Government : HELLO HOUSE DISTRICT 75 FROM THE STATE CAPITOL!

The ARC advocates Michael Wood and Julie Beckett

REM Iowa advocates Melinda Grimm, Linda Renn, and Amy Kady

The session for this year is half over, and the Iowa House passed approximately 56 bills this week. Of those, 75% of them passed unanimously, and only three passed that were along party lines. We are doing good things for Iowa, and these votes are a great example of it!

The House and Senate came to an agreement on the K-12 Education funding, with $85.57 million for Supplemental State Aid, $7.65 million for Rural Transportation, and $5.8 million for Per Pupil Equity, for a total of just over $99 million in new aid. In relation to our kids, there is a bill, HF 2532, in the Appropriations Committee which intends to help teachers deal with disruptive student behavior to help make classrooms safer.

There are also several bills scheduled to be debated which intend to help with child care, include increasing child care assistance provider rates in order to increase access and incentivizing developers to build daycare facilities. The House passed last year a bill to expand child care tax credits to more families, HF 771.

We have several Broadband bills coming up for debate soon which are intended to streamline regulations in order to deploy 5G faster, and the "Empower Rural Iowa" broadband bill which provides grants and authorizes more accurate mapping.

More health care bills are coming up soon on the calendar, such as reining the high price of insulin (HF 2138) and prescription drug transparency (HF 2551 & 2553).

I had the pleasure of more visitors to the State Capitol - a nice visit with Doris Guilford of Van Horne, who discussed with me some bills. Also Michael Wood from Shellsburg along with Julie Beckett promoting and advocating for The ARC, and advocating for REM Iowa in Vinton was Melinda Grimm and Linda Renn, both from Vinton, and Amy Kady of Cedar Rapids. Both the ARC and REM provide great services and are very much needed!

As always, please be careful out there and have a great week!