~by State Senator Jesse Green
February 19, 2021
It is week six already! We have been getting quite a bit done lately so time seems to go by more quickly. We passed several bills this week, and I’ll highlight a couple of the big ones.
Education was the highlight of the week once again. The Senate and the House came to an agreement on the K-12 education funding increase for next year. The allocation is a 2.4 percent increase per student and other funding brings the total to an additional $49.4 million for the next fiscal year.
The Senate also passed SF 252. This bill prohibits cities and counties from passing an ordinance requiring landlords to accept applicants who may be using a federal housing choice voucher. There are other ways cities have been encouraging landlords to accept federal dollars, such as fast-tracking inspections, providing security deposits and loss mitigation, and waiving building permit feeds, instead of yet another government mandate.
I have enjoyed working with Senator Driscoll on SF 350, which is a bill regarding barber apprenticeships. In Iowa there are only two barber schools. The education requirements to obtain a barbers license are very extensive. This bill will allow someone another avenue to obtain a license at a faster pace. I am excited about this bill because it will increase employer investments in the state and create more work opportunities. On Thursday this bill passed out of subcommittee.
The Bottle Bill debate is continuing. There are many bills that are popping up between the chambers. It appears that the two most popular ones highlight two different paths to improve the bill. One path is to double the handling fee, and give retail an opt-out option. More business would be streamed towards redemption centers, and new ones will probably be created due to the increased handling fee.
The other Bottle Bill that is drawing much attention in the Senate is a totally new concept. The new concept keeps the 5-cent redemption with a 1-cent handling fee. What makes this bill different than our current one is that the unredeemed nickels from cans that are thrown away would be scooped back to the state. Also with this bill, retail would be exempt from having to participate, and the redemption centers would be able to keep the scrap profit. Currently, distributors get to keep the unredeemed can money, which is estimated to be at least $30 million. They also currently keep the scrap money.
The last topic I’ll touch on for this week is election law. The United States Constitution specifically empowers state legislatures with authority over election law. The Iowa Senate takes that responsibility seriously and has made a number of changes over the last four years to improve the reliability and security of Iowa’s elections with common-sense reforms like requiring a voter identification at the polls, and a similar requirement for requesting an absentee ballot.
In 2020 a few county auditors attempted to violate Iowa law and circumvent the security measures implemented on Iowa absentee ballot request forms. County auditors are directed to implement election law, not write it. In response the Iowa Senate advanced SSB 1199 this week to improve the administration of elections and ensure one set of consistent and fair election laws are in place across the state regardless of if the county is in urban or rural, Republican or Democrat.
This bill also prohibits ballot harvesting. This practice typically involves partisans from a campaign or party soliciting the collection of absentee ballots and delivering them to the auditor. A number of stories have been told, even some in Iowa, of partisan actors failing to deliver voters ballots to the auditor, thus disenfranchising those voters. Postage is paid on all absentee ballots and caregivers and members of the same household are still able to help deliver a ballot.
SSB 1199 changes the beginning of early voting from 29 days before an election to 18 days before an election. According to the National Conference of State Legislators the average window for early voting in the US is 19 days. This change puts Iowa closer to that average.
A strong republic depends on the confidence of the people in the selection of their leaders. SSB 1199 continues to improve Iowa’s election law in an effort to bolster the confidence of Iowans in the electoral process by making it easy to vote but hard to cheat.
In closing I would like to thank you once again for giving me this opportunity to serve you. Please contact me with any questions or concerns you may have that I can help with at jesse.green@legis.iowa.gov.
