Reporters’ Roundtable

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The legislature passed a ban on handling cell phones while driving and continued work on other hot topics. Political reporters are here with an update on that and more 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, March 28th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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[Henderson] It's not an exaggeration to say that the Iowa House and Senate this past week debated dozens of bills. And there are dozens of bills awaiting legislator's action in the weeks ahead. The people who have gathered at this table today have written about many of those bills that were debated and we're going to set the stage for what is to come. But first, we want to focus on what happened this past week. Joining our conversation are Amanda Rooker, she is the Chief Political Reporter for KCCI-TV in Des Moines. Stephen Gruber-Miller is the Statehouse and Politics Reporter for the Des Moines Register. And Erin Murphy is the Bureau Chief for the Gazette in Cedar Rapids. Okay, big news, don't be doing this while you're driving, right Erin? Hello, Erin. We're going to start with --

[Murphy] I'm sorry, what?

[Henderson] -- a big deal. After more than a decade, the Iowa legislature has taken a vote on a very important piece of legislation.

[Murphy] I can do that at the Iowa Press table, but very soon I will not be able to do that while I am driving. The Iowa legislature, both chambers, have now passed a bill that will make it illegal for drivers to operate their phones with their hands while they're driving. You can still use them in hands free modes, hey Siri, or if you've got Carplay you can use them that way. But starting July, that will be illegal to use your phone with your hands while you're driving. As you noted, there has been an effort for many, many years to make that happen ever since the texting while driving law was passed in 2017. The House, sorry the Senate has always been willing, they have passed it a couple of times. This year, just this past week, the House also passed it. Governor Reynolds is clearly going to sign it. She talked about it in her Condition of the State Address.

[Henderson] Stephen, it was almost anti-climactic.

[Gruber-Miller] It was, the debate in the House lasted about two minutes. And they got up and they said thanks to everyone who has been working on this and let's pass it, which much more has happened behind the scenes. And one of the things that lawmakers did say is they credited advocates including family members who have lost loved ones to distracted driving who have been up regularly at the Capitol telling those stories to help lawmakers get it across the finish line.

[Murphy] And after being -- sorry, just real quick -- and after being told how close it was all these times, the vote was 84 to 11 if I remember right. It was a super wide margin.

[Rooker] Right. I was just going to say, I think one of the changes is you had a really different caucus in the House and the Senate with coming off the heels of the November election. You had wider majorities in the House and the Senate for republicans. And that is what one of the lawmakers told me is he felt like there were some new faces, new perspectives and also in prior years you have this bill kind of attached to traffic camera regulation. And with that reform being passed last year it kind of gave the green light a little bit for this legislation to get through.

[Gruber-Miller] Well, and I think the democrats have been willing to support this for a long time but they don't control the majority. The republicans wanted to be able to reach a majority with their membership before they would bring it up for a vote.

[Henderson] The old majority of the majority rule or we won't do the bill, right?

[Gruber-Miller] Yeah.

[Henderson] The other bill in regards to cell phone policy that cleared is dealing with schools. It only cleared -- it hasn't gone to the Governor yet, I'll just say, Amanda.

[Rooker] Right, but lawmakers are working on this and this is another one of the Governor's top priorities this session. She wants all school districts to have kind of a minimum cell phone policy that would say you can't have your cell phones during class time and it's kind of to nudge some school districts that haven't taken action on smartphones yet. The Iowa House passed this bill. The Iowa Senate has passed this bill but they added in a piece to it saying that the Iowa Department of Education has to create kind of a standard policy for schools to be able to look at a guideline, a model by May 1st. So, lawmakers are still kind of tinkering with it.

[Henderson] The other thing was when the Governor rolled out this policy she said, you know, we should teach those sixth, seventh and eighth graders about social media and that's not in the bill.

[Gruber-Miller] That's right. House lawmakers took that out. I think the Senate version took it out --

[Rooker] There's been so much -- but I thought so --

[Gruber-Miller] You've exposed that I wasn't totally caught up on where this was. But yeah, that is out of their -- perhaps they'll do that through a different means. But right now, it's just purely that standard that children in the classroom cannot have cell phones.

[Murphy] And it was pointed out, and to your point I'll confess to not have realizing this as closely as we've followed it throughout -- it was pointed out in the Senate debate that it's not an all-out ban, the word is restriction, it's not ban. So, you could technically develop a policy that says only for half the time you can't have your phone on you in the classroom. You just have to restrict it, you don't have to outright prohibit it.

[Henderson] And during debate in the House, Representative Jeff Shipley complimented two school districts, Ottumwa and the Des Moines Hoover High School, which have implemented a policy and seen really remarkable results. At the Hoover High, they've had a dramatic change in student behavior.

