundred new bricks when the project is completed. 

The presenters said they hope to have the project completed by the end of the year, but they anticipate scaffolding still being on the building next legislative session as they make some final adjustments. You can view some of the pictures of the renovation in the presentation they shared HERE.