Iowa Speaker of the House

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The final gavel dropped on the 2025 Iowa legislative session Thursday. We'll discuss what lawmakers did and didn't do with House Speaker Pat Grassley on this edition of Iowa Press.

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, May 16th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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[Henderson] Our guest on this edition of Iowa Press was first elected to the Iowa House in 2006. He became House Speaker in October of 2019 I believe it was. Welcome back to Iowa Press, House Speaker Pat Grassley, a republican from New Hartford.

[Grassley] Glad to be back.

[Henderson] Joining the conversation, Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Des Moines Register and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

[Murphy] So, Speaker Grassley, obviously a lot of legislative stuff we want to get to with the session having just ended. But before we do that let's get to this first. Recently you said you are exploring, considering a run for Governor with Governor Reynolds' announcement that she's not seeking re-election. Is that exploration complete yet? Have you reached a decision?

[Grassley] I thought that would be the last question I'd get. So, you're going to throw me off right out of the gate here. But, as I told you guys before, the race I'm focused on is my daughter's 4x8 team next week at State. But I'm just going to take some time now that session has wrapped up. As I've been saying, wanted to get through session and then take the next couple of weeks to kind of make a decision on what that would be. But obviously, being consistent with what I said earlier, considering that, yeah.

[Gruber-Miller] So, what are the pros and cons that you're kind of weighing as you look at this? And what's your timeline?

[Grassley] I think not necessarily having a specific timeline, I think that you have to make sure that's something that you're ready to do, not only ready but do I think that, I think that I would have the ability to do it, I think I would have the ability to raise money. I've had a lot of people reaching out for support. For me personally, obviously I'm more of a unique circumstance than others. I've lived in a family where you've had that major commitment for someone to do some of these higher offices like my grandfather has. So, I would say for me that is probably the number one driving factor is the impact that it may have on my kid, my personal life when it comes to the farm and other things. So, that's one of the biggest factors that I have that I'm trying to weigh right now.

[Henderson] And just for the benefit of viewers who may not know, your grandfather is U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley.

[Grassley] Yeah, I forget that sometimes.

[Henderson] Some people may not realize it.

[Grassley] Yes.

[Henderson] Let's move onto what happened and didn't happen during the 2025 legislative session, which ended at 6:31 on Thursday.

[Murphy] 6:31 a.m., by the way.

[Henderson] Correct. The pipeline bill passed the Senate in the last week. Are you advising Governor Reynolds to sign that?

[Grassley] Well, I would say to Erin's point, for farmers like Kay and us, 6:31 the day is getting started. So, it was right on time. But what I will tell you is I have not had an opportunity to have a conversation with the Governor at this point in time. I think the feedback that I have had from my caucus has been on the pipeline issue. We've passed bills for multiple years. We're extremely happy to see something already work its way finally through the Senate. And I've already signed it, sent it over to the Senate and I would be hopeful and my expectation would be that the Governor would sign that piece of policy that does finally give some certainty to landowners.

[Henderson] So, as you mentioned, the past few years House republicans have been passing bills that would add restrictions or new rules for the operation of carbon capture pipelines. This bill did not go as far as the bill in South Dakota that that state's governor signed, which would just prohibit the use of eminent domain authority for pipeline companies to seize private property along the pipeline route. Would you have preferred to do that as opposed to what passed the Senate?

[Grassley] Well, I think that there's two questions there within that, Kay, that I would say is we did pass a bill again this session obviously that would be much more of a broad or similar to what South Dakota did. And obviously that was our probably number one priority, but we realized working with the Senate and the Senators had their own issues to deal with trying to get a bill through. Within this bill though it does have some language in it that makes sure that final piece of the condemnation, the takings piece of the land is prohibited within the bill as well as many other pieces that provide land restoration and other things. So, it was a broader package than I would say what that would be. And talking with the members of the caucus, talking with landowners, we feel where we were today this provides the protections that we need. While we would have maybe wanted to go further and more explicitly like that other bill did, we think it achieves the mission that we've been on for several years now.

[Murphy] And I just wanted to have you repeat if you don't mind before we move on, you expect Governor Reynolds to sign that bill?

[Grassley] My expectation as Speaker of the Iowa House, I would be hopeful that she would sign that. Again, I have not had an opportunity to talk to her, but based on the feedback I've had from landowners, I know multiple members of our caucus have been trying to communicate as well that they would love to see that bill passed and I want to make sure that we have went through all of this to get to the point where we are today. I think it's something that we would really have a high expectation of the Governor to sign as a House caucus.

