Legislators talk water quality, library bills at Fairfield forum

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Area Chamber of Commerce hosted its first legislative briefing of the year on Saturday, Feb. 21, touching on topics such as water quality, library materials, and the distribution of casino revenues.

Previous legislative briefings have seen members of the audience use a microphone to ask a question of the three local legislators, Sen. Adrian Dickey, Rep. Helena Hayes and Rep. Jeff Shipley. But under a new format adopted this year by the chamber, only questions written in advance were allowed, sometimes summarized by moderator and Chamber Executive Director Mendy McAdams.

The first couple of questions dealt with water quality, with one being about House Study Bill 657, relating to the process by which the Iowa Department of Natural Resources tests bodies of water to determine if they should be placed on an “impaired waterways” list. Hayes said that waterways that make this list are required to have an improvement plan. She noted that Jefferson County only has one body of water that’s even on a watch list, whereas Hayes’ home county of Mahaska has six impaired waterways on the list.

Hayes said the bill requires the DNR to identify the source of pollution in impaired waterways. However, Fairfield resident Diane Rosenberg, who wrote the question, said after the meeting that Hayes’ characterization of the bill left out an important detail, which is that the DNR could not add a polluted waterway to the list unless it knew the source of fecal matter in the water, broken down by the percentage from each species. Rosenberg said the bill was an unfunded mandate that would be prohibitively expensive to implement, and reduce the number of polluted waters reported to the EPA.

Another hotly debated item at Saturday’s forum dealt with legislation in the House and Senate that would eliminate the exemption public libraries have from the state’s obscenity laws, which would make librarians subject to criminal penalties if they are found to have distributed obscene materials to minors. The written question asked the legislators how the bill, House File 274 sponsored by Hayes, was not a violation of the librarians’ free speech.

Hayes and Shipley defended the bill in their response. Hayes said there was no “book banning” or “putting librarians in jail,” and contested that the bill was an assault on free speech. She said that, since librarians are taxpayer funded, the books in their collection constitute government speech and are not protected under the First Amendment.

Shipley said the goal of the legislation is to apply the rules equally to everyone and that “we don’t think librarians should be above the law.” He said the state set age-appropriate standards for schools on what materials count as “obscene,” and this would only apply to depictions of sex acts. He added that most school districts were happy to comply with these rules, but “unfortunately librarians have not been as easy to work with.” He said librarians have refused to divulge to parents what their children check out, claiming state law prevents them from disclosing such information.

“Librarians have inserted themselves in that dangerous place between a parent and their child,” Shipley said.

Several library staff attended Saturday’s forum, and not just from the Fairfield Public Library, but also dignitaries from out of town. American Library Association Director Sam Helmick even attended the forum. Helmick lives in Iowa City now but was born in Burlington, and their grandfather was from Fairfield.

“I wanted to hear directly from the representatives outside of just a 15-minute committee hearing, which is how long the committee hearings have been for library bills,” Helmick said on why they attended the forum.

Helmick said one of the things they wanted to know was how to find solutions with the Legislature, but wasn’t sure how libraries could comply with Senate File 496 “when it’s not current law due to a federal injunction.”

Fairfield Public Library Director Alecs Schmidt Mickunas said he appreciated Shipley’s comments on the importance of parental oversight, but added that the library does not have any part in that.

“Iowa code does protect confidentiality of juveniles; it does not differentiate between adult and juvenile,” Schmidt Mickunas said. “The reason why public libraries in Iowa don’t share titles of current or past check-outs with parents is because the way Iowa code has been worded.”

Schmidt Mickunas said that families who wished to closer monitor the check-outs of their children could use a single account for all check-outs, and parents could see everything that has been checked out on that account.

Another issue that came up during the briefing was a bill Dickey proposed to alter the way that casinos donate a portion of their revenues to the county they’re in plus nearby counties. Dickey has argued that the current setup funnels a disproportionate share of these donations to the hosting county, and not enough to nearby counties. He pointed out that, in the last 20 years, the Washington County Riverboat Foundation has given over $52 million to projects in Washington County, but only about $200,000 to projects in Henry County, $33,000 to projects in Jefferson County, and no money to Mahaska County.

Dickey pushed a bill that would have allocated funds to counties based on the percentage of customers who come from each county, measured by looking at the zip codes of people who sign up for the casino’s Players Club. Dickey said his bill did not survive funnel week, so it is not advancing.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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