Revenue Estimating Conference meets March 15

We are now two months into the legislative session which means debate has continued to pick up and the House has started to consider Senate bills. The same goes for the Senate, which has now begun to consider House bills that have already been passed and messaged over by the House.

Revenue Estimating Conference to Meet March 15

The state’s Revenue Estimating Conference will hold its next meeting on March 15, at 12:30 PM. This meeting will revise the fiscal estimates for the current budget (FY 2024) and for the next year, Fiscal Year 2025. The meeting will also revise the estimates for funding going into the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund.

At December’s meeting, the three-member committee estimated that General Fund revenue for Fiscal Year 2024 would be $9.7465 billion. The panel also made the official revenue forecast for the upcoming FY 2025 budget, projecting that the state would collect $9.6371 billion in the upcoming budget year. Any changes that lower the expected revenue in the upcoming fiscal year will have to be accounted for in the budget process.

In December, the REC forecast that gaming tax would collect $318.5 million in the current year and then drop to $286.7 million in Fiscal Year 2025. With the expanding competition from the west side of Missouri River becoming an even bigger factor, it will be interesting to see how the panel adjusts these numbers.

There will be new faces at the next meeting. With long-time public member David Underwood retiring from the three-member panel at the December meeting, a new voice will enter the discussion. Jeff Plagge, the recently retired Superintendent of Banking, has been selected to fill this role. In my opinion Jeff is a great pick to join the panel having worked with him before in the Governor's Office.

As with previous meetings, it is expected that the meeting will be livestreamed on the Legislative Services Agency’s YouTube page.

House Advances Energy Legislation

This week the House passed House File 2554. This bill was based on some of the recommendations provided to update Iowa’s energy laws. Over the summer, the legislature required a full review of Iowa’s utilities and ratemaking processes. This was the first comprehensive review done in 20 years, and a lot has changed in that time in the energy sector.

This bill updates Iowa’s advance ratemaking statute. Advance ratemaking is a mechanism to incentivize investing in renewable generation capacity. As the report states, “by providing certainty around recovery principles for advance ratemaking assets, rate-regulated utilities are compensated for their investment risks. This has allowed Iowa to become the top wind power producer in the nation.”

House File 2554 adds nuclear and energy storage to the list of facilities eligible for advance ratemaking and lowers the megawatt requirement for eligible generating facilities, making newer technologies available in Iowa. Alternatively, this bill gives the Iowa Utilities Board new authority to deny or approve advance ratemaking petitions and to require the filing of an integrated resource plan when a public utility is applying for older technologies like solar, wind, or battery storage.

This bill also requires the Iowa Utilities Board to study performance-based regulation for the future with a report due to the legislature by October 1, 2026.

The bill now goes to the Senate for their consideration.

House Republicans Approve Comprehensive Education Standards Review

Wednesday House Republicans approved House File 2545 requiring the Department of Education to conduct a comprehensive review of the high school graduation requirements and K-12 core curriculum. A comprehensive review has not been conducted since 2007. Scores in key subject areas have fallen since then.

The review will include plans to regularly review and revise English Language Arts, mathematics, science, and social studies standards. The review of social studies will have an emphasis on American history, civics, and western civilization.

Specifically, the review will identify the best ways to “equip high school graduates with sufficient knowledge of civics and United States history, including the principles reflected in the Constitution of the United States, so that high school graduates are capable of discharging the responsibilities associated with United States citizenship.”

Additionally, the review will outline a “statewide literacy plan to increase student proficiency make Iowa the most literate state in the United States using systematic and sequential approaches to teaching phonetic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and text comprehension.”

Input from relevant stakeholders, including parents and teachers along with legislators will be part of the review process. The director of the Department of Education will issue an initial report in December prior to the 2025 legislative session.

House Republicans Approve Detailed History and Civics Standards for K-12 Education

In 2021 the Fordham Institute released, The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History. The report evaluated the quality, completeness, and rigor of K–12 civics and U.S. History standards.

Iowa received a “D” in civics standards and an “F” in U.S. History standards. According to the report, “Iowa’s current civics and U.S. History standards are inadequate. Vagueness and overbreadth lead to a dearth of specific content in both disciplines, and there is no discernible coverage of U.S. History at the K–8 level. A complete revision of the standards is recommended.”

New history and civics standards approved by the House on Wednesday in House File 2544 will include a focus on American history, civics, geography, the American flag, the national anthem along with extended standards on Western Civilization from Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome to the present, to understand the nature of our ideals and institutions of liberty, how they came into existence, and what actions our forefathers took to preserve them.