[Murphy] One bill that she's not going to be able to sign because it didn't make it to her desk is legislation on property taxes. Despite that being one of if not the priority of many legislators coming into this session, that bill did not get done this session. Why not?

[Grassley] I think it lays itself out as this. We're still in this position and we could probably spend two episodes just discussing property taxes, but we are in this position over years and years of the legislature putting a Band-aid on. And the first thing that I need to lead off because I don't want to forget to say this to all Iowans that may be listening, a lot of this is on the local governments who collect the property tax. I think sometimes there is a misconception on who collects your property taxes and what it's used for. These are local issues that I would actually say Iowans, we need to be engaged even more so. With the frustrations I'm hearing, hopefully those are being expressed at the local level. This is, a lot of it is about local taxation, local spending. That being said, I think it has risen to the level where the legislature cannot just sit here and not try to do something to make the system better. I think we ultimately ended up in a position, Representative Kaufmann working with Senator Dawson, put in significant work, really got to a position where they had been taking input on everything and I'm appreciative of all of the work that they've put into it. At the end of the day, every time you would try to fix one problem, three or four more are created. And that's why I think the legislature has always just put minor Band-aids on year after year after year. We've tried to set out to do something that is more comprehensive. As I said before session, I think the focus has to be on the property taxpayer. There's two choices that you can make here. It's the property taxpayer themselves and that may frustrate local governments, it may be a conversation around services. But, based on the feedback I've had from Iowans, there is an expectation on the legislature and our caucus kind of reached the conclusion if we don't know what a massive overhaul would actually impact our constituents, we shouldn't just rush something through so Pat Grassley, the Speaker of the House can come on here and say, well we did something. And then when you say, well what does it do for sure? Well, we think it's going to help, but we're not a hundred percent sure. So, to do this right, if we have to take a little bit more time, I'm as frustrated as anyone is that we can't find a solution and we have to continue down that path. But at the same time, I do not want Iowans to forget that local governments have to be a part of this conversation when they're contacting their elected officials.

[Murphy] Well, and to that, they were some of the folks who had concerns about the bills that were put forward. When you come back, and I assume inevitably this discussion continues next January, through the interim but when you'll meet next January, is there a resolution at the end of this tunnel or is it to your point, just too complex a situation to get something that a majority of the two chambers can agree on and get to the Governor?

[Grassley] I think that's why it's so, I think that is why it has taken a lot more time. And I will even admit after my 19th legislative session I thought we would be able to move faster than maybe we've been able to. So, maybe I should have seen that coming knowing that this problem exists for a reason, because it's hard to solve. I think at the end of the day we're going to continue to try to work towards that. I think whatever we do we probably will get pushback from the local governments. But what I would say to Iowans is we have to really analyze what do you expect for services versus how many dollars do you want to have the local government take through your property taxes? And that is really the ultimate conversation. I've told the caucus, you're going to really have to pick a team potentially here. Is it purely on team taxpayer? Or is it on team local government? And I know that's a difficult decision to make. Some people don't even like when I say that because it is not a comfortable one. I happen to land in the position that we have to be on the side of the taxpayer, not to say that this thing is going to be easy to fix, but we have to have more certainty in the system. I had emails from Iowans all over the state, organically, not through chain emails, saying we have to have some level of relief. And that's why I think the state is involved when really, it's a local issue, but here's where we sit.

[Gruber-Miller] So, you're describing property taxes as a local issue. I want to talk to you about the state budget. The budget you just passed spends about $900 million out of the state's budget surplus and the Taxpayer Relief Fund. The Governor's budget projections anticipate using money from these funds for the next five years or so. How, especially with uncertainty kind of in the economy and at the federal level, how can you be sure that that's a sustainable approach to the state budget?

