Partisan differences likely to keep Iowa lawmakers in session

DES MOINES – Top legislators say they expect the split-control General Assembly's 2011 session will need to go into overtime to resolve the partisan differences over key policy decisions standing in the way of adjournment.

“There is a lot yet to be determined and, before a final conclusion is reached, things could get a little squirrely,” Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, said in his weekly memo.

Friday will mark the session's 110th day and officially mark the end of daily expense more for the 150 citizen legislators who make up the 84th General Assembly. Traditionally, that date runs in close proximity to adjournment but the 16th week of session arrives with major priorities of the state budget, funding for preschool and K-12 schools, commercial property tax relief and other tax-related issues, mental-health reform and Gov. Terry Branstad's planned revamp of the state's economic development approach still far from being resolved.

Other issues dealing with gambling regulation, nuclear energy, abortion restrictions and animal agriculture also are awaiting debate or demanding legislative attention as Republicans who hold a 60-40 edge in the House and Democrats with a tighter 26-24 majority in the Senate look for compromises that will bring this year's work to completion.

Legislators return to the Statehouse this week under some uncertainty over how Branstad's item-vetoes of provisions of a compromise spending and tax policy package that Democrats say he helped broker might have impacted the trust quotient as they move deeper into negotiations over things like the governor's demand for a two-year budget and a wide gulf remaining between the two parties' funding priorities and spending levels.

“The big stumbling block right now is the budget,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, including where things land on Branstad's demand for a two-year budget through June 30, 2013, that legislative Democrats view as an executive branch “power grab.”

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said getting the supplemental spending piece for the current fiscal year out of the way with Branstad's signature last week clears the way for lawmakers to decide the “size of the pie” for fiscal 2012, which would require closing a roughly $300 million gap between where House Republicans and Senate Democrats are.

Paulsen said he told his 60-member GOP caucus “to plan on going beyond April 29” – the unofficial adjournment target, but he said there is too much uncertainty to predict how far into May the current session will run.

Branstad, who is dealing with his 17th legislative session as governor after having previously served as a state representative and lieutenant governor, said time is no object for him in working through major issues and major differences.

“I'm going to be here as long as it takes and I think we need to do it right,” Branstad told reporters last week. “I'm very patient and very willing to work with both houses of the Legislature to try to work the differences out.”