Articles Tagged: Iowa Legislature

The merged department should be able to help people seamlessly receive the maximum services in the most efficient way to give families the tools to be independent, she tells legislators.

Watch live as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds delivers her fifth Condition of the State address to the Iowa Legislature at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Government is a blunt instrument and state and federal officials are using it to whack us from both sides of the COVID-19 vaccine debate.

Cedar Rapids City Council member Ashley Vanorny was among speakers Monday at a “People’s Condition of the State” event hosted Progress Iowa and featuring representative from a number of Democratic-leaning organizations.

During a event conducted over Zoom, individuals shouted and drew a racial epithet and posted an image of a monkey on the shared screen for all participants to see.

Iowa’s public universities for years have requested legislative funding increases — promising to commit the extra tens of millions they sought to student aid, mental health, and more recently hybrid learning in an age of COVID-19 — but the asks have fallen flat.

Judging by the opening-day remarks delivered Monday by leaders in the Iowa Legislature, Republicans and Democrats have decidedly different views about how to attract more workers and people to Iowa, whose population has been stagnant for a decade.

Republican leaders in the Senate told journalists last week they will no longer be allowed to work on the chamber floor, a change that breaks with a more than 140-year tradition in the Iowa Capitol.

Democratic leaders on both chambers, however, were critical of lawmakers taking a hand in the issue and argued there is a process in place to address concerns about books or other materials.

“I think there's going to be an effort to push for everything that's on the agenda,” University of Northern Iowa political scientist Chris Larimer said. “I think they're going to push on tax cuts, maybe more easing of gun restrictions and kind of waiting and seeing what they're going to do on abortion” in anticipation of a United States Supreme Court decision on a Mississippi abortion law.

Education leaders advocate that the Iowa Legislature set state supplemental aid at 5 percent to adequately fund schools and attract more teachers.

On this week’s edition of the On Iowa Politics Podcast, Jan 6 one year later, legislative look-ahead, and words we don't want to hear.

Leaders in Iowa's Republican-led Legislature say they're waiting to see how court cases play out first before taking any further steps to restrict abortion access in the state — an assertion not all Democrats are buying.

Along the way, however, there are any number of ideas and issues that can disrupt, delay and derail the familiar routine of a legislative session. Often, they are the same issues from year-to-year: abortion; gun rights; traffic cameras; gambling.

School superintendents and the Iowa Girls’ High School Athletic Union are eager for guidance on transgender sports. Although there have been no Iowa challenges of district decisions on transgender athletes so far, parents in other states have filed lawsuits and Title IX complaints.