[Grassley] And I think a lot of that conversation stems around the fact that we went to a 3.8% flat income tax rate and I think it's always, when you say this people they think we're just pivoting but we said this even before we passed that tax cut, there is a reason why we felt we were in a position to lower Iowa's income tax to make us one of the most competitive in the entire country from where we started. We made significant changes. We were able to do that because Iowans had overpaid. We have roughly $4 billion of overpayment, in my opinion, of taxpayers' money that has come into the state of Iowa in the Taxpayer Relief Fund that you trust on, or that you touched on. So, we have that $4 billion. We also have a $2 billion surplus and we also have a billion dollar in our ending balance Rainy Day Fund. And so, the reason we felt confident in being able to do that is we felt we had an overcollection from Iowans, we needed to get that back into their pockets. I think what we've done as we approached this, we expected that there may be less revenue coming in, but typically when you cut taxes that is what comes with it. Thankfully we have those backstops there that were in place for that reason. And, like I said, in a $9.4 billion budget, the state of Iowa is sitting on roughly $7 billion between those accounts that I just touched on. I think that puts us in a very strong position and why we felt confident and still feel confident moving forward.

[Gruber-Miller] It's clear already that democrats plan to hit republicans about this issue on the campaign trail next year and partly because it's a reversal of the position you've held that you should not use one-time money to pay for ongoing expenses. So, how do you plan to respond to those?

[Grassley] I think that there's multiple ways to look at that. I know for a fact the last group of people I'm going to take budget advice is going to be the democrats that left us with a billion dollars in debt when we took the majority back in 2010. So, from that standpoint I'm not concerned about those accusations. What I think we feel strongly about and where we think we have a very strong case to make to Iowans is in a $9.4 billion budget, when you have $7 billion, I don't look at that as just a one-time money that we're taking $200 million of a $300 million ending balance to fix any sort of shortfalls. We're in a position where we can take money out of the Taxpayer Relief Fund to offset any of those bumps in the road, unforeseen things that have been touched on or the impacts of those tax reductions. Our goal would be obviously putting that money back in the hands of Iowans. That is going to stimulate the economy so we have an ability to work through whatever we have right now in the immediate term and use those funds to make sure that we don't see any sort of something unforeseen when it comes to the budget. At the same time, we're spending more money on education than we ever have. We're spending as much if not more on Medicaid. We're still fulfilling the requirements and expectations of Iowans, at the same time trying to get money back in their pocket.

[Henderson] On the final marathon day of the legislative session, the House and Senate approved a tax break for businesses. You reduced the business tax rate that is paid into the state unemployment trust fund. This was a two-year project of Governor Reynolds. And the first year some business groups were very nervous about it. What happened? What changed?

[Grassley] Well, I think the Governor has spent a lot -- and I won't speak for the Governor, but from where I sit in the House and observing this play itself out over the last couple of years, I think she spent a lot of time engaging with employers across the state. I remind everyone that there's a lot of accusations flying around of what this bill really means. But right now, we have a $2 billion unemployment trust fund. If you look at states like Illinois with much more population, they have a smaller trust fund balance than what we even have. So, we feel confident for having the 9th highest balance, the 32nd in population, that we do need to find a way to provide relief because I would look at that just like taxes, an overcollection from employers in the state of Iowa. Within that bill and with what we currently have in state law, we have a trigger mechanism that will be in place that if we get below that, I think it's around $950 billion mark, that those taxes then would trigger and go back up again. So, we built this in a way to not put it on autopilot. We want to make sure that there is sustainability in the unemployment trust fund and if we can hover around that billion dollars, we still would be significantly higher than all of our surrounding states. At the same time, if something unforeseen happens that fund would begin to refill itself through those taxes.

[Murphy] So, speaking of the Governor, many of her legislative priorities passed the legislature this session whether it was on rural health care, phones in schools, phones in cars. A couple that did not I wanted to ask you about. She had a bill on energy policy that had a number of elements in it and also a bill that tried to address child care and preschool and that continuum care I think was the phrase that she used. What were the stumbling blocks to those two pieces?

