Culver pushes Senate for confirmations

DES MOINES – Gov. Chet Culver made an 11th-hour appeal Tuesday for GOP senators to quit playing politics with the confirmation process and approve Gene Gessow to direct the Iowa Department of Human Services. 

The governor also called upon the Senate to confirm Shearon Elderkin of Cedar Rapids to the state Environmental Protection Commission and Carrie La Seur of Mount Vernon to the Iowa Power Fund Board.

Culver, a first-term Democrat, conceded the trio of nominees face problems in winning the 34 affirmative votes needed to be confirmed by two-thirds of the 50-member Iowa Senate – which is made up of 32 Democrats and 18 Republicans.

The governor praised Gessow's work as DHS head and previously as Iowa's Medicaid director over the past six years, crediting him for aggressively securing millions of federal dollars and creating the IowaCare program to serve low-income Iowans who are unable to access government health care programs.

 “I want to be as clear as I can be:  Gene is my choice and I stand by him,” Culver told a news conference attended by leaders of social service organizations from around Iowa who rallied around Gessow's nomination. “I ask for his immediate confirmation, and I look forward to working with him in the years to come.”

Culver credited Gessow with taking steps to improve state care facilities for Iowans with severe disabilities at Woodward and Glenwood, and with leading the state's response to a recent situation in Atalissa where 21 individuals with mental retardation were found to be living in sub-standard conditions.

However, Senate GOP Leader Paul McKinley of Chariton said his 18-member caucus takes the confirmation process very seriously and many have expressed “grave concerns” that Gessow had not been forthright in discussing the Atalissa bunkhouse issue with a legislative panel earlier this year.

“The one thing we know from the citizens of Iowa they are extremely frustrated and what we need is much more transparency in government and we need much more honesty and much more openness from officials in state government,” he said.

McKinley said he could make the same case to Culver that the election is over and the time for political gamesmanship has ended.

Sen. Merlin Bartz, R-Grafton, said Gessow's Atalissa responses were a major obstacle to confirmation, but he also had philosophical differences over extending state benefits to illegal aliens and licensing all day cares in Iowa.

In urging GOP senators to reconsider, Culver said Gessow was the right man to guide the state's largest government agency, which has a combined state-federal budget of $4.6 billion and 5,700 employees that administer programs to more than 800,000 Iowans.

 “He has shown compassion and leadership in the face of adversity,” Culver said. “Nothing illustrates this better than his own actions in the days after the floods of 2008. This is a man who literally got in his car, and drove Medicaid provider checks to people in flood-affected areas.”

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said he expected to complete the confirmation process by Wednesday's deadline.