Eggs and Issues for Saturday March 12, 2011
State Senator Tom Rielly (D) address those on had at Eggs and Issue's Saturday March 12th, 2011
With approximately 85 people in attendance at the 8:30 meeting inside Smokey Row.
This week had State Representatives Rich Arnold, Guy Vander Linden and State Senator Tom Rielly on hand to speak and answer questions from those in attendance.
Jon Sullivan, Main Street and Commerce Director for the Oskaloosa Area Chamber and Development Group once again opened up the event, with Senator Rielly (D) leading off the session with some brief statements on his recent activity stating that “The last 3 weeks have been probably the most intense sleep deprived weeks I’ve had in quite some time.” He went on to say that last week was “funnel week”, a very intense week according to Rielly. Rielly said the Iowa Senate this past week did a lot of floor debate with not much in the way of controversial types of bills.
Rep. Guy Vander Linden (R) of House District 75 took to the floor next. Vander Linden spoke briefly about House File 525 that covers Iowa’s collective bargaining law pertaining to public employees. He said he would limit comments on that and leave it for questions from the floor covering that topic.
Rep. Guy Vander Linden (R) spoke about issues being dealt with in the Iowa House these past 2 weeks at Eggs and Issues March 12th, 2011
The final opening remarks were by Rep. Rich Arnold (R) of House District 72. He also spoke of last week being the “funnel week” where any bills had to be out of committee in order to be brought to the floor for debate and a vote. Arnold says that even though a bill maybe didn’t make it past funnel week, it could very well show up as an amendment later on in the session.
Arnold also spoke about traffic camera’s and the “money grab” it appears is going on by cities over traffic cameras, stating that the House bill dealt more with the fines. “There’s a lot of big money being made by the cities that have it” (traffic cameras) Arnold continued. He spoke of the money generated by the fines going to the companies that run the cameras for the cities, with one instance at least of more than half the fine money going out of state.
Approximately 85 people were on hand for Eggs and Issues hosted at Smokey Row Saturday March 12th, 2011
Issues discussed ranged from Iowa House file 5 that covers abortion after the 20th week, to what is considered collective bargaining reform for public employees in the state to the “Dove Bill” and local governments being able to cover expenses without having to raise property taxes.
Oskaloosa City Manager questioned the representatives about increasing costs that are passed along to cities over increasing responsibility to pay more for the pensions of those employees, that makes cities increase tax rates including property tax rates in order to cover those mandated costs.
The 3 representatives agreed to hear more on the issue, and said they would be willing to look more into the matter.
Eggs and Issues season is winding down with the end of the legislative session nearing. If you have not yet had an opportunity to attend, the next one is in 2 weeks.
