~a column by State Senator Jesse Green
February 24, 2022
Next week is funnel week, which is our first deadline for keeping policy bills alive. If an individual policy bill does not pass out of committee by the end of the week, it is dead for the rest of session. Due to this deadline, the week prior is a busy time for subcommittee meetings. This year I chair the Local Government Committee and would like to highlight a couple of bills we have been working on.
SF 272 is a bill that authorizes municipalities to create a length of service award program for their volunteer emergency personnel as a form of bonus or benefit for their service. This bill would allocate $1 million from Iowa Lottery revenues to a fund that would be used for a dollar-for-dollar match for cities that raise funds for this purpose as well. This bill would begin a much-appreciated program to recognize the volunteer emergency services personnel that serve our communities. It is unclear to me if this dollar amount is sufficient or not, but this should be enough to get us started to see how it takes different-sized cities to start their programs and how much this will be used.
SF 314 is a bill that would force counties with a population of 60,000 or more to elect their supervisors within districts rather than “at large.” There are many large population counties that elect at-large supervisors who only live a short distance from each other within a large city. This leaves a large portion of the county feeling like they do not have proper representation. This passed subcommittee this week with bipartisan support and will be in full committee next week.
Outside of Local Government I have a couple of other bills still floating around. SF 17 is a bill that would eliminate the current option for a court to order parents to pay for the college tuition for their children upon the dissolution of a marriage. A problem was brought to my attention by a neighbor who had an ex-husband harass her with this provision. The judge did not force her to pay for her portion of tuition due to her economic situation, but nevertheless, she still had to pay large attorney fees to fight the situation in court. This provision has been around since around 1970, but the circumstances around this issue have changed tremendously. Divorce rates and college tuition are drastically higher now. The combination of these two differences have created more harassment possibilities. This law I believe needs to go. There are better ways than this to help our youth overcome the obstacles they face to receive a college education if they desire one. My other thought for filing this bill was, when children turn 18, I believe they should be ready to make these huge life decisions for themselves.
Another bill of mine is SF 29. This bill relates to the transportation to and from school for students participating in open enrollment. Current law allows a receiving school district to send school vehicles into the district of residence of a student who open enrolls for the purpose of transporting the student to and from school in the receiving school district if the boards of directors of the sending school district and receiving school district agree to this arrangement. This bill strikes the requirement that the sending and receiving school have to reach an agreement, and would change it so that the only conversation and agreement that needs to happen is between the family and the receiving district. There is fear this policy would create chaos between districts so I hope we will find an amendment to provide more distance guardrails and define which families can qualify to have these conversations about transportation with another district.
We’ll be preparing for another busy week at the Capitol as we work on preparing bills for floor debate in the Senate. Next week will be full of subcommittees and committee work as we move forward in the legislative session and ensure our focus remains on the most important issues. Please feel free to contact me or reach out with questions as legislation is introduced and goes through the legislative process.
