April 3, 2014 This week the emphasis has been on the budget with a little political sideshow thrown in to keep things interesting. The budget bills are always the last items on to be considered on the path to adjournment. They are the culmination of three months of work in committee, in the lobby and on the floor. The House and the Senate share responsibility for starting the individual budget bills on an alternating basis. Here in the House we have budget bills in various stages of completion ranging from just out of subcommittee to on the Governor’s desk ready for his signature. Currently the Senate is lagging behind the House in advancing the bills that they are to initiate. The Justice Systems budget committee, which I chair, is unique in that we are responsible for two budget bills. We moved the judicial budget on the floor last week and sent it over to the Senate. This bill finances our court systems from the clerks of court and magistrates on the county level up through district court to the Supreme Court here in Des Moines. This was a $174 million budget that will allow the court to maintain and improve services and also innovate in areas like business courts, family courts and drug courts. This week the Senate took action on the bill, passing it without amendments, and it is currently on the Governor’s desk awaiting his signature. The other half of our responsibility, the justice systems budget, will be more contentious. We passed the bill on the floor of the House this week and sent it over to the Senate. The primary point of contention with the Senate lies with the budget for the Department of Public Safety. Since the budget meltdown in 2009 we have watched the strength of the Highway Patrol and the Division of Criminal Investigation dwindle to a level that we haven’t seen since the 1980’s. Since 2011 when we took the majority in the House, it has been our priority to begin to rebuild the DPS; this is the first time since then that the budget has allowed us to begin that process. The budget that we sent to the Senate provides for the addition of 33 highway patrolmen to the force. While the Senate may not disagree with the increases in DPS, their priority is to hire more prison guards before we add patrolmen. I am sure our bill will be amended in the Senate and sent back here with more prison guards and less patrolmen. The political sideshow continues in the Joint Oversight Committee. A couple of weeks ago it was revealed that there have been confidential termination settlements with state employees. The sideshow began when accusations were made that these agreements came about because the firings were for political reasons and were exclusive to the Branstad administration. Senate Democrats alleged that employees were terminated because they were affiliated with the Democratic Party. Of the cases that were presented, it turns out that only one was active in the party and most of the confidential agreements came about at the request of the terminated employee and not the request of the state. Another major hole was blown in their argument when a local Des Moines TV station discovered that confidential monetary settlements to terminated employees also occurred during the Culver administration, much to the chagrin of the former lieutenant governor. Patty Judge, as recently as last weekend on a Des Moines TV program, declared unequivocally that these kinds of settlements had not
occurred on her watch and if they had she would have known. This is the kind of nonsense that occurs when a candidate attempts to use the Legislature as an implement in his campaign for Governor.
