District 12 Senator Amy Sinclair

The second funnel week is here for the 2026 Iowa Legislative session.

Senator for District 12 Amy Sinclair says that in the past week, the Senate discussed House File 2296, which restricts local city and county governments from issuing local identification cards to residents. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio why this bill was introduced.

“We certainly want people to move to our state. We want immigrants to come, we want to be open to that, but we also want to make sure that they’ve gone through the correct route to do that. And so, from a statewide level, their official identification card from the state of Iowa ought to be issued by the state of Iowa, rather than by a local city or county.”

Sinclair mentions that this does not prohibit city or county governments from issuing identification cards that would be for employment by those entities. She adds that the bill only eliminates an official identification card from being issued by a city or a county rather than the state.