Overview / Major Events
With the first legislative funnel behind us and the second funnel already looming on March 11, the House and Senate spent virtually the entire week on their respective floors debating dozens of bills and sending them to the opposite Chamber for further consideration.
 
Monitoring legislation through the entire process can often be confusing, as bills frequently are redrafted and renumbered after initial committee passage (and may be so again if they are referred to the Ways and Means or Appropriations committees – as most bills coming out of those committees are exempt from further funnel restrictions).
 
Thus, bills can start out as a study bill (HSB 111, SSB 222) and then are given an official Senate File or House File number once they clear their initial committee (HF 333, SF 444).  If they are further referred to Ways and Means or Appropriations committee and gain approval there, they will get a THIRD number (HF 555, SF 666). Confused yet?

Overview / Major Events
The first legislative funnel of 2016 has arrived and all House and Senate policy committees have finished their first round of work for this session. The dust is still settling on those bills that made the cut and those that are dead for the year (will have a more robust picture of this in next week’’s newsletter).
 
The next funnel deadline occurs in only three weeks (March 11).  In the next three weeks those policy bills that cleared their committee of origin must be passed on their respective chamber floors and then passed out of a committee of the other chamber (meaning Senate Files must pass the full Senate and a House committee; House Files must pass the full House and a Senate committee) in order to remain eligible for the year.

Governor Branstad’s Water Quality Initiative Clears House Agriculture Committee
Governor Branstad made it clear in his Condition of the State message that his legislative agenda would consist of one main item, and that item is his initiative to find a long-term significant source of funding for water quality projects in Iowa. HSB 601 is the Governor’s bill and it cleared the House Agriculture Committee earlier this week and now will move to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Overview / Major Events
With the first legislative funnel looming on February 19, the pace of Week 5 was frenetic (more than 150 subcommittee meetings were held over the last four days as the race to keep issues alive went into overdrive).  Next week the bulk of the work shifts to the standing committees where policy bills must be approved by the end of that week in order to remain eligible for the remainder of the year.  Watch for next week’s newsletter to get a more complete picture of what survived and what failed (keeping in mind that tax bills and spending bills are exempt from the funnel deadlines).

Senate Votes to Terminate Medicaid Managed Care
Senate Democrats continued their assault on the efforts of Governor Branstad to transition the state’s Medicaid system from a state-run fee-for-service model to a privately run managed care model.  Iowa’s Medicaid system costs Iowa taxpayers more than $1 billion a year, with billions more in federal tax dollars also administered by the state to provide health care for Iowa’s poor.  Early in 2015, Governor Branstad embarked on a process to transition the provision of Medicaid services and join nearly 30 other states that use a managed care model to help control costs and improve patient outcomes.

The Iowa Hospital Association has led the charge to stop this effort and this week the Iowa Senate passed legislation to terminate the contracts that have been signed with private health care companies to take over the Medicaid system on March 1 (assuming the state receives the go-ahead from the federal government to proceed).

Overview / Major Events
The 4th week of the 2016 Session will be best remembered for the end of the Iowa caucus road show and the movement of the political epicenter from Iowa to New Hampshire. Functionally for the General Assembly, it meant that legislators stayed home on Monday to participate in their local party caucuses and that the week didn’t officially start until Tuesday.
 
However, Mother Nature had other plans, and while both the House and Senate officially opened for business on Tuesday, the storms kept most legislators home for a second day and no significant business was conducted until committee work resumed on Wednesday.

In addition, due to the death of former Iowa Senator Tom Hancock (D – Epworth), most of the Senate and many others involved in the legislative process will be departing Des Moines on Thursday morning to attend his memorial services in northeast Iowa.  Senator Hancock served as recently as the 2012 Session before retiring from the General Assembly.  He was a strong advocate for public safety issues and an individual with the ability to effectively work across party lines.