Updated Secular Guide to 2024 Legislation

By Robert Cook

I have just updated IAF’s Secular Guide to 2024 Legislation. The new layout is 1000% easier to read and I deleted several columns of irrelevant information.

When it comes to the actual legislation, I have sort of good news, and I have bad news.

The sort of good news: Only about 20% of all the bills I am following (that I declared for or against) survived the first funnel (were voted out of a committee).

The bad news: That 20% of bills that survived contain some of the worst and they all have a high likelyhood that they will ultimately end up on Governor Reynold’s desk. And none of the bills I declared for even got a positive vote in a subcommittee. Not one.

So we still have a lot of work to do to fight back against Christian nationalism and theocratic privilege in the Iowa Statehouse. I will do my best to keep you informed when 1) important bills are open for public input at subcommittee hearings, 2) bills advance through the process, and 3) any other legislative shenanigans against our secular government.

Please take some time and check out our Secular Guide to 2024 Legislation. It might still give you a headache, but not from trying to make out the tiny little letters.

I moved all of the bills that survived the first funnel to the top of the list.The link to the file is below. Anyone with the link can open it, read it, and share it. I encourage you to spread it far and wide everywhere you can.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sTIEhLJ83GQggh2WLx7Trfb-R91IJ5avNpLkKqdTEXs/edit?usp=sharing

Update on the Iowa Legislature

By Robert Cook

The first funnel in the Iowa Legislature is past. That means that any bill (except spending and tax related bills) that didn’t make it out of a standing committee in either the House or Senate is dead for the session*. The funnel killed a huge swath of bills both good and bad. But many of the worst did survive so we still have to remain vigilant and active.

As I said in my last post, I am now a registered lobbyist in the Iowa Legislature. I have updated my Lobbyist Declaration List to include links to the bills, brief legislative descriptions, and whether they are alive or dead. Please check it out. I think you will find it a useful reference to help IAF members keep track of the relevant bills. I will continue to update it as needed.

*”Dead” is a relative term. There are several ways to resurrect a dead bill. Leaders of the House or Senate can jointly reintroduce a dead bill. Dead bills can also be added to other bills as amendments. The leaders of the House and Senate are sneaky, Machiavellian bastards. I expect to see multiple shenanigans before the session is done.

IAF Has a Registered Lobbyist

By Robert Cook

And that lobbyist would be me. I registered on the Iowa Legislature website about a month ago and I have been busy declaring for and against (mostly against) specific bills on behalf of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. This is a way for 401c3s (like IAF), businesses, political groups, and governmental agencies to express their approval, dissent, or neutrality to our legislators as they work on the bills that are before them. I signed up because I felt that IAF should have as much say in the process as The Family Leader and Iowa Baptists for Biblical Values.

Here is a link to my declarations list on Google Drive including all of the bills I have addressed as a lobbyist. Unfortunately it didn’t preserve the links to specific bills when I downloaded the page. If you want to read and learn more about a specific bill, you will need to click here and then search for the bill. (i.e. SF123, HF234). When I have time, I will go through them all and fix the links. Until then, you’ll have to use this workaround. Sorry about that,

Instead of reading the entire bill, I recommend scrolling down until you get the the section labeled “Description.” It is a simpler explanation that doesn’t include all of the legalistic details. It will still be hard to read but not as difficult as the actual bill.

It takes a lot of time to stay on top of all these bills and there is definitely a learning curve. (Pay no attention to HF 149. That was clearly done by an idiot who didn’t know what they were doing.)

Okay, fine. I’ll tell you about HF 149 and the lessons I learned from it about how to lobby. This Bill is about corporal punishment in schools. Current law prohibits intentional physical punishment of a student. At the same time it provides certain exceptions and legal protections for teachers and employees of pubic or accredited nonpublic schools. For example, if a student acts up in class and a teacher grabs them by the shoulders and marches them down to the Principle’s office, that teacher can’t be sued for beating the child or arrested for assault and battery.

This bill extends those exceptions and protections to school volunteers and charter school employees.

I totally misread this bill.

On my first read through, I was sure that HF 149 was meant to loosen restrictions on capitol punishment. School employees should not be encouraged to beat your kids. I clicked the box that said, “against.”

Then I read through it again, and it finally sunk in that it was way more ambiguous than I first thought. I clicked on the Lobbyist Declarations link down on the left side to see what other lobbyists thought about it. They were all “undecided.” All of them. And it was a long list.

Okay, so I can just change my declaration to “undecided” like all the rest. But that original “against” was still there like a flashing neon light of embarrassment. How about if I withdraw my declaration. Nope, still there.

Apparently, every declaration you make — including changes and withdrawals — are engraved in the fabric of the universe until the heat death of matter and energy for other lobbyists to laugh at.

I won’t make that mistake again. I’ll probably find some others, but not that one.

Lessons learned: 1) Always read each bill at least twice before making a declaration. 2) Always check the Lobbyist Declarations link to see what other lobbyists have done.

So many horrible bills have been filed in the Iowa Legislature and many of them are guaranteed to pass. Please check out as many of them as you can and don’t be shy about contacting your legislators and letting them know your opinions on these bills.

Iowa Legislature Day 1: The Obligatory Magic Spell

It is opening day of the 2023 Iowa Legislature. It starts with a flurry of activity. Our legislators have a lot to do and only 110 days to get it all done. One of the first and most important items of business is to resolve that each daily session begins with a magic spell to appease Big Daddy Who Lives In the Sky.

If you don’t cast the magic spell, Big Daddy Who Lives in the Sky gets very, very angry and donors threaten to stop sending money.

And there it is, House Resolution 2, filed by Siegrist:

A Resolution to arrange for opening the sessions with prayer.

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, That a committee of one be appointed to arrange for opening the sessions with prayer.