A lawmaker that spearheaded a bill that didn’t make it through the first funnel week in the Iowa Legislature and is considered “dead” for the rest of the session, is looking back at some of the reasons why that happened.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green (R-Boone) tells Raccoon Valley Radio his bill about changing how public libraries are governed and the option to levy a tax for the cities died in the first funnel week, which is a deadline for bills to make it through a committee in either the House or the Senate to remain “alive” until the next funnel week. 

Green notes the goal of the legislation was change the language from “shall” to “may” in regards to levying property taxes on libraries, thus removing the required $.06 minimum tax levy, as well as allowing city councils to make the final decisions on hiring library directors and the makeup of a library board of trustees. He talks about the reasons why he believes the bill didn’t survive.

“I probably could’ve done a better job of having conversations with my colleagues a few months ago and to tell them why this bill was coming. It’s no accident that this bill came from Representative Nordman and myself. We spotted some issues that were happening within our district and so that’s why we forced the conversation. So evidently not other legislators around the state were not seeing the same issues that we were seeing within our district. Naturally, if you can’t build consensus that there is a problem, then it’s pretty hard to pass a bill that most look at as a bill that’s searching for a problem.”    

Green adds there was one community in Guthrie and Dallas counties that had issues with the library boards. The companion bill in the House that was led by House District 47 Representative Carter Nordman (R-Panora) also died in the first funnel week.