While Iowans get a taste of spring fever, legislators are getting shutdown fever. With the official end of the Iowa legislative session coming up on May 3, it’s clear that leaders are lining things up to end session sometime in the next ten days. Legislative leaders have said privately that they will end session one week early, on or around April 26. However, experience tells us that it takes time for the paper (amendments, bills, fiscal summaries) to catch up. Every amendment and bill goes through an extensive editing process, where bill drafters and proof readers review it to make sure errors do not end up in Iowa lawbooks. That’s why it is more likely sine die (the official term for the end of session, roughly translated as without another day) will happen closer to April 30.
It’s the time of year when bills that have been lingering on the debate calendar get thrown overboard or held over until next year. It’s also that time of year when there is a lot of sitting around and waiting for caucuses to be done and for amendments to be drafted. During that down time, legislators can get pretty creative and start finding ways to revive dead bills. It keeps everyone on their toes.
So, while it looks like a bill may be dead, it can still be resurrected. Keep at your advocacy. Legislators still need to hear from you about your budget priorities, as well as bills you want done before that final “sine die” fall of the gavel.
There are two signs that the end of session is near:
While budgets are moving through the process, the House and Senate versions of the budgets are different because they each had a different amount of money they were allowed to spend for the budget year that starts on July 1, 2019 (aka “Fiscal Year 2020”). Now that legislative leaders have agreed to a joint spending plan, the House and Senate budget subcommittee chairs can begin to negotiate a deal for their area of the budget. They started those meetings Thursday night, April 18.
Below is a chart of the differences between the current year, the Senate’s plan, the House plan, and the joint target they have been given. You can see a current version of this daily here. This link also includes links to budget descriptions done by the state’s nonpartisan fiscal bureau.
We don’t know what is in the Senate version of the Health/Human Services budget, but you can read more about it online at www.infonetiowa.orgnext week. The subcommittee will meet on Monday (April 22) at 10 am to discuss the Senate version, so we’ll report on the differences later that day. The Senate spends less than the House and may have different policy language included in the bill. As a reminder, the House-passed budget (HF 766) includes the following:
Other budgets include the following:
The infoNETBill Tracker is updated at least once daily – book mark it to watch how your priorities are progressing. Just a few things to note from the last two weeks:
There are several bills that have been signed or sent to the Governor:
There are a few bills that could still make it to the Governor’s desk this year:
One bill we were closely tracking (HF 692) faces an uncertain future. This bill, as passed by the House, fixes a problem with Iowa’s mail-in ballot laws. Right now, the law is unclear about how counties are to track a mail-in ballot. Some counties used bar codes, some only post marks. Since post offices do not always postmark ballots, this has become an issue in close races.
HF 692 requires all county auditors to use the post office’s bar code tracking system, and changes the law to count ballots that are received on time, either physically received by the due date, bearing a post mark showing it was mailed before the election, or using the bar code tracking system showing it entered the postal service’s system in time.
The Senate, however, added a 56-page amendment with dozens of election law changes, including closing polling sites an hour earlier (at 8 p.m.), changing procedures for constitutional amendments, requiring signature verification on absentee ballots (and throwing out if signatures do not match), prohibiting candidates that lose in a partisan primary from running as an independent in the general election (aka “sore loser” law), and stopping auditors from distributing sample ballots to the public. It also requires a mail-in ballot to be received by election day, otherwise it will not be counted (no matter when you mailed it).
The House does not seem to want to entertain big changes to Iowa’s election law, as the public is still getting used to the voter ID law passed two years ago. The House could reject the Senate amendment (but the Senate could insist on it, sending it to conference committee). That would take time, so it is more likely the bill will end up dead, or be added to another bill like the Standings budget.
This will be our last biweekly report before the end of session. Our next issue will report on what passed, what didn’t, what was funded, and what wasn’t.