Bill updates grain indemnity program

On Thursday (Feb. 20), the House passed several small, bipartisan bills, but the biggest bills are still works in progress. Two in particular that I worked on … relate to the grain indemnity fund and the Governor’s energy bill.

On Tuesday (Feb. 18), we passed House Study Bill 131 out of the Agriculture Committee by a bipartisan vote of 21-1. The grain indemnity fund is a bit like FDIC insurance at your bank. If your bank goes belly up, the FDIC insures your deposits up to $250,000, and you essentially suffer no injury.

Like storing money at a bank, farmers often store their grain at a grain elevator. On rare occasions, those elevators financially fail. The indemnity program is intended to protect farmers from losses when that happens.

The program was started forty years ago during the 1980s farm crisis. It has not been updated, so the dollar amounts involved are out of whack.

Additionally, the rise of specialty grain sales has created unforeseen risks in the program which, in part, precipitated the reinstatement of indemnity fees in 2023 when several specialty grain purchasers went bankrupt.

I have heard from some farmer friends back home that they want the deferred-payment contracts to be covered as well. I have heard from other farmers that they don’t believe that the fund should protect contracts where the payment is deferred for tax reasons, rather than market-related reasons.

I voted for the bill in committee because I think the fund needs to be updated from the 1980s. As the representative who is managing the bill said, “I was willing to compromise a little bit so that we don’t have to revisit this for another forty years.”

But nothing is yet set in stone. Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill would also cover deferred-payment contracts. We will see what the final bill says.

In the meantime, if you have an opinion on deferred-payment coverage, please let me know.

This week we had discussions on the Governor’s energy bill. My priorities are reliability and affordability. I believe this involves competition wherever possible.

But we also have set service areas that have worked pretty well for most people. Energy policy is boring to most people, but it is critically important.

House Study Bill 123 does the following:

•Allows advance ratemaking for new generation facilities, including small nuclear reactors, energy storage and gas peaker plants.

•Requires utilities to provide support for their advance ratemaking application through an electric utility resource plan that has been filed no more than 24 months prior to the advance ratemaking application.

•Requires the Iowa Utilities Commission to adopt rules to complete advance ratemaking proceedings within 10 months of filing an application.

•Requires electric utilities to file a resource plan with IUC at least once every 5 years, with IUC feedback and required good faith to involve stakeholders in the process.

•Allows public utilities to apply for innovative tariffs that do not negatively impact non-participating customers.

•This bill updates language passed by the legislature in 2020 to establish a right of first refusal to incumbent companies in building electric transmission line.

I am opposed to this last part. I do not think our two largest utility companies need an unfair advantage like this. It reduces competition, makes major projects essentially no-bid, and would drive up rates for electricity customers like you and me.

I also objected to some language in the bill that would essentially approve any project so long as it might increase “economic development.” This language was too vague for me and seemed subject to abuse.

Others agreed, and it was removed from the bill.

This bill now goes to the Appropriations Committee for consideration. So, I will get to raise my concerns again on that committee. I hope to have a great energy bill to vote on at the end of this process.

I did a poor job gathering photos of this week’s visitors and of our “Day in the District.” Brian Strasser and Derek VonAhsen came to talk about some ag issues, Stacey Cremeens visited to discuss nursing homes, and it was good to see Dr. Kristie Fisher of Kirkwood Community College …

Sen. Driscoll and I also were fortunate to be able to visit Kinze Manufacturing and Compass Memorial Hospital on Friday. Jobs and health care are always vital to our community.

And then we had coffee and conversation at DK’s [Eatery] in Marengo Saturday.