Speaker of the Iowa House

Henderson:

 

The governor's private school scholarship bill stalled in the House this year. And just a few days remain in dozens of primary legislative races. We'll talk about it all with Speaker of the Iowa House Pat Grassley on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

Voiceover:

 

Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation. The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure. Fuel Iowa's a voice and a resource for Iowa's fuel industry. Our members offer a diverse range of products, including fuel, grocery, and convenience items. They help keep Iowans on the move in rural and urban communities. Together, we fuel Iowa. Small businesses are the backbone of Iowa's communities, and they are backed by Iowa banks. With advice, loans and financial services, banks across Iowa are committed to showing small businesses the way to a stronger tomorrow. Learn more at iowabankers.com. For decades. Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and news makers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, June 3rd edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

Henderson:

 

Last week, on Wednesday morning at 12:16, the Iowa House of Representatives adjourned for the year. The session lasted 136 days. Our guest for this edition of Iowa Press was sitting in the chair in the Iowa House ruling over debate. Our guest is House Speaker Pat Grassley, a Republican from New Hartford. Welcome back to the program.

 

Grassley:

 

Glad to be here. Thanks. Kay.

 

Henderson:

 

We are taping this program on Thursday to accommodate Iowa PBS production schedule. So thanks for accommodating that.

 

Grassley:

 

I'm glad to be here.

 

Henderson:

 

Joining in the discussion are Katarina Sostaric of Iowa Public Radio and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

 

Murphy:

 

So Speaker Grassley, in a couple of days, on Tuesday the 7th, Iowans will be casting ballots in our primary elections here. Members of your House Republican caucus are involved. You have some competitive Republican primaries. Governor Reynolds has gotten involved in some of those races by endorsing some of those candidates and including challengers to some of the incumbent members. How involved have you been in those, or as Speaker, do you pull back from those competitive primaries?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, and thanks for...glad to be here with you guys. But from the standpoint of those primaries, and I always tell everybody, you know, keep in mind, it's a redistricting year. So the likelihood of having primaries is much higher during this situation we find ourselves in, especially as late as we were putting the maps out. And so I've gotten involved in some of our races with our incumbents that have been members. Typically the House leadership, and this has kind of just been the rule, doesn't really weigh in on races that are open seats. That's typically not what we have done. But in the instances of where we have a member in a lot of those races where they're not running against one another there is opportunities for leadership to get involved.

 

Murphy:

 

So are there races where you have supported a candidate and the governor has endorsed the other one?

 

Grassley:

 

At this point in time, I would have to say, I don't think that there are any, from the standpoint of you know, some of the ones that the governor's got involved with, maybe if it's amongst members, like I said, as Speaker, whoever the leader of the caucus is gonna be typically would not be getting involved in that. But I have gotten involved in a few of our other with some members that have been good members of the caucus.

 

Murphy:

 

And how about looking ahead to next year? So again, you have the governor endorsing some candidates in some of those primaries. And if one of those, well, either way, but especially if one of those people who she did not endorse wins and as a member of your caucus next year, as you're working on legislation, working with the governor's office again, does that have any danger of threatening that process? Like do hard feelings carry over from a campaign?

 

Grassley:

 

So what I would say at this point, I mean, I've heard from some members that have some frustrations about their being affected. Obviously it's the governor's prerogative to get involved in those races. But some members have expressed some frustrations. And I I understand where they're coming from. And, and so I'm hopeful, you know, as Speaker, my goal obviously is get through next week and then make sure that the party is united up and down the ticket for us to be successful at Republicans. 'Cause At the end of the day, I think we have the state on the right track. So that's really what I think the focus has to be. We have to come... Every primary season there's regardless of who gets involved in what races, there can be a little bit of hard feelings, whoever the individuals are that are involved. But moving forward, we have to quickly rebound from that and make sure we're all on the same team moving forward into the fall.

 

Sostaric:

 

The reason the governor has gotten involved in some of these primaries is because the House didn't pass her proposal for state funded scholarships for private schools, and she wants to get people in there who will support that plan. If that plan had come up for a vote in the House this year, would you have voted for it?

 

Grassley:

 

I've been very clear that I would... So I have been working with members of the caucus. I have been clear that I would support something that the caucus had worked on. You know, the governor had made proposals we were working with. I mean, that's clearly why it took so long to get to the point in which when we made the decision not to do something. I was working with members of the caucus to try to find a path forward, to try to address some of the concerns. So I would've personally supported something that the members were able to come up with. But obviously we were unable to do that at this point in time. But I think what you're gonna see moving forward is going to be a, a very broad conversation about education reform. And I don't want to, maybe I'll be asked about this and maybe I won't, but you know, we passed a bill on transparency, for example out of the House. And we felt very strongly about that being part of the conversation. So I think what you're going to see is a much broader conversation when it comes to education, things like transparency and other pieces being part of it between now and moving forward in the next session.

