Capitol highlights

This week the House has made a good amount of progress on reconciling the shortfalls in the FY17 budget. The Republican caucus has reached an agreement on the various portions of the budget that will be cut in order to balance the budget by approximately $117 million. The budget adjustment is now ready to be debated on the Floor. I expect the budget adjustment to come to a vote early next week.
Now that we are coming to a resolution about FY17, the House can turn its attention to the budget appropriations for FY18. State revenue has seen a slight amount of growth over the past year and the House will be discussing the best way to allocate these state funds in the next few weeks. House Republicans are dedicated to budgeting wisely and funding our priorities according to the expectations of our constituents.
This week, the House has begun to assign bills to their respective committees and subcommittees are being organized to discuss them. I have been assigned to serve on subcommittees for three different bills- two from the Education committee and one from Economic Growth.
HF 48:
This bill modifies the laws regarding the student data collection process by the Department of Education and school districts. HF 48 lays out information that shall not be included in the data collection such as biometrics, psychometrics, health, voting status, income, personality traits, political or religious affiliations and criminal or juvenile justice records. In addition, HF 48 sets expectations for the Department of Education to report their findings on school data by November 1st of each year, and notify the governor and general assembly of changes in measures used to collect or maintain student data. The purpose of this bill is to provide for the privacy of Iowa families by keeping the state from collecting an excessive and unnecessary amount of personal information about Iowa households. We held a subcommittee for this bill on Wednesday, and after hearing the concerns of the lobby we have decided to re-examine some of the data collection restrictions. We will be continuing the discussion on this issue over the next couple of weeks.
HF 66
Establishes that if a court awards the divorced parents of a student joint custody of the child, each parent’s home within the school district shall be considered the pupil’s residence for purposes of determining eligibility for state transportation aid to and from school. This bill seeks to ensure that school districts receive the necessary transportation funds to provide for students who have multiple residences within the district.
HF 23
This bill comes from the Economic Growth committee and establishes a worker shortage loan forgiveness program. This program would be for eligible Iowa residents who have completed higher education training such as a college degree from a regent or community college in the state or a career and technical education (CTE) program. These students will be eligible to receive loan forgiveness. The purpose of this bill is to incentivize the higher education of young Iowans while at the same time encouraging them to get jobs within our state.
HF 84
This is a bill that I have co-sponsored along with another Representative, which changes the laws regarding Driver’s Education. This bill would allow any qualified parent with a clean driving record to teach Driver’s Education to their own children. The parent would be required to provide a total of 40 hours of driving time and instruction using state-approved materials. This bill would place the responsibility of teaching young people to drive in the hands of the many competent parents of our state. HF 84 is under consideration in the Transportation committee