Hope to adjourn 2015 Iowa session this week dims

DES MOINES - Issues old, new and recycled surfaced Tuesday as members of the split-control Legislature continued their slow march to adjournment.

Rank-and-file legislators settled into a leisurely pace with limited floor activity taking place while Republicans and Democrats worked behind the scenes to resolve their budget differences.

'We're obviously going to push hard to try to get done,” said House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha.

But he quickly conceded that the overtime session will spill into next week because of the plodding nature of budget talks.

'We'd have a lot of work to get done that would probably be difficult to do at this point” to make an adjournment run this week, he said.

Top legislators also indicated they were considering a disaster-type state response to the bird flu outbreak, but now they believe the state of emergency Branstad recently declared will provide access to needed resources at least until a clearer picture forms of the magnitude of costs to Iowa's poultry industry.

Paulsen said lawmakers are closely monitoring the outbreak that has affected about 25 million chickens and 750,000 turkeys in 13 counties. But so far no legislative response has been formulated, key legislators said Tuesday.

On the budget, Paulsen said progress was being made on the various pieces that have divided the GOP-led Iowa House and majority Senate Democrats. He said GOP representatives were 'still having conversations” on a compromise to boost state aid to schools by 1.25 percent with a one-time addition of $55 million in fiscal 2016 and to also set the state aid growth rate for K-12 schools for fiscal 2017 yet this session.

'I'm going to work diligently to get as much as I can every day that I'm here and I'm going to continue to do that,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs. 'I'm not going to spend a lot of time speculating on whether we go to next week, the week after, the week after that or July.”

In the Senate, the Appropriations Committee, on a 12-7 party line vote, passed a fiscal 2016 standing appropriations bill that contained Democrats' funding increases for K-12 schools the next two years, Gov. Terry Branstad's anti-bullying priority, a controversial substance abuse measure, and a handful of Senate-passed bills that have stalled in the House.

Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats decided to make one more try at persuading the House to take up the anti-bullying bill the Senate passed 43-7 by putting it in the standings bill in hopes House Republicans would take it up.

Another stalled issue that was amended to the standings bill was a measure to toughen penalties for synthetic drugs or imitation controlled substances. Senators expanded the measure with provisions to move marijuana from Schedule 1 to a Schedule II controlled substance; make possession of 5 grams or less of marijuana a simple rather than a serious misdemeanor; bring penalties for crack and powder cocaine more in line with each other; and give judges discretion to waive the mandatory minimum sentences relating to a drug conviction if the defendant is assessed as a low risk to reoffend.

'We just want to let people have a look at those again,” Dvorsky said of stalled bills that were rolled into the $2.9 billion budget bill.

On the bird flu issue, Dvorsky said legislators for a time were looking at authorizing use of the state's economic emergency fund similar to what was done to facilitate recovery from the 2008 flood. But state officials believe the governor's emergency declaration will allow state agencies to make requests for additional disaster funds related to the outbreak.

Dustin Vande Hoef, spokesman for Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, said the state does not have good estimates on influenza-related costs, but he noted that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's indemnification program would cover much of the cost of the birds as well as the depopulation and disposal but not state costs associated with the monitoring and testing.

The state Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship has $137,000 in a bird flu fund. Vande Hoef said the state's costs will exceed that amount, 'but it is too early to tell how much” until a determination is made on what the USDA will cover and what will be the state's responsibility.

'The total cost of the outbreak will certainly run into the hundreds of millions, but I don't know what the states will be responsible for,” Vande Hoef said in an email.

Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, whose northwest Iowa district has been hard hit by the bird flu cases, said the cost to address the outbreak will be 'enormous,” and he strongly supports putting the Legislative Council in a position to eventually decide whether to 'tap” additional state emergency funds.

Branstad spokesman Jimmy Centers said it remains too early to estimate the cost for the activities related to the bird flu outbreak.

'It's clear that stopping and recovering from the outbreak isn't a partisan issue,” he said. 'The governor will continue to have conversations with the Legislature, Secretary Northey and relevant stakeholders to determine the best path forward.”