Anamosa
Holding their second Jones County forum of the legislative session at the Anamosa library, Sen. Carrie Koelker and Rep. Steven Bradley fielded questions from constituents packed into the community room.
Multiple questions were fielded on a proposal to allow parents to have books removed from a school library. Bradley said the aim of the bill was to get items out school libraries.
“This is about ensuring sexually explicit materials aren’t available without parental consent,” Bradley said, noting it was aimed at school libraries, not the public library systems.
One such book was the graphic novel “Gender Queer,” which Bradley said, “is a graphic novel about sexual orientation written to relate to others who are struggling with their identity. The book explores the use of pronouns, hormone-blocking therapy, and it contains graphic illustrations of oral sex. Now, do you want that in our schools?”
Another question concerned house files eight and nine, one psychotherapy professional asked what research legislators were using to back up their claims. During the first week of the 2023 Iowa legislative session, Iowa House Republicans introduced House File 8, which limits the ability to teach about sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary and House File 9, which requires written consent from parents.
Bradley, who co-sponsors the bill, started going through what the bill does and does not do before being asked again what research he used. Bradley said the sources he used was the information used in committee, and when asked for an example, responded, “I’m not going to get into that right now.”
Legislators were also urged to oppose a bill seeking to take gender identity out of Iowa’s Civil Rights Act. The bill has been introduced and referred to the judiciary committee, but no further action has been taken.
Property taxes were another issue. Jones County auditor Whitney Hein spoke about her opposition to Senate File 356 because of the negative impact it would have on local control in setting levy rates and the budget process.
“The current levy rates were set in the 1980s. A lot has changed since the 1980s. The type of expenditures that we have at the county level have changed. In the 1980s, we didn’t have IT, we didn’t have GIS. An IT server costs $50,000. GIS costs $140,000,” Hein said.
She said the current bill would force the county to cut services and asked how Koelker planned to counteract that as a member of the ways and means committee looking at that bill.
“We’ve all heard that people can’t keep up with inflation, property taxes, property taxes property taxes. So, it’s going to be some turbulent waters between city governments and legislatures because this impacts 18 different levies,” she said.
“We’re trying to get the levies under control.”
Koelker pointed to removing mental health funding from property taxes to ease that burden that was passed previously.
“With the mental health thing, though, you’re putting the burden of commercial/industrial replacement and the property tax replacement back on to the county,” Hein said.
Koelker said they had to combat bad actors, with Hein saying that shouldn’t mean penalizing counties, like she said Jones County had been responsible.
“I invite you to visit us down there, we’ve had some really great auditors that have visited us down there that have sat down and had really good conversations with us…instead of barking at us,” Koelker said, a characterization disagreed with by a future question asker.
When asked later if there was anyone looking at the big picture to make sure the needs of property taxpayers, counties and cities were being balanced. Koelker said lobbyists are making the cases for entities, and Koelker also cited Iowans for tax relief, but many legislators also look at graphed data highlighting tax, cost of living and assessment increases.
Other questions included the lack of accessibility to dental care with disabilities. Bradley said he’d been working to get the Medicaid reimbursement rate raised, currently just at 20% but that the head of the appropriations committee, Rep. Joe Fry, refused to take the matter up.
