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Iowa Capital Dispatch
February 13, 2023

The Republican Party’s obsession with sex and gender identity has reached a fever pitch in the Iowa Statehouse this year. Gov. Kim Reynolds and her gang of helicopter mothers are clutching their pearls so hard they must be cutting off oxygen to their brains. At this rate, they will end up banning rainbows before the next election.

Iowa GOP lawmakers have expanded on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law from Florida, extending the prohibition in schools on all things LGBTQ all the way to eighth grade. The Florida ban specifies kindergarten through third grade.

Sen. Sandy Salmon’s version of the bill, Senate File 159, would create draconian civil penalties from $10,000 to $50,000 for schools where violations occur and are not immediately corrected. The bill prohibits any instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation in grades K-8, while also requiring instruction on human growth and development to be “age-appropriate” and research-based. That seems like a contradiction, since pretending LGBTQ people don’t exist is neither age-appropriate nor research-based. It’s delusional.

A recent public opinion poll found that three-quarters of Americans want members of Congress to end their bickering and begin compromising more with their colleagues from the other party.

The poll was conducted across the United States by Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion for National Public Radio and the PBS News Hour.

If such a poll were conducted in Iowa, it’s my hunch the pollsters would find people here have similar views of the inability, or unwillingness, of senators and representatives in Washington to engage in the thoughtful give-and-take art of lawmaking.

It is also my hunch that Iowans are at a similar point with respect to the Legislature’s recent string of proposed laws that target our 327 public school districts.

That hunch jelled even before Gov. Kim Reynolds signaled last week where she may be headed next in her quest to transform public schools. Her new goal should bother freedom-loving moms and dads and others who understand what our Founding Fathers wanted when they established the United States — you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I’ve seen a lot of Iowa winters and I have to say the weeks between Christmas and January 20 were the ugliest I’ve seen the state look.

I know northwest Iowa has had some snow cover, but what little snow there is lying around the rest of the state is thickly coated with the dirt that we're repeatedly told is so, so precious to the SOL (Stewards Oftha Land).

A pre-Christmas blizzard moved a lot of snow and a lot of $20k per acre dirt along with it into the ditches, and the immediate warmup that followed melted much of the white stuff, exposing what the Cropagandists tell us is black gold.

Not that she asked, but I have some advice for Rita Hart, the new chair of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Yes, Hart is an experienced practitioner of politics. She was twice elected to the Iowa Senate. She was the Democrats’ lieutenant governor candidate on the ticket with Fred Hubbell in 2018. And two years ago, she came within an eyelash — six votes — of winning a seat in Congress. She also is a former teacher and still farms with her husband near the Clinton County town of Wheatland.

Normally, I would trust the judgment of someone with her credentials on what her priorities should be as the Iowa Democrats’ top state leader. But this is the Iowa Democratic Party, and too many party activists, along with civic boosters and journalists, cling to the belief that the process of choosing presidential nominees absolutely and without question must begin in Iowa.

Iowa Capital Dispatch
January 23, 2023

Transparency is for suckers.

That’s the message, loud and clear, from Gov. Kim Reynolds and her Republican enablers in the Legislature.

I’d suspect that this was another, particularly idiotic manifestation of the trans-phobia that has infected Republican officeholders the past few years. But no, Reynolds and GOP lawmakers are insisting on “transparency” through various priority bills in the Legislature while keeping the public in the dark. Everybody loves transparency  – as long as it required of other people.

Reynolds’ recent interview with Amanda Rooker of KCCI-TV made that abundantly clear. Rooker asked Reynolds about the so-called “transparency” measures she is proposing for public schools. These may include ideas proposed in the past, like requiring teachers to post their lesson plans online or school libraries posting every title on their shelves.

Rooker asked if Reynolds would also seek to impose those rules on private schools that receive taxpayer funds from her education savings account proposal.

Reynolds stammered.

“Well, you know they’re held to — you know, most of this would deal with public schools, would public schools right now. So you know, they – it would just be public schools.”

That last phrase is the actual answer. Only public schools would have to post course details and library titles and whatever else the governor and GOP lawmakers can think of to demand from public schools.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see that private school vouchers appear to be barreling toward passage by the Iowa Legislature, just three weeks into the 2023 session. These vouchers, or education savings accounts, or whatever you want to call them, would give parents $7,600 per year for each of their kids to attend a private K-12 school.

Although the outcome has been easy to foresee, it has not been easy to get answers to the many questions being asked across the state as lawmakers move to make this landmark change in education in Iowa.

