The Iowa Legislative session has been temporarily put on hold for 30 days as COVID-19 was upgraded to community spread.

This past weekend Governor Kim Reynolds announced the first positive cases of the virus as community spread, meaning the cause of the illness was not tied to someone traveling. Iowa lawmakers responded by suspending the current session for 30 days. Before they adjourned, District 24 Senator Jerry Behn of Boone says they passed several bills related to the coronavirus. 

He says lots of appropriation bills were approved by the legislature, including $89 million for Medicaid, $1.7 million for the Healthy and Well Kids of Iowa insurance program and $525,000 to the state hygienic lab for testing of the virus. Other legislation that was approved included waiving the requirement for school districts to make up missed instructional time while they are closed.

“It repeals the waiver on July 1st of 2020. So it only gives the governor the authority to do that until July 1, 2020. We thought that was also important that any of the stuff that we did would expire on July 1, 2020.”

Behn explains the goal of why there have been so many restrictions and safeguards that have been and continue to be put in place against the 2019 novel coronavirus.

“Instead of a spike where you have a bunch of people that have to go to the hospital at the same time, if you can flatten that curve out and just not have so many people get it at the same time, then our medical places can handle that better. That’s the goal.”

The legislative session is slated to begin again on April 15th at 10am.