Senate passes transportation budget, IPERS bills

DES MOINES – Efforts to expand required seat-belt usage to more back-seat passenger moved ahead Thursday but the wheels came off an attempt to revive a bicycle safety expansion.

The Iowa Senate voted 31-16 to attach a policy measure to a transportation budget bill that would require passengers under the age of 18 to wear seat belts while riding in the back seat of a moving vehicle. The current law applies to passengers under age 11.

However, an amendment offered by Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, to revive a stalled bicycle safety measure was ruled irrelevant to Senate File 2381 by Senate President Jack Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg, squashing any late attempt to get the issue back up for legislative consideration. The bill passed the Senate last year but died in the House earlier this year.

Senators went on to approve the overall package to finance about $350 million worth of spending on transportation-related issues beginning on July 1 – including $3.8 million to launch the central issuance of driver's licenses and $1.4 million to replenish the road salt fund that was depleted earlier this winter, said Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, the bill's floor manager.

Also Thursday, senators voted 31-16 to approve a measure to fund three public employees' retirement funds, including a $5 million yearly new investment to the Iowa Public Employees' Retirement System (IPERS), which has over 300,000 members and a $20.4 billion portfolio as of this week.

House File 2518, which now goes to Gov. Chet Culver for his consideration, would increase the IPERS vesting requirement from four years to seven years, calculate retirement benefits using a member's high five years of salary rather than three and increase the early retirement penalty from 3 percent to 6 percent. That will reduce the present value of future benefits by $1.2 billion.

It also calls for increasing the IPERS total contribution to 13.45 percent beginning in 2011 and allow the system to adjust the rate up of down by no more than 1 percent per year. Currently, the employer pays 7.25 percent and the employee pays in 4.7 percent.

Employees in the Police Officers Retirement System would see an increase in their contribution rate of 0.5 percent a year for four years. The employer's contribution, now 21 percent, would increase to 27 percent by 2013.

In other action, the Senate voted 46-0 to confirm Nancy Richardson as director of the state Department of Transportation for another four years but rejected Shearon Elderkin's appointment to the Iowa Power Fund Board by a 31-15 margin. Gubernatorial appointees must garner 34 affirmative votes to meet the two-thirds majority requirement to win confirmation.

The vote was a carryover from last session, when minority Republicans rejected Elderkin to continue serving on the Environmental Protection Commission and Carrie Le Seur as a Power Fund Board member.

Gov. Chet Culver later pulled a double switch, naming Elderkin to the Power Fund Board and Le Seur to the EPC, although her Iowa connection ended when she moved to Montana.

Sen. Merlin Bartz, R-Grafton, said Republicans considered it a “slap in the face” when the governor “did the switcheroo and thumbed his nose at the Senate” by switching the two appointees. He said the Senate “exerted its authority” Thursday by turning down Elderkin's appointment.

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