by Ken Rozenboom The legislature has officially finished the 2021 legislative session. Republicans in the legislature set out this session with ambitious goals as the session began after nearly a year of dealing with the COVID pandemic. Iowans were eager to get back to the lives they knew and move Iowa forward. Throughout the summer […]
by Dustin Hite Now that we have passed our second funnel, our focus shifts since only the Appropriations and Ways & Means committees are meeting for the rest of this session. I sit on Ways & Means, so my focus has been on taxes and fees while others on Appropriations work to get a budget […]
by Holly Brink Week 14 Update Hello Friends, We are two weeks away from the scheduled end of the session, although no official announcement has been made about when we will officially end. This does mean that the legislature is focusing on fewer legislation that will be passed in the next month. If bills do […]
by Holly Brink Week 13 Update Hello Friends, Apologies for the delay in the newsletter, the day I normally work on the newsletter, Thursday, was an eventful day at the capitol and I wanted to include information from the virtual Ames forum. Beyond the eventful Thursday, it was a great and productive week at the […]
by Dustin Hite This week was the second funnel, which means a bill must make it through committee in the other chamber in order for it to be alive for the session. It also means that it is the last week of committee meetings, with the exception of Ways and Means and Appropriations. These two […]
by Ken Rozenboom This week we received more good news about Iowa and the economy. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Iowa’s economy grew 6.3 percent in the last few months of 2020, faster than many of our neighboring states. Coupled with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, this is great news […]
by Holly Brink Week 12 Update Hello Friends, Happy Easter! I hope this holiday weekend is full of joy for you and your families. Here at the legislature it has been a chaotic week, as it is the second funnel which I will explain further below. After this week, the legislature will look very different […]
by Holly Brink Week 11 Update Hello Friends, I am again so honored to be serving you in the legislature. This week contained several long days of debate, including Wednesday’s debate which lasted until past 1 AM Thursday morning. On those days I just remind myself of how important it is to ensure that we […]
by Dustin Hite This was another busy week in the House. We dealt with a range of topics from CDL testing to ABLE accounts for Iowans on Medicaid and SSI. Two bills that passed the House this week were second chance legislation. This year, the Iowa House again took the first step in amending the […]
by Ken Rozenboom Last Friday the Revenue Estimating Conference met. This process gives us final revenue projections as we start preparing our budgets for the next fiscal year. Because of the pro-growth policies we have continued to pass throughout the last several years, Iowa has seen economic growth even through these last several months, and […]
