The Dickey Dispatch

Last week in the Senate was definitely a GREAT one. We passed a large amount of legislation and covered some highly contested topics. Monday night saw us working late into the night, debating my “Youth Opportunities Bill” for 9 hours, until 5 a.m. Tuesday morning. We finished passing the governor’s appointees on Thursday, and I can say this was a stellar group. After having the opportunity to speak with many of these individuals, I am assured the governor chose high quality candidates for each position and I look forward to the progress they make for the state.

One major piece of legislation we passed this week was SF 542. This was my “Youth Opportunities Bill,” not the “youth slave labor bill” as the misinformed Democrats and twisted media tried to proclaim it. This bill does quite the opposite.

First off, this bill does not mention or insinuate that any child will ever be forced to work. This bill simply gives the child the OPTION to work a little more each year than what the current law allows. If a child would rather work and save money for a car instead of playing extracurricular sports, why shouldn’t they be able to? Again, this bill gives the child the opportunity to work and gain valuable experience that will benefit them in the future. If you solely paid attention to the Democrats or the media, you would believe this bill is putting kids into meat-packing plants, coal mines, and other dangerous environments. However, if you actually read the bill, you would understand that this piece of legislation actually provides more safeguards and believe it or not, it actually takes OUT the loopholes that currently allowed our youth to work in these dangerous environments. In addition, since 1951, Iowa law allows 12-year-olds to work in migrant labor and I removed that from state law as well. Iowa is not radically changing youth labor laws on a whim. Many states, including those surrounding us, have already strayed from federal regulations as to how many hours and how late at night teenagers can work. We have looked at the data and information from these states and decided to pass this legislation after careful analysis.

While the bill we passed made the work environments where youth can work MUCH SAFER, it also allows these teenagers to work until 9 p.m. during school and 11 p.m. in the summer. It currently is very common for their classmates to be away from home on a school night until midnight as they attend a sporting or other extra curricular activity. If we allow their classmates to do this, then what is so wrong with allowing other students who would rather have a job to save money for college or to buy a car to work until 9 p.m.? There is dignity and LEARNING opportunities in work and I will never apologize for wanting to stand up for a teenager who aspires and desires to work during the same time frame that their classmates are off playing at athletic events.

This bill gained attention from the national media and it was fun to be on CNBC Tuesday night talking about this historical legislation.

During our 9-hour debate, I was asked to yield by a Democrat senator. From time to time in debate, this can occur and typically it is never a big deal. However, a recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling indicated it was using floor debate to determine the ambiguous definition of legislative intent. This has NEVER occurred in the history of Iowa and that new poorly thought out decision will set a new precedent that will forever change the way that bills will be debated in Iowa and I HATE that! This should NOT be the case. Unfortunately, this will continue UNTIL the Supreme Court realizes their overreaching decision. Because of that we have all been advised not to engage in spontaneous and speculative discussions of legislative intent during floor debate.

Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa, said the Supreme Court ruling “will muzzle floor debate indefinitely until the court clarifies its approach toward interpreting individual lawmakers’ comments on the floor. It’s basically a Maranda warning for the Legislature: Anything you say can be used against your bill in a court of law, so the Legislature is going to stop talking.”

The question that was going to be asked of me was my “opinion” on one word — ONE word — in a 17 page bill. The fact is, the question that was going to be asked of me was a subject that we voted on last year and it passed 47-0. Never in the history of our GREAT state has legislation been passed or evaluated by the Supreme Court based on a legislators “opinion or comments” of a bill, much less their thoughts on 1 word of the bill. Up until this opinion was released the intent of the law has been the words on the actual paper.

Think about it this way. There are 150 senators and representatives in the Capitol. That is 150 different opinions or even understanding of the bill. If the Supreme Court holds their ruling, there could be 150 different ideas on what ANY bill that becomes law could mean. How could we ever legislate in that manner? The words on the four corners of that paper IS THE LEGISLATIVE INTENT, not someone’s opinion.

However the other side that the news media never mentioned when this occurred was that I introduced this bill 3 months ago and in those 3 months not a single Democrat came to me with any concerns, questions, or issues with the bill, even though we serve in the same chamber EVERY single day. Not one of them, not one comment! IF they had real concern with the bill or even if they had a thought to improve the bill, they had unlimited opportunities to come to me to discuss it. They did not. If they had a question of the legislative intent of that single word, I would have happily directed them to the bill that we passed a year ago 47-0 that clearly explained the legislative intent of that one word. Again, they choose not to. What was reported as “news” was just another liberal talking point that was an attempt to take away from the great legislation that was passed that evening. Another example of “dirty politics” that everyone is tired of.

Besides passing SF 542, Senate Republicans passed more GREAT legislation last week. Another one of these bills was HF 603. This bill allows volunteer emergency services providers to purchase a set of tires from the department of administrative services, once every few years. I feel as though this is a great bill, and serves as a “thank you” to our great volunteer emergency service providers for all they do for our great state.

SF 391 was also passed, which makes changes to aid school districts to meet the individualized needs of their schools. This could be changing the number of required courses or allowing students to opt-out of physical education if they are involved in work-based learning programs. It will also make school districts with community colleges more flexible by no longer requiring a district to maintain 600 students in order for a community college instructor to teach coursework. Furthermore, it allows schools to hire former public librarians as school librarians if they choose to do so. This bill simply creates more flexibility for schools and allows these schools to cater their services to more perfectly meet the needs of their district.

The last piece of legislation I want to touch on is SF 228. After being amended by the House, the bill now sets a $5 million cap on non-economic civil damages for instances involving commercial motor vehicles. This was the same piece of legislation that caused the ambulance-chasing attorneys to take out those very expensive, full page color attack ads against me a few months ago. So, if our local newspapers are greedy again and take the trial attorneys money over printing something factual, be prepared for another round of toilet paper to be printed.