Finish Line Push
The Iowa legislative session came to a close shortly before midnight Wednesday…and many woke up Thursday morning surprised about a couple of bills that were pushed through in the last hours and quickly signed by the governor.
You have to go back a ways to find a time when a governor held a midnight bill signing ceremony, but it happened very early yesterday morning…a bill that, in part, codified what the attorney general had suggested earlier…namely, that no local government could put a more stringent “mask mandate” in place than was the case under state order. This was even broader, including school districts. That led to a scramble Thursday morning, as schools had to send alerts to parents saying they could no longer legally require masks, and that they were now optional. But there’s the federal bus mandate, still requiring masks…at least that’s the Waterloo schools’ interpretation.
Again, the interesting part of that bill was that it not only went into effect immediately upon the governor’s signature…but she signed it literally as the ink on the paper was drying. That made it far harder for a court challenge to be filed temporarily stopping implementation of the law…since schools had already removed the masks before the courthouse opened. It also took away one of the arguments opponents would have used in court, regarding potential harm to individuals if the law went into effect.
And while the legislature passed changes to Iowa’s voting laws earlier this session…there was a separate law passed in the final hours changing the rules for absentee ballots. Again, that’s one that will lead the heads of those on the left to explode.
But as noted in past weeks, Iowa voters gave Republicans an even bigger majority in the legislature in the last election, so it’s not inappropriate to think that they view the results as a mandate…or at the very least, a vote of support for their campaign promises. Failure to act would be held against them next election.
So those out of power are not happy…but as we well know, elections have consequences.