[Rooker] In Ottumwa, they said they've actually seen a huge change in academic performance too. They have way less F's, way more A's. And if you go it's really interesting, they have a locker system where they have all students drop their phone in at the start of the day. They, though, have a bell-to-bell program, which schools would be able to do, they could take this policy further, they just have to have some sort of minimum.

[Murphy] And I think this is why you're seeing such wide bipartisan support for these. Democrats are on board too and that is one of the reasons they've stated is we've seen the evidence in places where this is already taking place and how it's clearly good for educational outcomes. So, it has got some very broad support.

[Rooker] And not to belabor it, but I think students are also actually excited about this. I think there was a lot of questions of really, you're going to get teenagers to be okay with putting away their phone? But some of the students I talked to in Ottumwa told me, I was so anxious or so glued to my phone or I was facing cyberbullying, and now I'm not even thinking about that and I actually get to feel included in conversation at lunchtime. So, they're sort of seeing the positive results, which will be interesting to see across the state if that happens as well.

[Henderson] Well, and I interviewed someone from Ottumwa a couple of years ago and one of the things they said was the kids are looking and talking to one another in the hallway. Before that, they would just walk down the hallway looking at their phones and not interacting with one another. So, it has really been a sea change in what has happened in that school and we may see it in other schools around the state. Stephen, big news late this week from the Attorney General of Iowa.

[Gruber-Miller] Yeah, that's right. Attorney General Brenna Bird is suing Winneshiek County under the state's sanctuary cities law from 2018, sanctuary cities and counties, which says that law enforcement officers in the state shall not discourage immigration enforcement or fail to basically comply with requests from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for like detainers, holding somebody in jail longer than their charges would perhaps allow so that ICE can come and pick them up. This is because Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx last month posted on Facebook that he essentially was going to not comply with those ICE detainer requests. He later in email correspondence with the Attorney General said, actually Winneshiek County does have a policy saying we do comply, they have complied with detainer requests from ICE 21 times, but the Attorney General says that this post amounts to discouraging immigration enforcement and then falls under a violation of the law. And so, she asked him to take it down and to post essentially a disavowal of that previous statement. He did take it down. He did not post the disavowal. They are in court. So, we will see what happens next.

[Henderson] This past week in the Iowa House, a bill that was passed that deals with federal food assistance and establishing new rules if the USDA grants the state a waiver that would say people who get supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits, that's called SNAP, can only buy healthy foods with that money, things like proteins, fruits and vegetables. Erin Murphy, it was an interesting debate and this is going on in other states as well.

[Murphy] Yeah, you're seeing more states applying for these kinds of waivers and the debate over the state's role in deciding what kinds of foods should be eligible and it relates to another topic that we're going to talk about here and we saw that play out in the legislature this week. We have, it's not coincidental, we have a different party in control of the White House now so we see some of these bills being taken up again now that they feel like they have a friendly partner in the White House.

[Henderson] Stephen, it's interesting, there was a discussion during the first Trump administration about these kinds of proposals, but now they seem to have more momentum. Do you have a sense of why?

[Gruber-Miller] Yeah, I mean, I can't answer totally for the reason, but one difference we see now in the Iowa legislature from President Trump's first term to now is that there is a much larger House republican majority. I think we had seen the Senate previously being more interested in these types of things. But now with that larger republican majority in the House they are really on board as well and have the votes to do something like this.

[Murphy] I was going to say, and to that you mentioned the votes, we did see some republicans peel off on these proposals but now they have such a greater majority --

[Henderson] There were eight republicans who joined 32 democrats to vote against the SNAP bill.

[Murphy] But they can afford 15 or 16 now.

[Henderson] When you have 67 of the 100 members you can do things that you weren't able to do before. Stephen, let's dive into the details of a bill that deals with Medicaid expansion. Maybe we should first start and tell people what is Medicaid expansion?

[Gruber-Miller] Right, so in Iowa in all there are about 700,000 people on Medicaid, so health care benefits for poor or disabled people. Medicaid expansion is essentially allowing people who make a little bit more money, have a higher income threshold than normal Medicaid, there's about 181,000 people on this program, it was created through the Affordable Care Act, Governor Terry Branstad signed it into law back in 2013. So, close to 200,000 people on this expansion population. And this is the group that would, if Governor Reynolds signs this legislation and the state submits a waiver request to the federal government, they would have to work 80 hours per month to continue receiving their health care benefits. There are some exceptions. There's exceptions for people who are disabled. You have to be an adult. You can't be caring for a child younger than six years old or have a high-risk pregnancy or be on unemployment. So, there are some exceptions in this. But potentially there are thousands of people who would be subject to these work requirements. And one of the things that critics have said is that a lot of the people on this population, in this Medicaid population are in fact doing some kind of work whether it is a part-time job that doesn't meet 20 hours a week or it is caring for a loved one that is not covered by this bill somehow. So, they are trying to do what they can but they just don't meet what this would set out as the requirement for working.

