Government : In the Statehouse: Mouse tale in Des Moines

In the Statehouse
January 15, 2016

Before getting into the legislative action in this column, I want to start out with a mouse tale (tail?). I have a Mount Auburn mouse living in my car who has become a world traveler. The little bugger has been all over House District 75...every town. Now he's been to the statehouse!

This is a little like the 'Caddy Shack' story. Initially not wanting to hurt it, I tried luring it out of the car with food. I tried driving it out of the car with so many Bounce sheets I had to breathe through my sweater while driving and then added sliced up pieces of Irish Spring soap. No luck. He ate my chapstick, tore up paper to make a nest, ripped into a quilt I had in the back seat for the batting. Then it got serious. My efforts went to DEFCON 5 with sticky traps and peanut butter. Onward to the deadly smash'em traps with peanut butter. Nothing. Thinking it left, the thought of mouse droppings in the car drove me crazy, so I took the car to be detailed inside. Carpet vacuumed, shampooed and everything Armorall'd. The next morning what is in my car? A nest with one of my torn up business cards...this means war! Where is the grenade?

Later that day, in a meeting with the DNR on wastewater, I told them the mouse tale. Their unofficial position is to start the car and shut the garage door on the thing. Hmmm, sounds like a good DEFCON 1 plan. If there is a news story coming out about me going into the ditch, you will know it showed itself while I was behind the wheel.

More to come on that and back to business...our first week is completed and we are duly organized for the people's work.

On the first day, we elected a new Speaker of the House, the first woman Speaker, Representative Linda Upmeyer. I seconded the motion for her nomination and made comments on why. Although we made history with the first woman Speaker, my comments were more to her qualifications and abilities as a legislator, which are legendary. Another cool thing about it, her father was the Speaker of the House too, making Iowa the state with the first Father/Daughter legacy. There was a somber note to the day, we lost Representative Jack Drake to cancer last fall. Starting without him was hard. He was a true statesman and will be missed greatly.

After the speeches, we got to work in our committees and started filing bills we'd worked on over the interim. We went over our budget and the fact we have multiple budget promises from last year that adds to our spending with only (only?) $153 million dollars of new money to squeeze it all into.

On Tuesday, we heard the Governor's Condition of the State address and had committee work. On Wednesday, Chief Justice Cady of the Iowa Supreme Court gave the Condition of the Judiciary with more committee work.

Thursday I was assigned a legislative oversight task for the Rock Island Clean Line/Iowa Utilities Board dealing with eminent domain. Our responsibilities as legislators are three fold. First we are lawmakers. Second we are your liaison with state agencies. And third, we have oversight of state agencies and departments to make sure they are doing right by you. The Rock Island Clean Line and the Iowa Utilities Board falls under the third. After our investigation, I will let you know more.

If you have any problems or suggestions, please feel free to send an email my way to dawn.pettengill@legis.iowa.gov or call my desk at 515-281-6879. Thank you for letting me serve you!