Legislators discuss Chapter 20 reform, voter ID

The Iowa Capitol

By Charlie Comfort

Des Moines, Iowa- Last week, the Iowa Legislature, on near party line votes, approved a bill which would alter Chapter 20 of the Iowa Code, better known as collective bargaining. The bill, which was met with immense discord from union members, was formally passed by the legislature last Thursday after marathon debate sessions in the house and senate before being signed into law by Governor Branstad on Friday. Since the passage of the bill, legislative Republicans have come under fire by critics, who accuse them of pushing through the bill with little public input.

Representative Guy Vander Linden said in an interview at the State Capitol this week that those accusations are false. Vander Linden said that the bill went through subcommittee and committee meetings, which resulted in votes in favor of it. He also said that the bill went through a public hearing in the house, in which hundreds of Iowa residents showed up to offer input. The bill also was debated in the house for two-and-a-half days, according to him.
“That’s simply not true that it was rushed through,” Vander Linden said.

Senator Ken Rozenboom said that the bill received similar scrutiny in the Iowa Senate before its final passage.

“As near as I’ve been told, I think we had 40 hours of debate on the senate floor, which is ten times as much as maybe any other bill I’ve seen,” Rozenboom said of the amount of debate on the bill in the Senate.

Rozenboom also said that critics of the bill who claim the Republicans maliciously shut down debate on it are misguided. He said that debate was ended after it became apparent that critics would try to indefinitely stall its passage. He said that Senate Democrats went into “lengthy” caucus meetings to delay the bill. He also said a tactic called “papering” a bill, when opponents of a bill offer numerous amendments and offer debate on those amendments immediately in an effort to stall it, was used by Senate Democrats.

“There comes a point where it was obvious that the Senate Democrats were going to do everything they could to delay and stall,” Rozenboom said. “It was obvious at the pace we were going we wouldn’t get one bill through funnel week,” he added.

Vander Linden also said that claims that the bill was drafted in secret are false. In fact, he claimed that Iowa unions were contacted but did not wish to be involved in its drafting.
“They were consulted, they chose not to play, and we wrote the bill,” Vander Linden said.

Vander Linden went on to say that he supported the bill in the House because he felt it would be helpful for Iowa taxpayers. He also said that he strongly supported aspects of it that did not require government bodies to pay union dues for employees, and a revamp on the arbitration process.
“First of all, I don’t see any reason why the various governments should be obligated to collect anybody’s union dues,” he remarked.

Rozenboom expressed similar sentiments regarding his support of the bill. He expressed his opinions that Chapter 20 was not working prior to the passage of the reform bill and that taxpayers were suffering the most by Chapter 20.

“It hasn’t worked very well for Iowa taxpayers,” he said.

Rozenboom also said that the bill would provide a savings towards entities, saying that the University of Iowa alone would save $13 Million due to changes in health care offerings for public employees.
Vander Linden backed away from claims that bill approved and signed into law evens the playing field, saying that Republican leaders pushed out those statements.
“I think it’s doing the right thing. I think that we are protecting the taxpayer. I just don’t see any reason for these organizations to have the hand or advantage they had over school boards and city councils,” Vander Linden said.

Vander Linden and Rozenboom also addressed voter ID. In a report in the Des Moines Register this past weekend highlighting results of the latest Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, 69% of Iowans support requiring showing ID prior to voting. Vander Linden said that the results of the poll confirmed what some in the legislature already thought. He said that he is hoping a voter ID bill will be brought to the floor of the house soon.

“I have been advocating to bring it to the floor sooner than later,” Vander Linden said.
He also said that he does not need to see evidence of voting shenanigans in order to support voter ID. In fact, he said that he believed Iowa has a strong and ethical voting process. Rather, he said that he would support a voter ID bill because it would continue to ensure the integrity of Iowa’s election system.

“I don’t need to know that there’s been violations ever; maybe there has never been a single violation. I want to make sure in the future there are no violations,” Vander Linden said.
Rozenboom agreed with Vander Linden’s assessment of Iowa’s election system.

“I think that’s true, but I do believe there are exceptions to that.”

Rozenboom also said that voter ID would ensure that the legal right exercised by thousands would not be infringed upon by those who do not have the legal right to vote.

“It is absolutely essential that we protect that process from those that should not be voting to protect those that legitimately do that.”

Recently, Dallas County officials discovered that around 5,000 votes from Iowa’s 2016 general election had not been included in Dallas County’s final vote count. It was discovered that while the votes, which were absentee votes, had been counted in Dallas County, they had not been properly submitted to the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, and had never been included in any final vote counts for Dallas County. The additional votes did not affect any races in Dallas County, and the results were formally added to Dallas County’s final results. Vander Linden said that the issue in Dallas County was an unfortunate error.

“The thing in Dallas County was a regrettable, clerical error,” he said.

Posted by on Feb 24 2017. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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