[Grassley] Yeah, make sure I answer them both if I forget one. If I get going on too long or you can cut me off too, Erin. But from the standpoint of the childcare bill that we had before the House, this was I think the attempt from the Governor's standpoint, we have a significant amount of dollars that go into child care. This was an attempt to move those dollars in a way that we make sure we have more accountability where those dollars are going to make sure they're being accessed all across the state. At the same time, I think a lot of the feedback we got from locals was without a level of certainty on what the impact would have been at the local level for almost I would say even each individual provider. There was a lot of concern what will that impact be? We even worked with the Governor to try to maybe kick it out another year to make sure we could have more certainty within that system. I think at the time when we were getting towards the end of session, we had enough members of the caucus that didn't feel that we had addressed the concerns from their local governments, excuse me, from their local providers. When it comes to the energy policy that you had touched on, I think there was multiple factors into that. Going into the year we knew that that may be one of the more difficult challenges before the legislature. Obviously, the right of first refusal piece, but without going too far into the weeds, I look at that from the standpoint of making sure that Iowa companies who we have worked with in the state, who we know use good practices, they don't use eminent domain, they don't cut kitty corner across their field, they do land restoration, the Governor is pushing that policy to make sure that we can move these projects working with people that we know much quicker. There was a level of opposition in the legislature that want to just let the free market rule and whoever would be able to bid on that. I think in a highly regulated space like utilities the free market argument for me didn't necessarily have quite as much sway because it is such a highly regulated industry. At the end of the day, I would say that was probably the main sticking point in which the legislature just wouldn't be able to resolve. And just like every other piece of legislation, you take one thing out, maybe you lose some votes on one side of it because something's not in there, or if something's in there you can't get the votes together. And I think that was a product of that legislative process.

[Murphy] And before we move on, I did want to ask you quick, speaking of Governor's priorities broadly speaking, and she'll have one more session before the end of her term, does her announcement that she's not seeking re-election take any of the urgency out of -- I won't ask you individually, but you manage a caucus of 60 some legislators -- do you sense that takes some of the urgency out of the caucus when the Governor isn't running for re-election to pass her priorities?

[Grassley] I would say, I don't know if it necessarily takes the level of urgency out of it. I think that we have displayed regardless of who is up for re-election and when they are or who they are running, that the House, Senate and the Governor have been able to sit down, work together to move things forward. We know as a Republican Party if the Governor is successful whether she is running or not, it does have an impact on what we're able to do in the legislature whether it's achieving legislation, whether it's running in our campaigns. So, what I would say from that standpoint, we still want to collectively work as a team the way we have for the last several years under the Governor's leadership. We want to make sure that we can continue to do that to move Iowa forward because we know if all three of us are successful, that's what is not only best for us but it's best for Iowa.

[Gruber-Miller] At the beginning of the year you created a new committee in the legislature, a higher education committee, that had some success passing bills to create a School of Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa, getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the public universities and community colleges. You weren't able to get changes passed on private colleges related to DEI. But do you consider that committee's work finished? Do you plan to have them come back next year and look at other things?

[Grassley] I think one of the biggest things that I even talked about in the beginning of session that I think did play itself out when it came to the creation of that committee, I think that, and as observers hopefully you guys noticed, there was more talk this year about higher education instead of kind of a number two, three, four issue. It was one of the frontline issues that we were discussing. So, that was part of the creation of the committee. I think the committee showed the ability to get things done whether it was legislatively, some of the things that you touched on, Stephen, but also it put us in a position where I think we had a better level of cooperation and communication with the Board of Regents, with the three Regents institutions themselves to be able to if we couldn't get bills passed through the legislature, to work with them to develop some policies that they can internally do. Not everything that comes from a committee or that is successful is necessarily a policy. They were able to work with the Regents institutions to look at things like tuition, look at things like you're providing more security to individuals that are entering Regents institutions. They're doing some of those things on their own, I think not only at the request but at the work that that committee has put in. So, I think whether it's legislatively or more cooperation with the Regents, I think it has been successful.

[Gruber-Miller] Tell us what you have accomplished on tuition, for example.

[Grassley] So, my expectation, these are conversations that I know Representative Collins has had with the Regents institutions, we have asked them to review -- we had some bills that whether they would have capped tuition, froze tuition, we've tried to push them in a way to try to do some of that more internally. We're hopeful that that's what they can work towards, making sure that when you enter into one of the universities you know what school is going to cost you as you move forward, making sure that they're setting their tuition earlier so that way students and families have the ability to make some of those decisions. A lot of that came through good conversations between that committee, through bills that we had worked on that maybe we thought that they could try to do themselves. Now, I will say fully, if they are not able to achieve some of that I think you ought to have expectation of the committee to be willing to pass legislation. But I think we need to have a level of cooperation. So, if they give us, if we put faith in them to do that, we're hopeful that they'll follow through with that. But I think the committee stands ready, if not to pass further legislation.

[Henderson] There was a bill about tax credits that cleared the legislature in its final hours and there are some elements of that that continue a discussion that House republicans started about John Deere and whether it should qualify for the state's research development tax credits and it also includes language, the final version of that discussion includes language about shipping jobs overseas or employing people who are not legally in the U.S. as residents. Why have that discussion about one of the major employers in Iowa, John Deere?

