Legislative output won’t be high this session

DES MOINES - The 84th Iowa General Assembly is on track to produce one of the lowest bill totals in recent memory.

So far this year, the split-control Legislature has approved 115 enrolled bills and joint resolutions. But that number will grow once the House and Senate finalize work on roughly a dozen fiscal 2013 budget bills and reach expected agreements on property tax reform, mental health redesign, education reform and a short list of other priorities.

Last year, lawmakers worked a 172-day, overtime session that produced 138 enrolled bills and joint resolutions. Observers believe this year will wrap up with a similar output.

In comparison, the 82nd General Assembly passed 322 bills during the 2007 and 2008 sessions.

“In pure numbers, it's the lightest session we've had for several decades,” said Richard Johnson of the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency, which provides support services and helps lawmakers draft policy measures and appropriation bills. “My recollection is we've never been this low since I've been here and that's been 30 years.”

The 73rd General Assembly sent then-Gov. Terry Branstad 602 bills during its 1989 and 1990 sessions. Since then, lawmakers gradually have lowered their legislative output to where the annual bill total has exceeded 200 only three times in the past 11 years.

“When you can reduce the number of bills, that's probably a good thing,” said Rep. Ralph Watts, R-Adel. “If you put all the code books side by side and you look at the growth of them over the years, you can really relate that - as those books grow, your personal freedom goes down.

“People complain about, ‘well, it's a do-nothing Legislature.' My experience in the time I've been here is the shorter time we're here, the better off the people out there are; the less we get involved, the less we meddle in their lives,” Watts added.

Lawmakers say the back-to-back years of below-average legislative output are a result of divided government. Republicans hold a 60-40 edge in the Iowa House and Democrats narrowly control the Iowa Senate with a 26-24 majority.

They also cite:

----  A ‘go-slow' concern among constituents looking for stability in unsettled economic and political times.

----  An agenda that included a number of complicated and time-consuming issues in a year when leaders compressed the session timetable .

----  A desire to both limit the growth of government and emphasize quality over quantity.

“I don't think Iowans should judge a legislative session by the number of bills passed. I would think that would be almost a meaningless measure for whether a Legislature has been successful or not. I think it really gets more to the substance of what is being passed,” said Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids. “I think people want government to continue to be updated. I think people also want us to focus on things that are important to the economy or education.”

Rep. Tom Sands, R-Wapello, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said House Republicans have made a conscious effort to maintain a limited focus, to slow the growth in government and reduce the regulations that go along with administering state laws.

Hogg, vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee - an area that traditionally sees a lot of legislative action - said the panel took a limited approach this session to House-passed measures dealing with gun laws and other bills that seemed politically motivated or designed to take advantage of an election-year session.

Committee chairman Sen. Eugene Fraise, D-Fort Madison, said he questioned every measure by asking “if the state of Iowa has survived for more than 160 years without this bill, why do we really need it this year?” as a quality-control standard.

“One of the things I sense - people feel there's a little turbulence right now. The rhetoric is getting pretty extreme,” Hogg said. “I think people react to that. Let's not go to these extreme postures. Let's stabilize, hold together, get Democrats and Republicans to work together. In some sense, that's a stabilizing influence and it means you don't need to pass legislation on every subject.”

Jeff Boeyink, Branstad's chief of staff, said he is optimistic the Legislature will adjourn by Friday. If lawmakers manage to resolve differences over commercial property tax relief, mental-health redesign and education reform, approve a public information board to assure transparency in government, and settle on a “really solid” budget number, “I think we're going to feel pretty good about this session,” he said.