The American history and civics standards will have an emphasis on the Constitution of the United States, with emphasis on the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution of Iowa and their original intent. The basic principles of the United States’ republican form of government. The historical development of the United States’ republican form of government. A comparison of the United States’ republican form of government with different forms of government including dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, communism, and autocracy. The structure, function, and processes of government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels. Civic virtues exemplified in the lives of famous Americans such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Abraham Lincoln.

The basic political, diplomatic, and military history of America, which shall include the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the World Wars, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and the September 11th attacks to the present. Specific information on the Holocaust and the crimes against humanity committed by communist regimes throughout history will be included.

Additionally, the basic history of business and technology in America and the basic history of the religious and secular aspects of America’s common culture will be included.

In the higher grades, substantial primary source instruction such as the Mayflower Compact, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers (including but not limited to Essays 10 and 51), the Emancipation Proclamation, and the writings of the Founding Fathers of the United States will be covered.

Any curriculum on economics will include an emphasis on the free enterprise system and its benefits. It shall include material on the failures of the communist economic system and the differences between capitalist and communist economic systems.

Regulating Temp Staffing Agencies in Health Care

Prior to COVID, temporary staffing agencies operated as a supplemental staffing resource for health care facilities, not as a solution to workforce shortage. However, since COVID, many agencies recognized the dependence health care providers had on them and they capitalized by raising pay rates and passing those increases on to providers, patients, and the state budget. $80 million of Medicaid dollars are going to health care employment agencies for nursing facilities alone. Out of the 331 health care employment agencies that operate in Iowa, 282 are out-of-state companies.

In 2022 and 2023, the legislature established Iowa Code 135Q to ensure that Iowa taxpayer funds are not being gouged by temporary staffing agencies charging health care entities unnecessarily high costs. These bills ensured that temporary nursing staffing agencies (registered nurses, LPNs, CNAs, etc.) are the target of the requirements described below.

This law helped provide transparency in pricing by requiring temp nursing agencies report quarterly a detailed list of the average amount charged to the health care entity for each agency worker category, and average amount paid by the agency to the agency workers for each worker category. These reports can be found here by selecting “health care employment agency” under the “entity type”.

The law also required health care employment agencies to register with the Department of Inspections and Appeals and Licensing, and required DIAL to investigate complaints against these agencies. Importantly, this law required agency workers to be qualified and meet health regulation requirements for the health care setting they are working in. Lastly, this bill prohibited non-competes, as it has been seen that these agencies are using non-competes for even CNA positions.

This week, the House passed additional requirements in House File 2319. This bill establishes a statewide allowable charge schedule for nursing services and prohibits temp staffing agencies from charging over 150% of the charge schedule. It is estimated that this bill will save Iowa Medicaid between $7.5 million and $12.5 million.

Veterans Treatment Court

This week, the House Veterans Affairs Committee heard a presentation from Judge Tod Deck about the Veterans Treatment Court in Woodbury County. This court is the first treatment court dedicated to veterans in Iowa. The court began in 2015 and has had over 50 veterans participate.

This court directs veterans to treatment, rather than jail. The veterans that participate have requirements developed by a treatment team of the court to improve the veteran’s situation, whether it is mental health and substance abuse treatment and/or housing and / or employment. The court is a collaboration with the criminal justice system, the VA, and community organizations, and is meant to address the unique needs of veterans. Judge Deck mentioned that the veterans that have participated in the court have an 80% graduation rate.

This program has no funding and operates by all stakeholders volunteering their time, including the judge, county attorney, public defender, probation officer and community partners. Veterans have to meet with the court every other week for over a year. Pottawattamie County has also recently started a Veterans Treatment Court.

House Committee Supports More Money for Housing Trust Fund

This week the House Ways and Means Committee passed House File 2188 unanimously. The bill removes the $7.0 million cap on the real estate transfer tax (RETT) that is deposited in the housing trust fund (HTF) and will likely result in an increase to that fund.

The housing trust fund was established for the development and preservation of affordable housing for low-income people and for the Iowa mortgage help initiative. It is funded from the real estate transfer tax. The RETT is imposed on the transfer of real estate in Iowa and is based on the assessed value of home sales. The tax is equal to $0.80 per $500 (or any fractional part of $500) of consideration paid as part of or a condition of the property transfer, with the first $500 being exempt. The tax is paid to the county.

Staying in Touch

As always, you also can shoot me an email with any questions or concerns at taylor.collins@legis.iowa.gov or you can call the Capitol Switchboard and leave me a message at (515) 281-7340.

Sincerely, Rep. Taylor Collins