Around Des Moines

Landscape crews worked on the western plaza of the Capitol complex this week. As plants that stood tall through winter’s snow and ice were whacked down, the Iowa legislature left some bills caught in the second funnel’s trap. Several other bills were sent to Governor Chet Culver. According to the daily analysis reports on the Track Legislation option of the General Assembly’s website, Culver signed 14 bills this week. One of those bills was HF2194 (formerly HF2002) relating to exemptions from minimum wage for certain retail businesses.

The second funnel of the Iowa legislature is the date when most bills must be passed out of committees in the opposing chamber. Thus, House bills must pass out of Senate committees and vice versa. One bill that made it through is HF2164 which codifies what the Iowa Department of Education required earlier this year when the Des Moines Public Schools and a few other districts in the state had to drop their desegregation plans in favor of diversity plans.

A meeting of the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women (ICSW) took me to the Capitol complex this week. Culver has made five new appointments to the Commission, including former Des Moines school board president Marc Ward. The other appointee with whom I am familiar is Judy Stafford of the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevent in Sioux City. Phyllis Peters (Ames), Rizwana Amjed (Clive), and Chad Leonard (Dallas Center) rounded out the new appointees. I have covered meetings of the ICSW for Leading Voices: Iowa since late 2006. What I observed has made me intensely passionate about all the governmental commissions and boards being observed by a member of the reporting press or by citizen journalists. These things need to see the light of day because quite a few decisions affecting a huge swath of the state’s population are being made by a small circle of people whose jobs put them at the Capitol, or at city halls and county buildings, on a regular basis. Unfortunately, now that I have finished my original commitment to Leading Voices, I do not know who is going to report on the ICSW meetings for the women and men of Iowa.

As long as I was at the Capitol, I took time to watch the short morning session of the House of Representatives on March 25th. It included the reading and unanimous acceptance of a resolution recognizing women from Nigeria visiting Des Moines as part of a State Department program to strengthen the future of women politicians in Nigeria. Nafisat Lawal Musa, the deputy director of legal drafting in the ministry of justice, is observing the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women for two weeks as she works on building a human rights organization in her country.

I also had several interesting conversations with representatives of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and of Rural Electric Cooperatives. I’ve put the groups on my list of subjects to cover sometime in the future.

M.R. Field covers local events for AroundDesMoines.com.