After a week, Iowa House begins introducing legislation

DES MOINES - A week after opening its 2017 session, the Iowa House finally has some bills to work on.

No bills were introduced during the first week of the session. But 22 bills and a pair of resolutions were read in Tuesday and now are eligible for consideration.

Senators have filed 97 bills since Jan. 9.

'Other years we've read them in sooner,” said House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake. She chalked up the change to the 'pomp and circumstances” of the opening week and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Monday.

Upmeyer said she's been trying to focus lawmakers' attention on the Legislature's first order of business: cutting the current year budget by about $118 million.

'I think now we're ready to start looking at other things,” she said Tuesday afternoon.

Among the bills read in Tuesday were several proposals majority Republicans say are part of their 'smaller and smarter government” agenda.

They include proposals for school vouchers, eliminating a variety of business- and occupational-related regulations, removing a requirement that taxpayers indicate on their tax returns whether they have health care coverage for their dependent children, exempting Iowans from required vaccinations based upon personal conviction, and calling for the future repeal of the individual income tax checkoff and the Iowa election campaign fund.

Also introduced was a resolution designating the regal fritillary as the state butterfly, calling it the 'perfect symbol to represent the prairie heritage of Iowa.”

The budget adjustments are necessary because of reductions in projected tax collection growth brought on my sluggish farm prices and other economic factors.

Gov. Terry Branstad proposed adjustments of $25 million at regent institutions, $20 million for the Department of Human Services, $15 million for prisons and community corrections, $8.7 million for community colleges, $7.7 million for the courts, $5.5 million for the Department of Education and $3.8 million for public safety.

Republicans in the House and Senate have said they are looking at alternatives to the cuts Branstad proposed Jan. 10 in his Condition of the State address. They have an agreement 'in principle,” Upmeyer said.

'You know there are always details we want to make sure we can work out, but at some point we also need to move forward,” Upmeyer said. 'We have much work to do this session, and we can't be waiting on this bill forever. We need to get moving.”

However, the legislative process moves slowly.

'The way the paper moves, we certainly can't have it to the floor this week, but we can start moving it through the process this week,” she said.

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