The Iowa Capitol on Dec. 20, 2024. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
Proposals dealing with voter registration and raising penalties for assaults on law enforcement officers and first responders are top priorities for Iowa elected officials heading into the 2025 legislative session.
As top Iowa officials like Gov. Kim Reynolds and Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen are giving speeches on their goals for 2025 this week, other statewide elected officials have weighed in with their priorities. Before the session started, these leaders and others with state departments and agencies released several bills they are hoping lawmakers will take up.
One proposal would create of “threat assessment teams” with immunity from civil liabilities that would be tasked with attempting to prevent school shootings. Another includes a ban on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment practices in public pension funds.
A majority of the proposals released as prefiled bills from Republican officials for a legislature with Republican supermajorities in both chambers. The only Democrat to hold statewide elected office is Auditor Rob Sand – who has proposed legislation on subjects like addressing the accountant shortage in the state through state income tax exemptions for audits and examinations of governmental subdivisions, like cities and schools, as well as an expansion of the Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) program.
Government efficiency
The bill proposes requiring the state auditor’s office to prepare an annual report on best practices for “maximizing the efficient use of public funds with innovative, practical, and common sense items not requiring legislative action.” This is an effort the auditor’s office is already implementing through the PIE program, Sand said in a news conference Wednesday.
“If the Legislature, the governor wants to improve government efficiency, then making sure that this program that already exists and is running will continue into the future, that would be a great thing to do in order to improve government efficiency,” Sand said.
Government efficiency was a topic that came up in Reynolds’ Condition of the State speech Tuesday night as she announced the creation of a state Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force, based on the proposed DOGE presidential advisory commission to be established under President-elect Donald Trump.
Reynolds said Iowa has been “doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,” but that the state task force will look for new ways to make state government more efficient in addition to working with local governments.
Sand said he was supportive of Reynolds’ efforts to make government more efficient through DOGE, and asked for collaboration with the state auditor’s office.
“If she’s going to have a task force of volunteers, and that is fantastic, because those folks will be giving their time in this pursuit of efficiency for the taxpayers,” Sand said. “… We are hoping that they will be working with our office and working with the PIE program, because we have been working on this very issue already for six years. And not only are we working on it, but we’re actually making quite a big impact across the state.”
Checking citizenship, voter registration
Many of the other proposals from statewide elected officials are not issues that came up in Reynolds’ or legislative leaders’ addresses – but have come up in discussions following the 2024 election.
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is calling for lawmakers to pass a measure that would allow his office to contract with state and federal agencies, in collaboration with private vendors, to verify citizenship information on registered voters.
The proposal comes in the wake of contentious guidance Pate issued to county auditors two weeks before the November election to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who the office identified as potential noncitizens. Pate said the guidance was needed because the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was unwilling to share the citizenship status of these individuals, who the Secretary of State’s office flagged because the individuals had identified themselves to the Iowa Department of Transportation or another government entity as not being U.S. citizens within the past 12 years before going onto vote.
Though a majority of these individuals were likely naturalized U.S. citizens, at least some did not have citizenship and could not legally participate in Iowa elections. Critics argued that the guidance discouraged naturalized citizens from casting regular ballots in the election, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the directive on behalf of naturalized citizens and the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Pate has repeatedly argued the guidance was only necessary because the USCIS would not share citizenship information on people identified as potential noncitizens – and said the legislation proposed this session would prevent a similar situation in the future by ensuring this information is shared ahead of elections.
“I don’t want to see the voter having to be hassled, if you will, when it comes to coming into the polling places and to question their legitimacy as a voter,” Pate said. “Let’s do our work on the front end here before they get there.”
House Speaker Pat Grassley said in December that House Republicans would “be willing to engage in that conversation” on making changes that allow the Secretary of State’s office more access to federal and state databases for voter list maintenance.
Raising penalities for assaults on law enforcement
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has proposed legislation this session that she said addresses a growing problem — assaults against law enforcement. The FBI reported that 2023 had the highest reported rate of assaults on officers in the past 10 years.
Bird’s proposal would raise multiple penalties related to assaults on law enforcement officers and first responders. Assaults involving a dangerous weapon or meant to inflict a serious injury will rise from a class “D” to class “C” felony charge, and assaults causing bodily injury will rise from an aggravated misdemeanor to a class “D” felony for people in these professions. For all other assaults, charges would be heightened from a serious misdemeanor to an aggravated misdemeanor charge with a minimum sentence of seven days in jail.
Spitting on law enforcement officers, first responders and corrections officers would also be added as a punishable assault under the bill.
“No one should be attacked for doing their job, especially when their job is to keep us safe,” Bird said in a news release on the proposal. “Our law enforcement and first responders heroes deserve our respect and appreciation. But instead, we have seen an increase in assaults on our law enforcement, like violent attacks or spitting on an officer. This bill ensures that any criminal who assaults a law enforcement hero gets the penalty they deserve.”
In December, Bird also proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow Iowa child crime victims to testify in court in a separate room from their alleged abusers.
The proposed amendment would reinstate the use of a live, closed-circuit video link for children and Iowans with intellectual disabilities who are testifying in court in these crimes. The practice was already in place in Iowa until a 2024 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that overturned the conviction of a man arguing that it was unconstitutional for two victims to testify against him from a remote location.
Iowa is the only state in the nation that currently does not allow for closed-circuit testimony in these cases, according to the AG’s office. Before the ruling, Iowa courts allowed child victims to testify in a separate room in cases where prosecution showed evidence that in-person courtroom testimony could cause additional trauma to the child.
“As a mom and prosecutor, I will never stop fighting to protect kids,” Bird said in a statement. “I know how hard it is for kids to be arm’s length in court from the criminal defendants who brutally beat or sexually molested them. Our constitutional amendment will restore closed-circuit testimony to protect kids in court and bring criminals to justice.”
If passed, the amendment would have to be approved by the Legislature again in 2027 or 2028 before going to Iowa voters on a general election ballot for a final vote.