District 12 Senator Amy Sinclair

The eighth week of the 2025 Iowa Legislative Session has come to a close, and with it the first funnel has come to pass as well.

Senator for District 12 Amy Sinclair says that the first funnel week is the first chance for the legislative chambers to cut down on the number of bills that they are looking at, as bills must pass a subcommittee and full committee hearing. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio what she observed from the Senate Education Committee.

“So we’ve hit that first funnel week, and we had a lot of different policy bills come out. I looked because I had a constituent ask me about education bills, and there were, coming out of Senate Education Committee, a couple dozen education bills, which I thought seemed like a lot until I heard that there were over 70 that came out of the House side. So we have a lot of bills that are coming through, but that was narrowed down from hundreds of bills that were introduced in that policy committee.”

Sinclair mentions that now, each chamber will be putting their own bills to a vote, and sending them to the other chamber for review through sub-committee, committee and a vote of the full chamber. She adds that there were about 1,500 bills introduced this year, and that by the end of session there will probably only be about 150 that cross the governor’s desk.