[Murphy] And there's also the concern expressed, and we've seen it in other states that have had this program, of people who wind up losing coverage for procedural reasons because they don't file the proper paperwork or they miss deadlines or they don't understand the process, the requirements for reporting their work and we've seen cases in other states where literally thousands of people have lost coverage under programs like the one that is proposed and passing in Iowa.

[Rooker] Another thing that was interesting on this was that it seemed like the democrats were less threatened by the work requirement piece of this bill and more about a mechanism in the bill that would potentially shut down Iowa's Medicaid expansion program if the federal government grants a waiver to Iowa and says you can put these work requirements in place but then later takes it away or if a future administration comes in that is maybe politically different than the makeup right now and changes their mind that the Iowa Medicaid expansion program would automatically shut down. Democrats were concerned that that could eventually kick all of the Iowans that are on that program off their benefits. But removing that program is also subject to federal approval.

[Gruber-Miller] Yeah, democrats essentially accused republicans of gambling with the health care of those 181,000 or so people. And the republican argument for this is it's sort of democrat-proofing the work requirements because if a democrat comes in and takes office and wants to yank the waiver for Iowa to do work requirements then they would trigger this language that says the state has to try to end the Medicaid expansion. So, the idea is to make it politically unpalatable to end work requirements.

[Henderson] And, to put a finer point on this Stephen, you mentioned able-bodied adults, that doesn't mean people over the age of 65. And many people who are residents of nursing homes in this state are both getting benefits from Medicare and from Medicaid. I'm not sure they would be part of this Medicaid expansion. But other concerns that were raised were about cancer patients.

[Gruber-Miller] Right. There are people who through chronic illness or other means just might not be able to work. There is a good cause exemption, the law would give the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department ability to exempt people from the work requirements for good cause. But, again, critics' concern is just that there are a lot of people who could be caught up in this and have to go through all these hoops essentially even if they do end up ultimately qualifying.

[Henderson] Amanda, the Iowa Senate as it did previously in a previous year has passed a bill that grants some liability protection to the makers of farm chemicals if the label matches federal requirements. Tell us about that.

[Rooker] Yeah, so this would basically prevent severely sick Iowans from being able to sue pesticide companies for failure to warn over health risks. And this really centers on this chemical called glyphosate. It is produced by Bayer and it is the active ingredient in Roundup. There is a production plant in Muscatine that develops like 70% of Roundup in North America and they have faced recently some really expensive lawsuits surrounding this chemical. The argument for this legislation is that if you put a label on the chemical that is federally compliant, that meets EPA regulations, then they shouldn't be faced with these meritless lawsuits that they say threaten this really important ag chemical. At the same time, Iowa has some of the highest cancer rates in the country, a lot of people facing the illness are farmers that say they have worked with this chemical for years and there's different debates on the health risks of this chemical. And opponents of this bill say it takes away a measure of justice for sick Iowans at a time when we're seeing cancer rates rising. One thing I found particularly interesting is that in the Senate this was a really close vote. We usually see things kind of come down on party lines, but it was 26 to 21 and I think six republicans broke and voted against this legislation. Another piece of this is that the Iowa Senate passed it last year and it died in the House. It will be back in the House again and House Speaker Pat Grassley this past week said he hadn't had conversations yet with his caucus about it and so it remains to be seen if that will change or not.

[Henderson] And the other interesting thing about this is that there is a coalition that is running advertisements and is actively lobbying for this bill and it previously passed the Senate with 30 votes and, as you mentioned, it passed with 26.

[Murphy] And this is an extension, real quick, of a theme that we've seen with the republican majorities here of "Tort reform". We've seen similar bills in previous years --

[Henderson] For the trucking industry.

[Murphy] The trucking industry and medical malpractice. There's a belief among some Statehouse republicans that some of these topics have become, and I'm paraphrasing and borrowing from a republican in debate here, that it's sort of like a money pinata for trial lawyers in some of these issues and they're trying to take steps to curtail that.

[Henderson] Erin, a couple of election related bills cleared the Iowa House this past week, one of which has elements in it that have been discussed for several years dating back to a really close congressional election in Iowa.

