The Dickey Dispatch

by Senator Adrian Dickey

Happy Monday District 44,

This last week the Senate passed a hands-free driving bill. This bill would require cell phones to be used only by voice activation or a single touch while driving. It is sad the number of deaths and how that number continues to rise due to distracted driving.

Another bill that passed the Senate last week was Senate File 311, which reforms the civil service discipline process and bans the use of citizen review boards in Iowa. The goal of the bill is to provide more objective standards regarding disciplinary decisions involving civil service employees, like police officers. Many times, citizen review boards become outlets for defund-the-police activism and deprive law enforcement officers of their right to due process, one of our greatest rights as American citizens. These changes are put in place to clarify the role of our police, fire, and other civil service employees to ensure they can do their job effectively. It also gives our brave men and women in law enforcement the due process they are guaranteed, brings more transparency to the disciplinary process, and helps support GREAT officers as they try to do a very difficult job and keep our communities safe.

Representatives from Access Energy were at the Capitol last Wednesday. I had the pleasure of meeting with them and discussed pending legislation that is in the chamber to help make energy more reliable and LOWERING electrical rates for Iowans. Energy is a product that we all consume and making sure that it is affordably available is a common sense issue.

We also had a visit from Senator Ernst. It was GREAT to hear of all of the events taking place in Washington and the workings of DOGE. The DOGE taskforce is much more than Elon Musk making daily headlines and we heard Senator Ernst explain the actual process from discovering the waste to all of the steps that are done to correct the issue.
I hope your basketball brackets stayed intact this weekend. I have GREAT pride in the men’s and women’s teams from Iowa that participated!

Hope you had a great weekend District 44!