The Dickey Dispatch – June 6th, 2025
by Senator Adrian Dickey
This is the last edition of the Dickey Dispatch for the 2025 legislative session. Last week I was honored to have been asked to speak to the National Guard unit in Mount Pleasant at their deployment ceremony. What an honor that was to speak to these GREAT men and women as they deployed on a mission to continue to protect our country!
As session wrapped up, the dominant issue all session long has been the carbon capture pipeline. I’m going to start off by making it very clear, I have always favored property owners over the pipeline. I don’t believe in the “science” behind the carbon capture issue. In the last week of session, a small group of senators made demands that HF693 was to be voted on the floor without any amendments. The problem is that HF693 is a poorly written piece of legislation that was drafted and is filled with many Trojan horses. For example, the bill states that in any public use project where the use of eminent domain could take place, anyone may file an objection, and those objections must be considered by the Iowa Utilities Board before the permitting process may take place. That may not sound bad on the surface, but the bill does not state that those objections must be filed by someone that’s actually impacted by the project. Heck, it doesn’t even say that the objections must be filed by an Iowa citizen. With that wording, anybody in the country could file objections. Words matter, or in this case, the lack of words would allow anyone in the United States to file objections for projects taking place in Iowa and killing them before the permit process could begin. Transmission lines, LP gas pipelines, anhydrous pipelines, anything where eminent domain could be a possibility will be stopped. That is awful for Iowa.
HF693 also requires any pipelines in Iowa to carry levels of insurance that are not even obtainable. This part of the bill would apply to not just the carbon capture pipeline project, but all pipelines. We have over 50,000 miles of pipeline in Iowa currently. If this bill is signed into law, your rates for gasoline, anhydrous, LP, or anything else that currently goes through Iowa will go UP due to the added cost of the new insurance requirements that will be placed upon them.
HF693 will stop this pipeline in phase one by changing existing eminent domain laws that have been in place for decades. That change in law will open the door for Summit, who is the investor in the current pipeline, to sue the state of Iowa for breach of contract. And they will win! Probably to the tune of $500,000,000 to $1 billion! That will mean that the billion dollars of tax savings that we have worked hard to implement over the last seven years will be wiped away and your income taxes may go back to up to the same rates when the Democrats were in charge.
Because HF639 was so bad, I voted for S-3165, an amendment which implemented many landowner protections. For example, it got rid of the use of eminent domain on this carbon pipeline project for phases two and three (without the risk of the state getting sued), eliminated the use of eminent domain for any future pipeline projects, allowed the project corridor to be widened for voluntary easements, and implemented protections to fix drainage lines, crop degradation, and to restore the land back to where it was prior to the construction, to name a few. S-3165 was an excellent piece of legislation protecting landowners’ rights. Unfortunately, this small group of senators made such a demand and wanting HF693 to be voted on without any amendments, they did not allow for S-3165 to be passed. Due to their tactics and every Democrat on their side, S-3165 failed and HF693 was passed. As a result, I feel Iowa is now open to a $1 billion lawsuit, and real landowner rights that would have been provided from S-3165 will not take place.
The last day of session, I was able to pass a $1 billion, yes that is correct, a $1 BILLION tax reduction bill for Iowa businesses.This bill will lower what they pay in unemployment taxes for the next six years. Iowa’s unemployment trust fund needs to have a balance of around $700 million, however, our fund balance is one of the highest in the nation at $2 billion! Federal law restricts what can be done with an excessive balance, so this bill lowers what Iowa businesses pay in unemployment taxes for the next six years to bring the fund down. There are only a handful of legislators in the history of Iowa who can claim to have passed legislation that will save Iowans $1 billion. To have my name on such a list feels pretty neat.
Finally, for the past five years I have worked on a piece of legislation called LOSAP. This is a Length Of Service Award Program for our volunteer firefighters, EMS, and reserve police officers. There are over 15,000 volunteer firefighters in the state, however, that number a decade ago was 19,000. The training requirements continue to go up, the time required continues to be more, and there are fewer men and women in rural areas that are willing to help their communities by volunteering. This bill will be very impactful for our volunteers and our small communities.
Even more meaningful was that Governor Reynolds accepted my invitation to come to the Packwood Fire Department, a fire department that I have been a volunteer at for the past 33 years, to sign the bill into law. Over 150 people from the Packwood community joined firefighters from all over the state to gather in the fire station to witness the bill being signed into law. For our small community, this will be remembered for years to come.
Thank you for your support this session and before you know it, you will be hearing from me again as session gavels back in next January.