 

Sostaric:

 

Still during the session, the governor said that she was open to scaling back her plan for state funded scholarships for private schools. She had a more narrow plan the year before that would've applied to a smaller number of schools. Why didn't you just pass that plan?

 

Grassley:

 

So we had had conversations about it. What we were trying to work through in the House was using the governor's original proposal in which she proposed, which was the 10,000 students, 5,000 based on income levels and based on IEPs. So we were trying to work from that framework. We really didn't feel with that being the original proposal, we felt we should work from that versus bringing a complete new, not new concept, but new concept to this session to the table.

 

Murphy:

 

And I think we will get to transparency. But first we wanted to ask you about a bill that did pass late in the session on open enrollment. Eliminated the deadline for when school students and, and their families have to apply for that. There was already in place mechanisms for exceptions to that deadline, where if there were special need that that arose a student could still apply after that deadline. Why was getting rid of that deadline altogether needed when that mechanism was already there?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, I think the first thing that I would say is ultimately the goal of what that was, and I think that's a very important piece of the legislature. In fact, I'm I appreciate you asking about it because I would've to try to find a way to work it in at some point during this. But I think it's very important that we send a clear message that ultimately that decision we feel should be left up to the parent and the student to make that decision and not have to try to meet some sort of a, what I would call, you know, an arbitrary deadline, whether certain would the school sign off, would they not? We feel that decision should ultimately be made by the parents. And that's what we tried to display in the House. That while we may not have been able to work through and get to a position where we could pass the ESA proposal that the governor had, even though we, we were working on other versions of that. We wanna make sure that we were clear that we do believe though that the parents should be in the driver's seat in their student or their children or their in their education as they move forward. So that's why we felt that that was extremely important to put the control in their hands.

 

Murphy:

 

And to the, I know this concern has been raised you to the point that districts have raised about that deadline was in place so we can be able to plan for how many students we're gonna have next year. What is your...

 

Grassley:

 

Well, I would say ultimately I don't, I mean, I don't, if there was, you know, the argument being, you know, there's these other deadlines people move. I don't think this is gonna be a situation where there's just mass exodus from certain school districts. That being said, I think that it does make sure that there's accountability from the administrations and the school boards that they're, you know, listening at the school board meetings. They're following through with the policies that they ran on when they were elected to the school boards. I think it gives that accountability and makes sure that it's a much more open and transparent conversation and a two-way street versus a get by a certain deadline, and then what really is the consequence if you decide to do something in which it seems to be against the wishes of the members of the community.

 

Sostaric:

 

Republican lawmakers spent a good deal at the beginning of the session talking about wanting more transparency in education. There are some concerns from some parents about certain library books in schools being inappropriate for students. But in the end, you didn't pass anything related to that. Why not?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, I would say... So again, the House did pass something that we felt was a very responsible bill that wouldn't have been overly burdensome, but also would've put the parents in the driver's seat when it came to making sure that they had access to the same information that the students in the school district would have access to. I think what ultimately happened is gets back to what I said earlier. I think this is ultimately a global conversation that has to happen on education. You know, board of educational examiners the transparency pieces, further options for school choice. I think ultimately what you're gonna see is that's gonna have to be part of that conversation to find the support.

 

Sostaric:

 

Since you mentioned the board of educational examiners, the House had passed a bill that was aiming to sort of crack down on keeping people accountable when there were teachers who abused students or did inappropriate things. Why didn't that end up getting passed by the Senate in the end?

 

Grassley:

 

I think again, I think that was part of the overall conversation. And that's why I'm being very clear after session, that those are priorities of the House, the way that some other pieces in the education policy debate are priorities of others. And that's why I plan on being very clear that I think that they should it should be a global conversation amongst all of it because the House does have some pieces that we feel are important as part of it.

 

Murphy:

 

Why is that? Why couldn't you have said, okay, let's table the private school tuition piece and, and address these. 'Cause This was a, a big issue coming into the session. You heard a lot of Republican legislators in both chambers talking about the need for more transparency. Why couldn't you have done those elements and just left the rest for next year?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, ultimately we did in the House. We did those pieces. And so it takes, you know, obviously to get something to the governor's desk, we have to have agreement between all parties or both chambers, and then try to get something to the governor's desk. And we were just unable to achieve it at this point.

