Capitol Ideas: Here comes the funnel

DES MOINES - The time has come for legislative ideas whose time has not come.

Friday marks the arrival of the first 'funnel” deadline for the 86th Iowa General Assembly's 2015 session. That's a mile marker that requires bills not dealing with tax policy or appropriations to clear a standing committee in either the House or the Senate to remain eligible for consideration by lawmakers this year.

The deadline usually touches off a flurry of subcommittee and committee activities - the legislative equivalent of March madness but without the brackets or the hype - to keep pet projects or priority bills alive and moving through the process.

That process is a self-imposed method of expediting legislative action while winnowing the list of issues that occupy lawmakers' attention during a session that is supposed to run 110 days and culminate with adjournment May 1.

Compiling a list of the bills that will fall victim to the March 6 legislative Grim Reaper is like rounding up the usual suspects - requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, reinstating the death penalty, decriminalizing marijuana possession, amending the Iowa Constitution to limit legislators' terms, halt same-sex marriages or have lawmakers meet biennially rather than yearly.

With control of the Legislature divided between majority Republicans in the House and Democrats who hold sway in the Senate, there's a certain predictability that bills seeking to restrict abortion and expand gun rights could survive for a time in the House and measures seeking to raise the minimum wage or impose environmental restrictions could do the same in the Senate.

But eventually they will fall victim to the second funnel deadline April 3 that requires non-money bills to clear one legislative chamber and a standing committee of the other to stay eligible for consideration.

Some ideas may languish for years, then suddenly catch fire and move forward in the process. One such example this year is barring minors under the age of 18 from tanning salons, which appears to have newfound support in both chambers.

Backers of an effort to lower the blood alcohol threshold for drunken driving worked for more than a decade before they finally achieved success.

A medical marijuana proposal had little hope for action until mothers of children with severe epilepsy convinced leaders to use procedural bypasses at their discretion to provide access to marijuana-derived cannabis oil. Often 'funneled” ideas get resurrected as amendments to other bills with limited but occasional success.

For members of the party out of power there's generally no fun in the funnel process. But lawmakers such as Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa, point out that introducing a bill - even one that will have a short shelf life en route to the Capitol recycling bin - gives voice to an idea 'and it may be the only voice that you get.”

Chelgren, as with other minority Republicans in the Senate and minority Democrats in the House, have learned to set their expectations low so they won't be disappointed when the ideas they brought to the Capitol on behalf of a constituent or hopeful Iowans get cast aside.

'The question people ask me is, why do you fight when you can't win? Well, standing on principle is not about winning, it's about standing on principle,” Chelgren notes.

So, with the arrival of March, let the madness begin.