Nothing is ever dead

In the Iowa Legislature

In 2011, I served as ranking member (lead Democrat) on the Administration and Rules Committee in the Iowa House of Representatives. Apparently Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn’t know where else he could deploy and keep an eye on me.

In Iowa, the Grim Reaper has the power to resurrect what it supposedly buried (ChatGPT-generated image).

The job required mastering the various rules and conventions governing the legislative process. In that and later years, I sometimes assisted my peers when the “regular order” was violated or objections were raised.

Proper procedure was inadvertently overlooked on occasion. Sometimes the mistakes were corrected. A common question during debate revolves around whether an amendment to a bill is “germane.” An amendment that is not germane (unrelated to something already in the bill) cannot be discussed or come to a vote.

Occasionally, I was able to help members win arguments for germaneness. Crafting amendments that could survive such objections became both an art and a science. Various approaches worked within the written rules we were supposed to follow. Speaker Kraig Paulsen (now director of the Department of Management) acknowledged that once when ruling in my favor, until the next time when he changed his mind on the exact same point. (I saved the original evidence in my desk drawer).

According to historical practice, the chief clerk (appointed by the Speaker of the House) is the parliamentarian. That person judges the arguments made “in the well” (in front of the Speaker) when debate is delayed to consider an objection. The clerk then makes a recommendation to the Speaker.

During the 2009-2010 sessions when Democrats were last in the majority in the House, I can’t remember a time when the Speaker overruled the parliamentarian’s recommendation, regardless of who it favored. After that clerk lost the job, Mark Brandsgard became my mentor.

Nowadays rules of law and procedure are seen as inconvenient barriers to circumvent at both the state and federal level. The rule of law is in peril. The Iowa Supreme Court will never intervene to make the Legislature follow its own rules because the State Constitution gives the General Assembly the power to make and/or break its own rules without adult supervision.

Over the years under Republican control, succeeding Speakers and other leaders in the chair (managing debate) began ignoring past precedent. The parliamentarians now are not even consulted. Often, the Chief Clerk now turns her back on the conversations. New rhymes, reasons and rules are made up on the fly so the majority party members can avoid having to debate and vote on amendments offered by the minority party that would be hard to explain to their constituents.

The suppression of debate is most egregious on appropriations bills, which presumably reflect the priorities and values of the people who supposedly own the seats that legislators sit in. The prevailing practice now: If Republicans haven’t included money in the bill for something, then any amendment that seeks to include funds for that purpose is ruled not germane. Ridiculous.

A No Kings Day protester highlights how the historic principle known as the “rule of law” is under attack.

All of this brings me to a case in point: On April 7, an Iowa House subcommittee will meet to discuss House Study Bill 764. According to the bill: Before applying for any “high-impact” federal grant, every state entity would be required to get permission from the Legislature. High-impact grants are defined as those for $5 million or more and all grants requiring any amount of state matching funds.

The bill is the brainchild of the State Policy Network, an astroturf national advocacy group that specializes in “advancing limited government solutions.” Translation in this case: Limit the ability of states to take advantage of federal resources.

Public universities would seem to be most affected. I have posed these questions to the Board of Regents: Does the bill require many if not most university research grants to be approved by the Legislature? Does the politicizing of the federal grant application process square with the Board of Regents’ policies on academic freedom?

The Legislative Services Agency is no doubt scrambling to figure out how the bill will impact other state departments, boards, commissions, bureaus and offices. Presumably, the anticipated “fiscal impact” of the new bureaucratic process will have to be documented.

You may be asking: How can this late-arriving bill (introduced March 17) even be considered on the 91^st day of a 100-day session? Well, I suppose any bill that restricts the power of the next governor and the executive branch is now in order with Republicans afraid of losing Terrace Hill in the next election. But I digress.

In my opinion, the bill can only be considered by breaking the rules. Policy bills not passed by one chamber and a committee of the other chamber were supposedly “dead” as of the second “funnel date” – March 20.

This bill should have been referred to the State Government Committee because it involves the policies and procedures of state agencies. There, it would have been automatically ineligible for debate. Instead, the bill was introduced in the Appropriations Committee. Why? Because appropriations bills are exempt from the funnel deadlines. But, wait a minute, this bill does not include an appropriation!

The bill has been referred to the Federal and Other Funds Appropriations Subcommittee because it has the word “federal” in it. This subcommittee was created in the House (not the Senate) after the Covid pandemic, when states were flooded with federal recovery funds. The committee considers the use of monies from sources other than the state general fund, road use tax fund and infrastructure fund (gambling taxes).

The best description for House Study Bill 754: Putting a straitjacket on future Democratic governor Rob Sand?

Typically, every two years the Legislature passes a boilerplate “federal funds” bill simply directing that federal money be spent on the “purposes set forth” by the federal government. If the Legislature wants to reject or dictate how federal funds can be used, such provisions can be included in this bill, which would then be subject to line item veto by the governor.

Lesson to be learned: If any issue can be kept alive by referring it to the Appropriations Committee (or Ways and Means as a “tax” bill), then there is no such thing as a “dead” bill in the Iowa Legislature.

As chair of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bobby Kaufmann (now House Majority Leader) would get around the rules by introducing bills that had a minor feature relating to taxes. Then he would strip out the tax provision in committee, sending the legislation to the House calendar for floor debate as a policy bill disguised as a “Ways and Means” tax bill.

We already know that there is no “dead” issue that can’t be piggy-backed onto a live bill, which Republicans suspend the rules to do, regardless of the content of the main bill, even as they declare amendments by Democrats “out-of-order.” For example, the floor manager of legislation attacking public health has filed an amendment to put onerous regulations on public libraries into the bill.

After meeting to adopt “rules” at the beginning of a session, the Administration and Rules Committees never meet again to discuss whether the rules are being fairly applied. In effect, there are no rules preventing Iowa’s Republican majority from getting their way as general managers of the universe.

That is how kings operate.