[Grassley] Well, I don't think that it, I think that it has been perceived to be specifically because of that. But I think anyone that is paying attention to the national conversation that is going on, I would say that probably has influenced some of the decisions that we've made as much as anything else, that national conversation that has been going on about making sure we're investing not only in the United States but here in Iowa. So, kind of the way it has worked its way through the process, there was obviously frustrations that we do have a significant amount of tax credits that go to companies all across the state. We just want to make sure that those are being used to benefit Iowa, not only our employers but Iowans in general to make sure that those investments are happening here. We worked with IEDA significantly, Director Durham, I had multiple meetings on this not only myself but the Ways and Means members to make sure that we could come up with a solution that was workable, but at the same time maybe not be overly heavy handed. So, we feel that is where we landed ultimately with that conversation. But again, I think as you see this national conversation going on right now that is going to continue to be a part of that as we move forward when it comes to state incentives.

[Murphy] One of the other bills that got done in that long last day of the session was the legislature after three years of trying finally came up with a plan for spending the state's share of national opioid settlement funds, again $56 million I think has been sitting there and needed a state law to describe how it could be spent and there's millions more coming. As I understand this, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I know that Senator Kraayenbrink and Representative Moore worked on that very hard throughout the session. There still was not an agreement up until that last day. As I understand it, ultimately that came down to you and Senator Whitver and the Governor coming up with a plan. If that is what it took, should you guys have just done that three years ago so those weren't sitting here for these years when they could have been out there helping folks?

[Grassley] I, again, this is similar to kind of the property tax conversation. I think we need to do things right, make sure that they're right and that they're sustainable and not just do it just to do it. So, should we have done it earlier? Yeah, we should have done it earlier. But I think it reached to the point this session and I was fairly early on in session that my expectation was that we would be able to find an agreement. The reason it took time in doing that is we wanted to make sure -- and I'll just speak from the House's perspective, so I don't want to say we as in the agreement -- but what I felt that the House was bringing to the table is we didn't want to be in a position as a legislature that the next 14 years that these funds will be expended that we're going to sit down as a legislature, earmark every single project within our district whether it's a good one or not. And so that was one thing that we wanted to see as part of the final product. We feel we achieved that with an agreement working with the Senate and the Governor, also making sure that these funds as they come into the state that they're used for one-time use. I don't want to see us put us in a situation with these opioid funds that when they are gone, or if someone receives the project, they are immediately back at the legislature. We already have significant pressures through Medicaid and other things in the HHS budget. Those were two of the driving factors that we had all along. I think we were able to reach a good place in which this immediate outpouring of money that we're going to see during this current fiscal year may go across the state and has more earmarks tied to it, but the long-term system moves forward to find an agreement is going to be more of that broad approach with the breakdown between the Department of Human Services and the Attorney General.

[Gruber-Miller] So, talking about some things that took a few years to get done, a couple of things that couldn't get done. You are coming off of your first session with a republican super majority in the House. Maybe Iowans look at the legislature and say, the republicans have control, why can't they get things done? What are those dynamics like as you work with that many members in your caucus?

[Grassley] Yeah, I think that it actually, I would hope that Iowans would see that from the standpoint, especially in the House but in general in the Republican Party, is that not everything is going to be heavy handed and dictated down from leadership. I use our caucus, for example, with myself and 66 other members and you guys know this sitting around the Capitol, we spend a lot of time in that caucus room having a lot of negotiations, or not negotiations but discussion with each other to make sure that we're doing things in the right way. I think managing that, obviously there's more people in the building, there's more people on committees, there's more voices to be heard, but I think we've done a really good job in the House to make sure that we listen to our entire caucus. And the thing that I'm most proud of is when we do reach resolution, the caucus we go with that together. But it's never a Speaker of the House or the Majority Leader of the House walk into the caucus and say, this is what we will be doing. We develop those policies through working with all of our members coming from all 99 counties, I had to get it in Kay, working with members representing all 99 counties to bring that feedback and develop policies and work it through the caucus process versus a top-down system.

[Henderson] Top-down decision here, I have to end the conversation.

[Grassley] Okay, I suppose you can cut me off.

[Henderson] Thank you for joining us again at Iowa Press.

[Grassley] Yep, thank you guys.

[Henderson] For everyone here at Iowa Press, thanks for watching today. You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org.

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Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

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The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

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Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at iowabankers.com.