 

Henderson:

 

There was agreement at the conclusion of the legislative session that there would be a new policy regarding deer hunting. A new season established in January with the goal of reducing the deer population in cer certain areas and the ability of hunters to use AR-15s. Is this a good time to do that?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, obviously, you know, we can't predict what's gonna happen at the national or, you know, across the country with any sort of gun violence that you may see happening. But what I would say is ultimately here in Iowa, I mean, I hear, I will tell you that every day when we go to anywhere back home, you hear a story of somebody hitting a deer being in some sort of an accident. And I think that's, that's a situation that we had to try to address. Now what's going on nationally, you know, we obviously didn't time anything or didn't have that expectation to happen. But at the end of the day our priority was make sure that we can maintain and control the deer population. It's not like we, we didn't do something that was completely out of the realm of what other states have done when it came to certain ammos and other things.

 

Henderson:

 

Do you sense that there's a change in opinion among House Republicans about AR-15s?

 

Grassley:

 

At this point I don't, I don't see there being a lot of change when it comes to specific gun policy. I think everything that we've passed has been very responsible and reasonable legislation over the last several years in the majority. I think the conversation really has to, and you're hearing this a lot, I think not just from House Republicans, but I think everywhere. It's much bigger than that. I mean, it's, it's about, you know, looking at mental health, we passed several bills this year, whether it was in the budget or whether it was in other pieces to make sure that we were expanding access to mental health services in the school districts across rural Iowa, adding residency programs. You know, last year, making sure that kids were in school. I think that's a huge driver of making sure that you have structure in kids' life. So I think the conversation has to continue to be very broad based and I think we've actually taken some good steps this session. We know there's more that needs to be done when it comes to things like the mental health front. We know that's one of the places that Iowa needs to be a leader on.

 

Murphy:

 

We asked Senator Whitver this same kind of, sort of follow up in this conversation last week. Why is it that a, that our country still struggles with this kind of gun violence when other countries also have mental health problems? Other countries also had schools closed during the pandemic. All these other issues, but this, these mass shootings, especially at schools, seems to be a uniquely American problem. Why is that?

 

Grassley:

 

To be honest with you, Erin, I haven't really taken, I haven't really seen any, what the statistics would look like between our country and in other countries, I can tell you that in Iowa, you know, like I said, we're gonna focus on some of the things that we feel are really the drivers of what could happen. You know, for example, you have some school districts removing resource officers from school districts. I'm not sure that's really the path that we want to be promoting if we wanna make sure that you have safe schools. I know at our school, we have one entrance in which you can go in and out. And we, the schools have spent a lot of money to make sure that they can accommodate one entrance to go in one entrance to go out. The legislature's taken action in the past to pass policy that would allow school districts to continue to use our infrastructure money in ways to further make sure schools are continuing to be safe. So the legislature has taken action to address some of those. And like I said, we feel that we've identified what we need to continue to support and have passed bills. Not all of 'em got to the governor's desk, but several of those pieces we've gotten down that track on.

 

Murphy:

 

Governor Reynolds this week talked about some of those same things that you just mentioned about schools safety and having plans in place. And maybe reviewing those sorts of things. But we're learning from the recent incident in Texas that they had a similar plan as well. And it, it, it still didn't prevent that. So I guess a kind of a two part question here is one, how can you be confident that schools are implementing and, and prepared as, as prepared as they can be for those situations? And two, are they enough? Can those plans genuinely stop a shooter who wants to do harm?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, what I would say is the, so to that, I'll try to answer that question together. That's gonna have to be a conversation. You know, as a legislator just to sit here and say, yes, this will work. Yes, this won't work. Or for us to say, what is each individual school doing that others may or may not be doing? Obviously those are conversations that the legislature needs to be having with our community schools across the state and find out what schools are doing. Like I said, I know what our school does, but I don't know what every other school across the state does for some of those plans that they may have. And so that's probably something that we need to engage with those school districts. Find out what they are doing, what we feel is working. Like I said, we've passed legislation in the past. You know, with the infrastructure funds that the state gets that spreading out the state by penny, for example, those kinds of things have been used to make upgrades at school districts with the goal of part of it being security in mind. So just keep, you know, that's a conversation I think's gonna be ongoing with the legislature and our school districts.

 

Sostaric:

 

In the next few weeks, we could see two major court rulings related to abortion rights. If abortion rights protections are struck down at both the state and federal level, do you want to have a special session to further restrict abortion immediately?

