Changes to Iowa bottle bill resurrected

DES MOINES — Trying to keep alive changes to Iowa’s iconic bottle bill, House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee approved changes, including doubling the handling fee for redemptions centers.

With amendments, HF 872 will accomplish the goals Rep. Jacob Bossman, R-Sioux City, has been working on for a few years.

In addition, it would double the 1-cent handling fee for redemption centers and will get dirty beverage containers — “garbage” — out of grocery stores. And it will provide more enforcement to address retailers that have never followed the law that required them to redeem cans and bottles they sold.

Bossman said his amendments addressed a “pretty good fusion of everybody’s needs.”

Rep. Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, wasn’t convinced.

“I'm a big believer in perfect not being the enemy of the good,” she said. “However, it doesn't come close to perfect or really even good.”

Republicans want to keep the bill moving as the legislative session winds down, but Konfrst said she doubts it accomplishes “the changes (Iowans) really want to see to the bottle bill.”

Bossman said the bill, as amended, would “go a long ways toward shoring up the bottle bill and making sure that it is what it has been for the last for 30 years for the next 30 years.”

There is no companion bill in the Senate, but Rep. Shannon Lundgren, R-Peosta, said her amendment to the bill before it was approved by State Government Committee made it more similar to what is now SF 368.

Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, the bill’s sponsor, said he hadn’t seen the House changes. However, he said he has “no interest in Band-Aid changes” to the bottle bill, which the Legislature approved in 1978.

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