Updated: 20 February 2013 | 6:35 am in conversations
What perennial Iowa Legislature proposal troubles you the most?
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The Iowa version of “The Walking Dead” is playing out at the Statehouse, where resurrected legislative ideas are moving around but facing a likely demise by early April.
Many of the proposed bills have died multiple times in previous legislative sessions as well.
Perennial issues like requiring drug tests for welfare recipients, placing term limits on state-level elected officials, reinstating Iowa’s death penalty or motorcycle helmet law, legalizing medical marijuana or putting a moratorium of gaming licenses have returned to the Capitol for another look.
Read the story linked above for more information. What perennial proposal in the Iowa Legislature troubles you the most?
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What perennial Iowa Legislature proposal troubles you the most?
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Anything that has to do with Gun Control!
Mr Hagen, gun control is not on the list. The question has to do with bills that have been introduced every session for years and years and years and are killed the instant they hit the floor.
The only reason to be concerned about any of these bills is that eventually they are going to slip through when no one is paying attention and we’re going to wake up one morning and find ourselves, I dunno, forced to fasten our seatbelts or hire an actual electrician if we rewire our house.
The ongoing threat to meet again next year.
The perennial favorite has got to be the guy who continuely wants to legalize pot. My guess is that he just forgets.
Why would any of these issues be “troubling”? It’s just part of the legislative process, and the fact that some ideas keep resurfacing from year to year only indicates that there is some part of the public that has an interest in them.
Fortunately, usually- but not always!- the perennially bad ideas get tossed out of the legislative grinder before they are made into State Code sausage. The Senate plays no small role in rejecting “junk legislation” on issues large and small, emotional and technical, especially in the past few sessions.
Personally, I think that the people of this state would be well served by returning to a Legislature that convenes only once every two years. The argument for changing that (not all that long ago) was that the “modern world” required a lawmaking body that could deal with problems on a yearly basis. In my opinion, all that has been achieved is to double the opportunity for adding unnecessary laws to the codebook.
Jack I dont disagree. We will see if you have the same opinion of the Senate when a single Rebublican will wield the power to deny legislation an up or down vote.
Lorenz,
Switching back to biennial meetings for the General Assembly would require a Constitutional Amendment. The 1857 Iowa Constitution originally mandated biennial meetings but was amended in 1969.
Constitutional amendments are deliberately difficult to pull off so good luck.
Refer a couple of articles dealing with one year budgets vs two year budgets–National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) “State Experiences with Annual and Biennial Budgeting” Ron Snell April 2011 and Council of State Governments “Iowa, Michigan consider bucking long-time trend” Ilene Grossman April 2011
Annual legislative meetings have to do with annual budgeting. As state budgets became more complex and revenue streams more reliant on sales and income (as opposed to property) taxes, budgeting on a two year calendar became more difficult. Two year budgets inevitably had to be redone which meant that they got to be increasingly irrelevant and unworkable. Iowa went to one year budgets in 1983.
Going to biennial budgets and sessions would shift power from the legislature to the governor. I guess whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on how much you like the governor.
Right now it’s Branstad and he’s all for biennial budgets. Wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he also thinks that eliminating the General Assembly would be a really okey dokey thing to do as well.
Now you can explain to me why small government conservatives support this consolidation of government power