By Jeff Edler

Senate District 36

This week was the ninth week of the legislative session.

Once again, legislators are focusing on moving their priorities through committees ahead of next week, which is the second funnel deadline for bills. In the Senate, we continued our work debating bills and sending them to the House of Representatives. We passed a number of bills based on ideas from constituents and issues that came up over the summer and fall.

Senate File 2394 clarifies the Iowa judicial branch does not have the authority to authorize an invasion into county courthouses and ensures those buildings remain the responsibility of the counties and taxpayers who fund these courthouses. It makes the county auditor, subject to the direction of the county board of supervisors, the person with custody and control of a courthouse and states courthouses are under the exclusive control of the county or city.

This bill was derived from the Government Oversight Committee hearings after the debacle last fall, when the judicial branch contracted with a security company to test the physical security of some courthouses. The company representatives broke into two courthouses in the middle of the night and were caught by law enforcement officials in Dallas County.

Additionally, the Senate passed several bipartisan bills to help a workforce shortage in a few different areas in Iowa.

The first – House File 2454 – provides another option for an instructor to qualify to teach career and technical education courses at a community college. It allows someone to teach a class if they have an associate degree in the field they are teaching and they have at least 3,000 hours of recent and relevant work experience in that area. Also, someone can qualify if they have a baccalaureate degree in a similar field but completed at least 18 hours in the field they wish to teach.

Another bill is Senate File 2298. It exempts certain peace officers authorized to teach the driving portion of driver’s education from having to be certified by the Department of Transportation. It also removes taking the driving instruction preparation requirement course. Last year we passed a bill allowing certain peace officers to teach that portion to help address an instructor shortage in this area, and this bill rolls back those requirements and takes down another hurdle they would have to jump before they could teach driver’s education. Peace officers have extensive training and experience in driving and the rules of the road, and these requirements were unnecessary. The passage of these bills reinforces the continued effort to allow local officials to be innovative in mitigating workforce shortage issues.

The Senate also passed two different bills relating to driver’s licenses in the state – one regarding a ‘school permit’ and another for driving farm equipment. Both of these bills are common-sense changes to make the everyday lives of rural Iowans easier.

Senate File 2009 allows someone with a special minor’s driver’s license, often called a school permit, to operate a car to a site, facility, or school within 50 miles for extracurricular activities.

A similar bill, Senate File 2061 says a person is not required to have a driver’s license when operating a farm tractor or other type of husbandry equipment between a home farm building and farmland for the purpose of conducting farm operations.

The Senate also passed Senate File 537, a bill allowing a person to use an infrared light source to hunt coyotes. Coyotes can be troublesome for livestock owners or even pet owners, and this gives individuals, especially in rural Iowa, access to technology that provides for better target identification for safer, more effective hunting.

Improving Infrastructure for Economic Growth

Since 2017 the agenda in the Iowa Senate has been focused on growth and opportunity. Increasingly, career opportunities in rural Iowa are tied to the availability and reliability of broadband internet service.

Governor Kim Reynolds has identified this policy as part of her Empower Rural Iowa initiative. It is a shared priority with the Senate and agriculture, business, and rural development organizations in Iowa. Last year the Senate approved $5 million for rural broadband expansion to expand and improve coverage to rural parts of the state. 

This year the governor requested $15 million for rural broadband and a number of policy changes to create more flexibility in the Empower Rural Iowa program. While funding for this project will be debated with the rest of the state budget later in session, this week the Senate passed SF 2400 to implement those policy changes requested by the governor.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.