Government : Fourth Week of the 2025 Legislative Session

This week started off on a somber note as many of us mourned the loss of Representative Martin Graber. I served with Martin in the Iowa Army National Guard and the Iowa House of Representatives. He was lifelong public servant, a dedicated husband, father, and friend. He will be greatly missed. The icy weather did cause my week to be cut short, but the time was well spent back in the district. I always enjoy meeting with constituents and visitors, and representing you at the Capitol.

As we continue our work passing bills before funnel week, we are still receiving proposals from the governor's office. Governor Reynolds introduced a bill this past week aimed at enhancing math proficiency and civics education for students. This plan specifically targets students on an individual basis who are struggling to meet proficiency standards and provides teachers with the necessary resources to achieve the new standard for educational success in Iowa.

The bill will also require high school students to score 60 percent or higher on a U.S civics test to graduate. Iowa continues to build on our educational successes and improvements to the system. These programs would raise expectations and ensure students and teachers are focused on the critical aspects of education in order to achieve success in the classroom. I believe all students deserve the opportunity to be successful in the classroom and in their careers. I look forward to talking more about the governor's proposal and how we can increase success for all students.

Governor Reynolds has also introduced a comprehensive energy bill aimed at enhancing the state's energy leadership and further development for rising energy demands. Specifics of the bill's goals include maintaining low electricity prices and strengthening the grid throughout the state. While Iowa ranks high in power grid reliability, while managing to keep prices low for consumers, we need to be looking at how we can maintain affordable and reliable energy for Iowans. This has become an increasingly important issue as demand for energy grows, and we will be looking into her proposal as we ensure Iowans and their families can continue to depend on reliable and affordable energy.

In 2023, the Iowa legislature passed a massive government reorganization bill with the goal of making government more efficient, aligning similar departments, and eliminating redundancies. While it was estimated to save a decent amount of money over the next several years, the governor announced in her Condition of the State speech this year that it had already saved Iowa taxpayers $217 million over 18 months. A report released this week by Common Sense Institute says that government reorganization policy helped us accelerate the income tax cuts Republicans had passed and helped Iowa continue down a path of growth and success. This is great news as we continue our work at the Capitol and pursuing an agenda that helps grow our state and making it a great one for Iowans to live, work and call home.

Election Integrity Measures See Results

Since 2017, Senate Republicans have enacted a number of voter integrity measures aimed at protecting Iowa's elections, strengthening election security, and making sure every legal vote is counted. The first, and one of the most important actions taken, was passing voter ID. We use driver's licenses for verification in so many other parts of our daily lives, implementing this one tactic was an easy way to protect our right to vote in Iowa.

In the following years we passed protection measures for absentee voting by mail or in-person, worked to increase transparency, brought checks and balances to commissioners of our elections, and ensured all votes would be counted on Election Day. We also passed a reform requiring an audit of all 99 counties following a general election, ensuring every vote is counted and verified.

A bill passed in 2021 strengthened Iowa's election laws. It enacted a series of measures to ensure uniform procedures across all of Iowa's counties and clarify enforcement and more clearly define the authority elected leaders have to uphold election laws. It also brought more transparency and accountability to the process of maintaining voter lists and ensured compliance with the National Voting Rights Act.

We are now seeing some of the results of this bill and the protection measures that were passed in 2021. Just this week we learned from the Secretary of State that over 180,000 voter registrations had been canceled after not voting in any of the last three general elections. Any of those people can still vote in future elections. This measure simply helps Iowa maintain accurate lists of registered and active voters and helps protect Iowa's voter integrity.

More people are voting because they have confidence in the security and integrity of our elections. Our state saw over 74% of registered voters come out to vote in 2024, while about 72% percent of registered voters came out in 2016. We know many Iowans support the steps we have taken, and these laws are critical in making it easy for Iowans to vote.