State Reps. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, and Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, sponsored the legislation to remove sexual orientation and gender identity as definitions used for purposes of protecting students in public and nonpublic schools from harassment and bullying.

Schultz told NBC affiliate WHO-TV that the rationale behind the move is to force a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, since the Iowa Supreme Court pointed to laws like Iowa’s Safe Schools Law in making its April decision to legalize same-sex marriage. Ryan Roemerman, executive director of Iowa Pride Network, said the bill would open up LGBT students to bullying and harassment.

“When our state is facing record budget deficits and unemployment, House Republicans feel their time is best spent picking on Iowa’s LGBT youth,” Roemerman said in a statement. “There is no better example as to why we have this law, so youth in Iowa don’t grow up to be like these bigots.”

(Source: Wikipedia)

But instead of shutting down, payday lenders in some of the same states that passed reforms continue making payday loans – and sometimes at higher rates than before the laws were enacted, according to public policy experts and consumer advocates who follow the payday industry.

As Iowa lawmakers consider going down a similar path — legislation that gives payday lenders the option of capping rates and fees at 36 percent or capping the number of loans per borrower at six — advocates say the fear of loopholes should not derail tougher payday regulation.

“This legislation would go far in cracking down on many of the predatory practices by these lenders, and should a loophole be found, not all will go to the effort to exploit it,” said Matthew Covington, an organizer for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. “And then the legislature could see the true vicious nature of the worst of them, and act to close any loopholes that may exist.”

Skirting tougher regulation

Despite promises that tougher payday lending laws would kill the industry, most major payday lenders in states that did pass new laws are still are in business, using loopholes in existing small loan laws or circumventing new laws entirely to continue charging triple digit annual interest rates, in some cases as high as nearly 700 percent, advocates contend.  Lenders issue loans in the form of a check, then charge the borrower to cash it. They roll into the loan a $10 credit investigation fee – then never do a credit check. Or they simply change lending licenses and transform themselves into car title companies, or small installment loan firms, while still making payday loans.

“In Ohio, New Mexico, Illinois and Virginia, every major payday lender is violating the intent of the law,” said Uriah King, senior policy associate with the Center for Responsible Lending. “I’ve been involved in public policy issues for a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“It is kind of astonishing. The more I look into it, the more brazen the practices are. Payday lenders, as a trade association, have consistently circumvented the intent of legislative efforts to address their practices.”

Payday lenders strongly refute that contention. Steven Schlein, a spokesman for the Community Financial Services Association of America, a payday lending trade group, said it’s simply untrue that payday lenders are circumventing the law in Ohio, or in any other state. “That argument is untenable,” he said. “It just shows you that our critics are really just anti-business.”

The dispute over Ohio’s payday lending practices began after voters upheld a 28 percent interest rate cap on payday loans in November of 2008, and many payday lenders began operating under several small loan laws already on the books.  The legislature approved the cap in the spring of 2008, and payday lenders fought back with the voter referendum, but failed.

The small loan laws, which have been in existence for decades, are intended to govern installment loans, not single-payment, two-week payday loans. Payday lending opponents say the lenders are exploiting those laws to avoid the 28 percent rate cap. Lenders contend they are legitimately licensed by the state to make the small loans.

Some 800 of the Ohio’s 1,600 payday lending stores have shut down since rates were capped – and the rest are “trying to make a go of it” by adhering to the small loan laws, said Ted Saunders, CEO of CheckSmart Financial Co., a national payday lender with more than 200 stores in 10 states. “We’re lending money for far less than we did when all this started,” he said. “This is not business as usual. The activists just want to put us out of business entirely.”

Those activists are pushing the Ohio legislature to move once again, to close the loopholes in the loan laws by placing them all under the 28 percent cap. More than 1,000 payday lenders already have gotten licenses to make short-term loans under the old small loan laws, which allow for high origination fees and other charges, according to a report by the Housing Research & Advocacy Center in Cleveland.

Under those laws, for a 14-day loan of $100, lenders can charge an origination fee of $15, interest charges of $1.10, and a  $10 credit investigation fee, for a total amount of $126.10, or a 680 percent annual interest rate.

Disregarding the spirit of the law

David Rothstein, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, an advocacy group that pushed for payday lending limits, said testers for his group found that lenders sometimes told borrowers certain loan amounts, such as $400, were not allowed. But they could borrow $505. Loans over $500, according to the small loan laws, allow lenders to double origination fees to $30. Lenders also often issued the check for the loan from an out of state bank, but said borrowers could cash it immediately if they did so at their store – for another fee, often 3 to 6 percent of the loan total. Testers contended employees at some of the stores laughed as they explained the procedures, saying they were only trying to get around the new law.

