Flurry of activity as Iowa Legislative ‘funnel’ nears

DES MOINES - March promises to come in like a lion this week at the Statehouse.

Friday marks the arrival of the legislative session's first 'funnel” deadline as part of the process of winnowing the number of bills that will remain eligible for consideration this year. Senators and representatives have generated at least 792 Senate and House files and 333 study bill requests this session.

Legislation not dealing with state appropriations or tax policy are required to clear at least on statutory committee in the House or Senate to stay active before lawmakers end their work presumably sometime in April.

The fast-approaching deadline already touched off a flurry to action last week as subcommittees stacked up to press for passage of a host of issues, and the early part of this week promises more of the same.

Republicans who hold majorities of 59-41 in the House and 29-20-1 in the Senate hope to keep priority issues alive at the session hits the midway point, with Monday marking the 2017 session's 50th calendar day.

Subcommittees this week are slated to consider repealing the state's bottle-deposit law, banning abortions beyond 20 weeks of a pregnancy, marking that life begins at conception and giving schools constitutionally protected home rule. Other issues for discussion deal with marijuana possession, mistreatment of animals, bicycle safety and trespassing by intentionally blocking traffic on Iowa interstate highways.

Funnel weeks are particularly hard on minority-party members (and now-independent Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan) who see their proposals ignored for the most part or crushed by the GOP legislative steamroller.

Gone will be bills seeking to raise the state's $7.25 hourly minimum wage, raise the legal age for smoking to 21, require minors to wear helmets while operating motorized bikes or ATVs, test schools for radon, require Senate confirmation for a newly appointed lieutenant governor, require Iowa and Iowa State to share athletic profits with Northern Iowa, reduce state park camping fees for seniors, require an inventory of carcinogens used by state or local governments, ban toxic shot for hunting mourning doves, repeal declaration that English is the official language of Iowa, exempt Iowans aged 73 or older from jury duty, ban the sale or transfer of semi-automatic assault weapons and designate the regal fritillary as the state's official butterfly.

Just being a member of the majority, however, is no guarantee for success either given the long-odds prospects for bills to bar regent universities from scheduling football games on Fridays, place a moratorium on more gambling licenses, remove carbonated beverages from food-stamp purchases, end tenure at state universities, invoke sanctions for filing frivolous lawsuits and authorize mandatory uniform policies at schools. Another bipartisan bill to make Central Standard Time a year-round provision may run out of time.

House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, said she was comfortable that GOP priorities were making it through the funnel process, but there are options to preserve issues in budget or Ways and Means bill or leadership bills if need be that are funnel-exempt.

'I think most of the ones that we're waiting for have either been discussed in subcommittee or committee,” she said.