 

Grassley:

 

I think at this point for me to speculate on, you know, there's been a lot of speculation, especially at the federal level for the last several weeks, probably months now going on with certain information, getting out from the court. What I would say at this point, let's see how these processes play out. We don't know what the specific timeline may be. At this point, I think it's best for us just to wait and see what comes from that, and then obviously have those conversations with the governor and with Senator Whitver or the Senate and we make a decision. But at this point not knowing what that looks like, I don't see that being necessarily on the horizon.

 

Sostaric:

 

This has been a big goal for Republicans pushing to restrict or even end abortion altogether. Why do you not have a plan for what you wanna do?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, I think that because Iowa's in a somewhat unique case, having the, not only the federal court ruling, but also the state case as well. So it isn't like when just the federal, we also have to see what the state's gonna look like as well. So it isn't that I wouldn't say that having a plan, I mean, we've been very clear and very strong in protecting life. Not just during my time, but since we had the majority. And even when we're in the minority, we tried to pass a lot of bills that would've done that. But I think at this point we wanna wait and see how this plays itself out, see what the rulings are and then make decisions based on that what's best. You know, obviously there's gonna be an election coming up and then we'll make that decision before next session, if those decisions have been made in the courts.

 

Sostaric:

 

The Senate passed a bill that would fund crisis pregnancy centers - some call them that. They're anti-abortion pregnancy centers - and would also expand Medicaid health insurance coverage for women for up to a year after they give birth. The House ended up passing just the funding for the pregnancy centers. Why not give, if you want, if you want, you know, more people to go through with pregnancies, why not give people more healthcare support after they give birth?

 

Grassley:

 

Yeah. Oh, sorry for cutting you off, Katarina. I think that will be part of the conversation. We've already started having those conversations. Again, not knowing, somewhat being speculative here, not knowing what the rulings all will look like at the state or the federal level. But we've already had some of those conversations and hypotheticals. If things play out, what are some of those things that we need to be supportive? That's why we started down the path this year in anticipation, if they are to be struck down, that we've already started to lay that groundwork. That's why we passed part of what you're, what you referenced in that budget. But we know that that's going to have to be part of the discussion moving forward if the courts strike those down.

 

Henderson:

 

The Bottle Bill has been changed. The governor hasn't actually signed the bill yet. I guess you assume she will. How will you respond to Iowans who complain to you that they can't take their bottles and cans back to the grocery store?

 

Grassley:

 

So and this is I'm, I'm glad you asked me. I was, if I would've got outta here without a, a bottle bill question, I was gonna be very concerned. But so what I've kind of to, to as quickly as possible, we current, we have a law that's decades old that has really not been modernized. A lot of the retailers that were selling the products were not already following law and not taking them back. So what we tried to do in this is make sure that there's enforcement of what we have on the books. I think we would all say a lot of our gas stations and other places serving hot food that is changed in the decades from when this bill was created. I don't think we really want people dragging cans in right next to the hot case, right in front, where you're gonna get a slice of pizza. So we've tried to modernize the law that there will be access across the state to redemption. But it's just gonna be in a little bit different way than it historically has been. And part of it, what I remind everybody why we did this is to modernize the law, but also make sure that we can give it the best chance to succeed. 'Cause We recognize it's important to Iowans. And so not only are we having the retailers and the distributors put a little bit more skin in the game, the state is willing, has stepped up and has done that as well under the bill that we passed. And so I think as you see this, we've put it in the best position we could to make sure that it's successful to meet the goals of Iowans. But again, the current law wasn't being followed right now. And there was a lot of frustrations from people like, I, I buy this product here, I can't take it back. So certain things like that have been cleaned up with this bill.

 

Murphy:

 

Are you confident that it will accomplish those goals? Because it's sort of a leap of faith bill, right? Like we know that the grocery stores will stop taking them. We don't know whether more - you hope and you have incentivized more redemption centers to be created - but we don't know for sure.

 

Grassley:

 

Well, I think, well, what you're gonna see is you're going to see there's a lot of new technology. Like I said, this law was very outdated from the standpoint of not taking into account some of the new technologies. There's a lot of new technologies. A Lot of the the folks that I talked to back home in the redemption that run redemptions have said, you know, we, we want to be able to expand, but it's beginning to the point where it doesn't work. So I feel, you know, there's, I don't know about every single corner of the state. I mean, those legislators could answer that. But at least the folks kind of in Northeast Iowa that I've talked to are looking forward to the opportunity to be able to expand, partner with new technologies, partner with, you know. I think you're gonna see I don't want it to look like, you know, that every gas station and every grocery store is gonna work in bad faith and say, here, buy this product and you're on your own with it. I think they're gonna work with those redemption centers to make sure that there is access.

