Sheets, Rozenboom attend Legislative Coffee

March 19--State Sen. Ken Rozenboom and Rep. Larry Sheets were in Centerville Saturday for a Legislative Coffee event held at the Chariton Valley Planning and Development office on the Centerville Square.

It was Sheets' final Legislative Coffee as he will not be seeking re-election this fall and he spoke about his experience being an elected state representative over the past several years.

"It's been an honor to represent you at the State House," said Sheets. "I had no idea what I was getting into but I really have appreciated the honor."

Throughout the event the two spoke about current legislation working through the capitol and answered questions from the audience.

Sheets highlighted Iowa's low unemployment rate, currently at 2.9 percent, but also the state's ongoing problem finding skilled workers.

"Even with nearly full employment Iowa employers still have 50,000 job openings," said Sheets. "Iowa has a skilled workforce shortage and businesses are struggling to find workers with the necessary skills to fill high paying careers."

Sheets said the Future Ready Iowa Act is an effort to address some of those issues.

"The goal of the Future Ready Iowa Act is to ensure Iowan's are trained for the jobs of today and tomorrow," said Sheets.

Sheets said the act will improve cooperation between schools, community colleges and businesses. He said it will also create a new summer youth intern program for at-risk students and will allow students to take college classes during the summer for dual high school and college credit.

Rozenboom spoke about a new proposed law that has to do with custody and divorce. He said he was looking for feedback on it. The law would say that there is a default assumption when a couple goes into court that both parents are equal.

"That passed out of the Senate ... a few days ago," said Rozenboom.

Rozenboom also spoke about proposed legislation dealing with the praxis test teachers are required to pass to teach in Iowa. The Senate passed a version saying that teachers could get a license to teach for one year while trying to pass the praxis exam while the House had passed a version that eliminated the test altogether.

Rozenboom also spoke about proposed legislation dealing with lunch shaming and lunch debt. Proposed legislation would allow schools to go after parent's tax returns if they had a debt more than $500 that the school had tried to get paid off for at least two years. Rozenboom said that the language could even be changed to lower the time to one year and the amount to $250.

"This seems to me to be a parent problem," said Rozenboom.

Some other topics that were touched on were the opioid epidemic, chronic wasting disease in deer in Iowa, spoofing, human trafficking, suicide prevention training for teachers, an extension of the SAVE tax, taxing credit unions, and more.

The two also spoke about new money that has been put into a fund to help school district's struggling with transportation costs. Sheets said the goal is to provide ongoing funding even though the funding approved this year is only for one year.

The two also spoke about legislation that has been passed dealing with money used for utility rebate programs.

"The solar people are upset with this bill because those rebates do help finance a lot solar installations," said Rozenboom.

The bill would cap the amount of money that utilities can charge customers to fund rebate programs at 2 percent and would also require them to note the charge on bills. it would also allow people to opt out of paying into the program at all.

Rozenboom also spoke about a bill the Senate passed that would allow Wellmark and Farm Bureau sell insurance that does not comply with rules of the Affordable Care Act. The policies would not technically be insurance, so they do not have to comply with the federal law. Because of that though, they could not be regulated by Iowa's insurance commissioner and would also not qualify for subsidies from the government to help with the costs. The idea is to offer policies to people, many of the farmers, who currently do not purchase insurance because it is too expensive. Many of them make too much money to qualify for federal subsidies through the Affordable Care Act.

Because these policies would not be regulated by the Affordable Care Act or by the Iowa insurance commissioner, the could do things like not cover people with pre-existing conditions or charge them more. They could offer relatively low-cost policies to healthy, younger people that make too much to qualify for subsidies.

Rozenboom was asked about how the new policies would treat people with pre-existing conditions.

"Well, we don't know what it's going to do ... ," said Rozenboom. "It has to be written.

The two were also asked about the continuing problems with Medicaid privatization including places like nursing homes not being paid in a timely manner.

"That puts that nursing home ... in a really tight spot," said Susan McDanel. "And that's what I just keep hearing about."

Both Sheets and Rozenboom agreed that there were problems.

"There are states that do it well," said Sheets. "We're not doing it well."

"... We all agree ... that it was not well rolled out," said Rozenboom. "It's no secret that there were problems."

However, he urged people to wait and see what solutions Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven could come up with.

"I hope people give him a chance," said Rozenboom. "He tells us that ... 83 percent of claims are being handled ... quickly and they're paid in full. It's the nature of all of us ... to focus on the broken parts of things but he's trying to explain that most of it's working very well."

Bill Thom, who is a member of the board of the Older Iowa Legislature, asked about cuts to the Department of Aging.

"The thing with older Iowans is this tax cut you know just about killed ever service ... like the area agencies," said Thom.

Rozenboom said there had been no tax cuts and that the reason that programs and staff that help older Iowans have been cut is because money is being redirected to education and Medicaid.

"We keep feeding the beast," said Rozenboom. "We keep feeding education and we keep feeding Medicaid and other parts of our state budget have huge problems because the big money guzzlers won't let up. They have cut nothing, absolutely nothing."

Thom said the local Area Agency on Aging in Ottumwa has laid off workers and can't even fill a couple of offices now.

"They don't have any money to pay these people so something is cut someplace," said Thom.

"It's all going somewhere else," said Rozenboom. "I've told you where it's going."

McDanel then asked why there is a proposed tax cut moving through the legislature if the state is in so much financial difficulty.

Rozenboom and Sheets said that the idea is that by cutting corporate taxes and income taxes, more businesses will come to Iowa and create more tax revenue. Rozenboom said they would also look at eliminating some tax credit.

The last bill the two spoke about was the heartbeat bill that would ban almost all abortions in the state after about six weeks. Both Sheets and Rozenboom support the bill and Sheets said that there are private groups and lawyers willing to fund a court fight over the law all the way to the Supreme Court.

"We're told that the Supreme Court has been trying to get itself out if the box that it's in with the trimester stuff that it said originally ... so It would probably get a hearing at the Supreme Court," said Sheets.

Rozenboom closed the meeting by making some remarks about Sen. Bill Dix, who recently resigned from the Senate and Republican leadership after he was caught on camera kissing a lobbyist in a Des Moines bar.

"To say that those of us who work with him every day were shocked ... is an understatement," said Rozenboom. "And I feel terrible for his family. ... It was hard for us."

Krystal Fowler can be reached at [email protected] or by calling (641) 856-6336. Follow her on Twitter @KFowler_Daily.

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