This Week at the Statehouse – Week 6

This week the House amended and passed their mid-year deappropriations bill. In SF 2117, the Iowa Senate is proposing to cut Iowa’s three public universities by a total of $14.6 million for the current budget, which ends June 30, 2018. This is on top of the mid-year cuts they took last year. The Iowa House is proposing $8.1 million in cuts in their committee amendment to SF 2117. Both bills have the Board of Regents decide where to make the cuts. However, in the House Appropriations Committee amendment language is included that UNI is to be held harmless with no mid-year cuts. Thank you to everyone who reached out to their lawmakers to help make this happen. The House and Senate still need to come to an agreement before it can be sent to the Governor to be signed into law.

This week also ended the Legislature’s first self-imposed funnel week. This is when a bill needs to be voted out of committee for it to remain eligible this session. Here’s a few bills we’re tracking that made it through the first funnel:

• The Future Ready Iowa bill. This is a Governor’s priority to help 70 percent of Iowa's workforce to have education, training or recognized certification beyond high school by 2025. There is no money in this bill just policy language. Budget issues will come up later this session.
• Guidelines for providing free speech on public universities.
• Changing contract bidding by Regents’ institutions for projects over $100,000
• Removing the 25th percentile requirement for passing the Praxis assessment test for teachers. The bill requires the Iowa Department of Education to require a “standard set score” instead. This score is changed every 5-7 years by the testing service.
• Requiring the Regent universities students complete a financial literacy course one-credit course prior to graduation as of July 2019. Requiring the universities have a plan for students to review employment rates, salaries and student debt in their field of study annually. And requiring the Regents to implement policy that makes information available to students of undergraduate degrees achievable in 3-academic years by July 2019.
• Creating a 15-member dyslexia task force through the Iowa Department of Education where one member of the committee would come from an institution of higher education. Among other things the report is to provide recommendations of any proposed legislation or rulemaking or any additional personnel or funding needed to address the needs of Iowa students with dyslexia; and recommendations relating to dyslexia response for specific stakeholder groups, including but not limited to parents, educators, administrators, school boards, and institutions of higher education.
• Having the Regents institutions, private colleges and community colleges post when their classes use open educational materials as opposed to text books.

The bill to eliminate tenure in the state public universities died in the first funnel.

Remember next Monday, February 19th is #UNIDay2018 at the Capitol! Check out our tweets at @nipanthercaucus. Please share your stories using the hashtag.

On February 21 President Nook will present UNI’s budget requests to the House Appropriations Committee.

As always, if you have any questions contact UNI Governmental Relations at mary.braun@uni.edu or call 319-273-6144.