 

Murphy:

 

Another bill that the legislature passed that the governor is still determining whether to take action on, would put a two year moratorium on new casinos in Iowa. There's already in place a state board the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, that typically handles that kind of issue and decides whether to issue a new state license or not. Why did the legislature feel the need to act on this and not just let that board do its normal work.

 

Grassley:

 

Yeah. And so I answer this kind of with a smiley face. If you haven't turned the TV on lately and within two seconds, see some sort of an ad for any sort of gaming platform that exists or sports betting platform. I think as part of, you know, we're hearing a lot about kind of the, feel that across the state, there may be a saturation level of what's going on when it comes to gaming in the state. We have been very open to new you know, sports wagering. We've done some things when it came to tax policy to make sure that Iowa was competitive with our neighbors to the west adding gaming now. So we've done a lot in the last several years, and I think the legislature has just reached the point in which it was, let's just take a little time out. That's why it didn't go. There was actually members that wanted to go much longer than just the two years. And I think that this is more of a, let's take a deep breath. We know there's new technologies on the horizon that we may see coming to further expand gaming. So I think it's the legislature saying, let's just put a pause on this and let the, let everybody kind of regroup.

 

Sostaric:

 

The House voted earlier this year to put a temporary moratorium on eminent domain for the pipeline construction as there's these proposed carbon capture pipelines in Iowa. Why couldn't you get the Senate to support that?

 

Grassley:

 

Well, you'd have to ask the Senate that question specifically, but to that answer. But I like, but you did frame that in a way that I, I do understand that there is some frustration amongst our members that we were unable to get something done. That being said, I think that this conversation's going to continue. This isn't something that's just gonna go away. I mean, I think we would all at this table agree. It isn't something that just disappears. That being said. I think in our bill that we passed over to the Senate, which would've been a partial moratorium at least for about a year when we passed the bill. That actually in our conversations with some of the larger players in the field in the space have already made commitments and have already adjusted their filings to meet that expectation of the legislature. So I think it's really been productive for us to pass something and then put us in a position where now everyone at the table, landowners, legislators, the folks in the carbon pipeline space, understand what we're trying to work with here. That there's an expectation that land just doesn't get taken overnight. That it's gonna be, have to be a thing that the legislature's in session to have these conversations.

 

Henderson:

 

Last week your counterpart in the Senate, Republican leader Jack Whitver was on this program and said that the next project for Republicans would be cutting property taxes. Is that something about which you are starting to discuss?

 

Grassley:

 

I think that that is, that is a growing concern amongst Iowans that we hear wherever you are. Just the increased increased costs that everyone's seeing every time they go to pay their property tax. So I guess the way to answer your question is yes, I think that is what the tax conversation looks like next year. We've taken significant steps forward when it comes to the state's income tax and I think put ourselves in a very good position. That being said, as you move into property tax, that is a much more complicated proposition. You, you you're shaking your head cuz you know, that you've been around long enough to know whenever the legislature tries that that it's not nearly as easy as cutting the income tax. So I think really what ultimately should happen is, you know, I think that I can't believe that our local elected officials are not hearing the same concerns that we are. Hopefully we could get around a table and sit down and say, okay, where are some places in which we can try to address this? You know, we just did something with a mental health levy last session, trying to eliminate that. The problem is when it comes to property tax as an issue, it looks like to me, if you want to make it as easy as possible between the state and the locals, you have to just eliminate levies. Which isn't as easy. It's easier said than done. We were able to do it on mental health cause we felt it was that important. But in this instance, I think if we sit around the table, I don't think there's anything wrong with us sitting around and see if we can come up with a, a reasonable solution. But I think it's something that the legislature has to really look at.

 

Henderson:

 

Well, Mr. Speaker, our time sitting around this table has come to an end. Thank you for joining Iowa Press again.

 

Grassley:

 

Thank you, Kay.

 

Henderson:

 

You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at iowapbs.org, or you can watch at our regular broadcast times 7:30 on Friday nights and Sunday at noon. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching.

 

Voiceover:

 

Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation. The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure. Fuel Iowa is a voice and a resource for Iowa's fuel industry. Our members offer a diverse range of products, including fuel, grocery and convenience items. They help keep Iowans on the move in rural and urban communities. Together, we fuel Iowa. Small businesses are the backbone of Iowa's communities and they are backed by Iowa banks. With advice, loans and financial services, banks across Iowa are committed to showing small businesses the way to a stronger tomorrow. Learn more at iowabankers.com.