Government : In the Statehouse: An inspiring story

At the end of a week that was back to back meetings with bill assignments, a touch of food poisoning from a shrimp to scallop menu change, lots of listening to constituent’s priorities and different state problems, I found some inspiration to keep on keeping on.

It was 7:45 p.m. and my day had started with a Skype interview with KWWL at 6:30 a.m. I was in my office packing up the information to bring home for my legislative coffees this weekend and the cleaning guy was in there cleaning. I said, “Oh my gosh, I’m tired, how long do you have to work?” and he said he was there until 1:00 a.m. and it was about a 5 hour gig. We were chatting about different stuff while doing our thing and here is what I learned about him:

He's 40. He was the son of a single Mom. He’s been married 21 years. They have 2 kids and his daughter is 20. Because they were so young, there was family talk of an abortion, but this man said he was sticking. They got married. He has three jobs. He's a small business owner, a barber. He worships the ground his wife walks on. He's a good Dad to his 20 year old daughter and is bringing his 14 year old son up to be a man. When he was a kid, his barber gave him life lessons. He gives young people life lessons in the 15 minutes he has to cut their hair.

I stared at him while he was proudly talking of how he was providing for his family and the love and support he gives and receives from that and was thinking his powerful life testimony is about real manhood. God bless you! Keep up the great work! And for all of you Dads/Husbands out there who are doing the same for your families, you are inspiring! Please share your inspiring story with other young men so they have someone to look up to.

Now to some state business, our committees are in full swing. In committees, the first month or so has the different departments coming in with the conditions of their departments – any problems and/or updates. We heard from the Citizen Ombudsman in Government Oversight who had thousands of Open Meetings/Open Records complaints and the challenges that go along with that. In Commerce, our fantastic Insurance Commissioner is retiring at the end of the month and she gave her last update to the committee on where we stood on health exchanges and how rate increases are calculated. In my email newsletter are many other updates, if you want it sent to you weekly, please send a Subscribe message to dawn.pettengill@legis.iowa.gov.

My Constituent Advisory Committee is starting on February 2nd. That committee will be the sounding board I need for the controversial issues. The committee has a balance that meets the demographics of our district. Age, sex, party affiliation, location and even some professions are taken into consideration when I made the committee selections. I’m thankful to have dedicated citizens who are willing to give up some Saturday time to help with deliberations on our most serious issues.

If you have any concerns or questions, you can give me a call at 515-281-7622 or send an email. Our days are pretty jammed up, so if you don’t hear back from me within two days, try me again please! We

get 100s of emails in a day, a good number of visitors and phone calls. If you get lost in the pile, I don’t mind a reminder. Have a great week!