Government : In The Statehouse

Dear Friends and Neighbors, Life is a whirlwind, isn't it? As soon as we were done with the legislative session, I took off to see my family in Alabama. They are all doing great and my granddaughter has to be the best gift of my lifetime. Yay! While I was gone, we had flooding again. Below you will find an update on the damage assessments from FEMA and Department of Homeland Security. Let me know if you have any questions or I can help out. Some good news for the Fill the Plate (supplementing senior meals) program I started last year. Walmart just announced they were giving $30,000 to the program. I knew this in early May, but was sworn to secrecy before their grant announcements. That brings the total up to $138,800 since December 2, 2012. $138,800 covers 27,760 meals and the southern part of my district was short 7,000 meals! My heart is pretty full over being able to help. Thank you to all my constituents who helped with the telethon, made donations and have volunteered your time and energy to stopping that shortage. You know who you are. We still have work to do, but the ground game has been laid out and people are stepping up all over. Today I'm headed down to Des Moines for two days of meetings on administrative rules and next week will be two days for pension and IPERS. There's always a lot to catch up on after we are done with the lawmaking part of our job. After the lawmaking part, we still have constituent work, government oversight and with rules, I have to make sure the rules match as closely as possible what we put into law. You know I love it. Now for a quick update on what happened during the session. Frequently I've made the comparison that session is like pregnancy and giving birth. Especially at the end, you're yelling I don't want to do this anymore but you keep pushing ahead on what you believe should happen and then ALL OF A SUDDEN, you have a beautiful baby. Ha! This year the baby is especially beautiful. We were able to get agreement on education reform, health care reform, property tax reform, tax credits, held the line on spending, filled our rainy day accounts and savings accounts, paid down almost 200 million in debt and held to our principles. I'm working on some detailed handouts for when I go to speak to different groups, but if you have questions on a certain topic, let me know. Don't worry, we left plenty of things to work on next year! I have to hit the road running now, but needed to touch base with you all. God bless and I will see you around the district this summer! Yours in service and your friend, Dawn