Representative’s daughter visits Iowa House

This was probably my favorite week of the session so far because my daughter Claire spent a couple of days with me in the House and because we passed a bill of tremendous importance to my constituents in Johnson County: Senate File 75. It is now headed to the governor’s desk for her signature.

Senate File 75: County Supervisor Districts

Our system of government is based, in large part, on checks and balances that prevent any one group from holding too much power. When power imbalances arise, we need to act to restore the proper balance of power.

In certain Iowa counties, power has become wildly out-of-balance with regard to county supervisor elections. Rural residents who are most affected by supervisor decisions have no influence on supervisor elections.

This bill attempts to remedy that problem by switching those counties from at-large supervisor elections to districted elections. Those districts will be in effect for the 2026 election.

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The comments I made on the floor of the House express the problem pretty well, so I share them now:

At-large voting may appear to be neutral, but in practice, it is often a tool used to disenfranchise minorities.

In at-large systems, the majority wins every seat in every local election, even if a minority community makes up a large share of the population.

The classic example of this is the Jim Crow era of the American South. Even though black Americans made up a significant portion of the population — between 30 and 50% — they couldn’t win a single election in at-large systems.

So you had a majority holding power over every single seat on city councils and county governments. That majority used at-large voting as its tool to systematically exclude the minority from local decision-making.

This is exactly what has happened in my home county of Johnson County. In the case of Johnson County, the dominant majority is the urban population. The minority is the rural and small-town population.

The urban majority wins every seat every time in local elections using its at-large system.

The second well-known problem with at-large districts is that they eliminate geographic representation. All the power centralizes. Huge areas of a district that has at-large elections have no representation.

This, too, is exactly what has happened in Johnson County. For years, Johnson County supervisors have almost all been from the small, urban area at the center of the county.

The final problem with at-large districts that I want to discuss is a natural result of the first two: when local officials all come from the same group and the same area, they are unresponsive to the concerns of the minority. Why? Because to hang onto their power, they don’t have to respond to the minority. The at-large voting system protects them from being held accountable.

Why does this urban-majority/rural-minority divide matter? Think of what a board of supervisors does. It sets policy for rural law enforcement. It sets property taxes for rural areas.

It decides whether or not to repair rural roads and bridges. It oversees rural land management. In Johnson County, the Board imposes what it calls “Village Plans” on small, rural communities.

These are the most important issues for rural residents. And county supervisors rule on all of them.

Having a board of supervisors that is really just another urban city council is incredibly unfair to rural and small-town citizens. And in Johnson County, there are about 40,000 rural and small-town citizens. That’s a population bigger than the vast majority of counties in Iowa.

Denying 40,000 people representation on the board of supervisors is simply unfair.

This is not merely theoretical. This is the frustration I hear over and over in rural and small-town Johnson County. The supervisors simply don’t respond or listen to their concerns.

It’s time for the large, rural minority in these counties to finally have a voice in county politics — to have a voice with regard to their rural law enforcement, their rural roads, their rural taxes, and their rural communities.

Rural water infrastructure projects

I know that some of our smaller communities have needs with regard to their water infrastructure, so I’m sharing this information I just received about possible grants. It looks like there is an application deadline of May 1.

If you think that I could help in some way, please let me know.

Last week, the Iowa Economic Development Authority announced that grant awards totaling more than $3.7 million have been awarded to the communities of Chelsea, Duncombe, Fort Madison, Lawler, McGregor, Mediapolis, Wellman, and Yale to assist water and sewer infrastructure projects through the Community Development Block Grant program.

The CDBG program is federally funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. IEDA is responsible for administering the CDBG funds in the non-metropolitan areas of the state.

CDBG funds enable communities to make needed improvements to water and sewer systems, improve housing conditions for low-income homeowners, provide facilities for disabled and at-risk individuals, and make transformative downtown improvements.

IEDA received 19 applications totaling $8,631,050 in funding requests. Grants are awarded based upon the benefit to low- and moderate-income people, financial need, project impact, and readiness and commitment of local resources to the project.

IEDA started with $11.8 million to allocate for CDBG water and sewer grants in 2025. Applications are currently being accepted through May 1 for a second round, while a third round is expected to open later this year, with a tentative deadline of Aug. 1.