Some questions that deserve answers include:

• Does the governor and other proponents really believe $900 million can be siphoned away from Iowa’s 327 public school districts over the next four years for vouchers without harming the public schools?
• The premise is to give parents a choice of where their children will be educated. Don’t parents already have a wide range of options if they can't afford the tuition at a private school — from enrolling their kids in an adjacent public school district at no cost, to home-schooling, or enrolling them tuition-free in Iowa Connections Academy or Iowa Virtual Academy, Iowa’s two online public schools?
• If a child has learning disabilities or behavior issues, or if English is not the child’s native language, do vouchers serve their intended purpose when these children can be turned away by a private school without the parents having any recourse? When that occurs, what happens to the governor’s “school choice” message?
• Forty-one of Iowa’s 99 counties do not have any private schools. How are vouchers going to help students in those counties, especially when voucher money cannot be used to pay for the expense of driving to a private school in another county?
• Do supporters of the governor’s proposal really think state tax revenues will be sufficient to allow the Legislature to allocate $340 million per year for vouchers indefinitely?
• What happens when the income tax cuts lawmakers approved in 2022 fully take effect in the next few years? These tax cuts will reduce the state general fund revenue by about $2 billion — a reduction of about one-fifth.
• Won’t the combined effects of the cost of vouchers and the reduced income tax revenue put an excruciating squeeze on the state government’s budget needs? Won’t that squeeze make it nearly impossible to maintain the services that Iowans have come to expect — from state law enforcement, to the courts, state parks, community colleges and state universities, to health care for the poor, and the public schools?
• Why are Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican leaders in the Legislature adamant to get the voucher program approved before the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency completes its cost analysis — especially without an estimate of how much the state will pay a for-profit company that is still to be chosen to manage the voucher applications and payments?
• Might the governor and Republican leaders be trying to get this proposal approved before Iowans fully understand the cost, and the consequences, and can express their opinions when their senators and representatives are back home on the weekends?

School enrollment data show there are 482,000 students attending public K-12 schools in Iowa. Private schools now serve 33,000 students.

The governor and proponents of vouchers have talked about the "failing" public schools in Iowa. Shouldn’t these officials be called on to cite specific examples of these failures, so Iowans know whether the concerns are legitimate or exaggerated?

Iowa Capital Dispatch

When I started my freshman year in college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I graduated.

I knew I was a writer, but I had no clear job goal in mind. For the first two years at Iowa State University, I registered for courses that would fit into either an English or a journalism major. But I didn’t make up my mind until faced with a deadline: Either pick a major or take an extra year to graduate.

Performing on deadline is a crucial skill for journalists, so I made the decision. I can’t say I’ve never regretted it over the years, but I’ve also never wished I was teaching English instead.

Sadly, the opportunity for young Iowans to explore, experiment and possibly reconsider a career path while in college may become a luxury reserved only for the wealthy.

Republicans who control the Iowa House are again considering shortchanging state universities. House Speaker Pat Grassley said in an interview last week he anticipates lawmakers telling the Regents universities: “… We will give you the money that you’ve requested, but it’s going to be in forms of scholarships for high-demand fields that are set up by the (Department of) Workforce Development.”

In politics, having a “trifecta” in government is a good thing for a political party — until the trifecta’s inaction on some popular issue starts to haunt the party.

Iowa Republicans served up an example of the consequences of such inaction in the days leading up to Christmas. The example involves military veterans, a highly sought-after constituency that is part of any solid political movement.

In political lingo, the Republicans have had a trifecta in Iowa’s state government since 2017. That is when the party gained the majority in the Iowa Senate to go along with its majority in the Iowa House and having a Republican in the governor’s office.

A trifecta means the party usually has an easy time getting its policy priorities approved by lawmakers and signed into law by the governor — Republican priorities like big tax cuts. It means the party’s control of those three key elements of the government generally can stop legislative action on proposals its members oppose — such as the Democrats’ efforts to improve water quality across Iowa.

But there is a downside to having that firm grip on state government. We are seeing that this winter, since the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund ran out of money and had to stop providing financial aid to lower income veterans and their families.

It is amazing what takes up room in our memory.

Yes, our basement can accommodate stacks of storage bins and shelves lined with boxes filled with what we politely assure our spouse is “important stuff” from our life. Our memory is no larger than our head, but long-forgotten details are tucked away there amid the cobwebs.

Those details are brought back to life by the unlikeliest of events. For me, one of those occurrences was the launch and then the landing of the Artemis 1 spacecraft a few weeks ago.