[Murphy] Yeah, those of us who have been around long enough remember 2020 congressional elections and Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks winning by six votes out of hundreds of thousands cast and there was obviously a recount in that election and it sort of revealed, shined a light on the patchwork of different recount procedures that happened in the different counties. And ever since then county auditors, our local election officials, have been begging for recount reform and there have been some bills that haven't made it obviously. As you alluded to, we've got some passage again. We'll see if they make it to the Governor this time. But it would deal with some recount reform, streamline the process and make some other changes. There was also measures in there about the Secretary of State looking for non-citizens on the state's voter registration rolls. There is a ban on rank choice voting. Go find our coverage for more on that because we don't have time to get into what that means. It's a different way to vote versus the two-party system. And also, a measure that Libertarians in Iowa don't love that would raise the bar for how a party earns major party status in Iowa by requiring you to earn that 2% threshold in three consecutive elections rather than just one.

[Henderson] And Stephen, the backdrop for this debate was the Secretary of State Paul Pate recently announced that he had gained access to a federal database and determined a group of non-citizens were registered to vote in Iowa in 2024 and 35 of them had ballots that were counted.

[Gruber-Miller] Yeah, that's right. So, the Secretary of State two weeks before the election if you remember ordered county auditors to challenge ballots of more than 2,000 registered voters in Iowa if they went to the polls because he thought because of data that they has presented at the Iowa Department of Transportation at some point that they might not be citizens. Well, fast forward to now and Secretary Pate has the list. He says that 277 people, so a much smaller number but still several hundred people, are non-citizens who are registered to vote in Iowa. 35 of them successfully voted in 2024. So, he is asking for some more of this data to be given to him earlier, allowing poll workers to ask voters about citizenship status at the polls if there is reason to believe they might not be citizens and things like that to avoid some of this issue.

[Henderson] Governor Reynolds went to our nation’s Capital and also in a publication called The Hill unveiled a policy.

[Gruber-Miller] Yeah, the Governor would like, as President Trump moves to shut down or at least significantly reduce the federal Department of Education, Governor Reynolds would like all of the federal education funding that Iowa receives to come essentially in like a lump sum, in a block grant, and given the state the flexibility to do with that money what it wishes. So, we don't have a lot of details about this proposal. Like you mentioned, it was announced in an Op-ed and we have not received the actual application that the Governor has submitted to the federal government, if it in fact has been submitted. But this would be a big change in Iowa and the Governor is hoping basically to set the template for other states that would like to return all of this money and authority back to the states to give them more flexibility with what they do with this funding.

[Henderson] And Erin, we have a couple of minutes left. This has been a familiar theme with the Governor even before the election, she started talking about block grants.

[Murphy] Block grants and that has been a popular idea in conservative circles for a long time and it's sort of that trying to take some of the authority and power away from the federal government and put it back to the states, the theory being the more local control over an issue the better. And so, a lot of federal funding comes with certain requirements and strings to make sure the federal government believes that this funding that we're allowing you to use is being used properly. States want fewer of those strings and the ability to use that money as they see fit.

[Gruber-Miller] And we should say, democrats are not thrilled with the idea of giving Governor Reynolds and Iowa republicans more authority. They have pointed to many of the changes Iowa republicans have passed including education savings accounts, massive changes to Iowa's Area Education Agencies last year, as reasons that they don't trust republicans here to carry out the spending with that federal money.

[Henderson] Before we go, I've been surprised by a couple of things that have come up during the legislative session and I just ran a story on Radio Iowa on Friday morning about a bill that would legalize the growing and dispensing of Psilocybin, which is also known as magic mushrooms, in sort of the same way that the state has a program for medical marijuana and it is sponsored by Representative John Wills, who is a conservative who said he recently went to a conference about PTSD and he discovered this stuff is working for people. And so, I'm just interested if you guys have other bills out there that have struck you as sort of gosh, I didn't know they were going to do that? Amanda?

[Rooker] On the health-related type beat, we've all heard of the Ozempic, the weight loss drugs recently. Well, there is a bill related to that, it would require a study of how weight loss drugs would reduce costs in the Iowa Medicaid program. So, I'm interested to see if that goes anywhere this session.

[Henderson] Stephen, anything real quick?

[Gruber-Miller] Sometimes you have to double check your eyes and ears are working okay. Republicans have a bill that is off of California model language that would ban certain food dyes in other types of foods and school lunches that they are allowed to serve.

[Henderson] Erin?

[Murphy] I have become a sports writer again referring to my previous life and I covered a bill this year that is interesting dealing with conference realignment for high school sports teams. A couple of school districts in the state that have been left on the outside looking in, which is all kinds of challenge. My favorite part about the bill in this story, the solution, as all good things, come from Wisconsin.

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[Henderson] Says the Wisconsin native Erin Murphy. That's it for this edition of Iowa Press. If you'd like to watch any episode of Iowa Press you may do so at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

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

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