In other cases, lenders directed borrowers to go get payday loans online, where rates can be higher.

“The General Assembly, in a bipartisan manner, passed a strong law on these loans and the governor signed it,” Rothstein said. “Then, the industry took it directly to the voters, who reaffirmed support for the law by some 60 percent despite the millions of dollars spent by the industry to overturn the law. This is a slap in the face. They are absolutely disregarding the spirit of the law that was passed.”

Saunders, however, said consumer advocacy groups promised that low-cost payday lending alternatives would pop up once the law was passed – but that hasn’t happened. Instead, there’s been an increasing demand for payday lending services by strapped consumers.

“Should we be further eliminating access to credit in a bad economy?” Saunders asked. “We exist because we’re still the least expensive option for a lot of people.”

People hit by high overdraft fees from banks or faced with late charges on multiple bills sometimes decide that taking out a payday loan can be a cheaper alternative, he said.

Based on those kinds of arguments, the debate in Ohio now has shifted from how to best enforce the new law to arguing again over the merits of payday lending. Payday lenders are contending that curbing payday lending in a recession hurts low-income borrowers, and results in job losses. Lawmakers have yet to move on the latest bill to end the loopholes. King, of the Center for Responsible Lending, said that while payday reform advocates have fought in the past to make sure new laws were followed, Ohio marks the first time where the payday lending debate seems to have started over entirely.

“I haven’t seen that elsewhere,” he said. “Ohio is something new. I think there is some degree of frustration as to why we are redeliberating every aspect of this issue. It’s made a tough issue even tougher.”

The industry fights back

Ohio isn’t alone in dealing with pushback from payday lenders, even after laws are passed.

In Virginia, payday lenders responded to laws passed last year to limit their fees by reinventing themselves as car title lenders, while still essentially making payday loans, said Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America. Car title loans are high-rate loans usually secured by the borrower’s car.

State officials ordered payday lenders in December to stop making car title loans to borrowers who already had a car title loan outstanding, and to start filing liens on borrowers’ vehicles, as is the usual practice with car title loans.

In New Mexico, the state attorney general sued two small installment lenders, contending they used a legal loophole to continue charging extremely high rates on short term loans – in some cases, more than 1,000 percent. In both New Mexico and Illinois, the payday lending lobby supported reform laws, but then began using the small loan laws once the new limits took effect, CRL’s King said.

For other states, such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Oregon, state lawmakers or the attorney general had to go back and tighten laws or ramp up enforcement after initial payday reform legislation failed to rein in high fees. In Arkansas, an effort to end payday lending would up involving the state Supreme Court and an aggressive campaign by the attorney general.

In Ohio, Saunders said payday lenders will be gone entirely if lawmakers move to limit their use of the small loan laws. The additional fees allowed by those laws, he said, are “the cost of doing business,” and companies like his can’t realistically operate without them. His solution is to launch a state wide financial literacy campaign, in which CheckSmart will provide an expert to train nonprofit groups and churches and provide them with a variety of resources to help consumers with budgeting and saving issues. The campaign won’t involve marketing payday loans or pushing any products. Saunders said he took on the idea after several lawmakers during the 2008 debate told him his firm needed to have a higher community profile. Providing financial literacy help, he said, will highlight CheckSmart’s good corporate citizenship.

“In 2010, financial literacy is a big part of what we’ll do going forward,” he said. “It’s not a conflict of interest. We’re going to be giving good, sound financial advice for free. I have nothing to hide. Look, no amount of financial literacy would solve every person’s financial shortfalls. If consumers were being served by other sectors, we wouldn’t be here. This is a way of saying, “We’re the good guys.’”

While consumer advocates may not see it that way, attempts in Ohio to limit charges on short-term loans also have been hampered by confusion over who should take the lead — the governor, lawmakers, the attorney general, or state agencies, Rothstein said. As that fight goes on, the question of how much people in financial peril should have to pay for a short-term loan remains as unresolved as ever, in Ohio and in many other states.

Iowa CCI’s Covington said when legislation passed in 2007 toughening restrictions on car title loans, many of those businesses began doing payday loans instead.

“Here in Iowa, we’ll have to look at lenders maybe going to offer lines of open ended credit, but I don’t know how much of an issue that will be, given that they will no longer have a personal check to hang over one’s head,” he said.

The bill, which has 34 co-sponsors in the Iowa House, is currently in a Commerce subcommittee made up of Democratic state Reps. Andrew Wenthe of Hawkeye, , Bob Kressig of Cedar Falls and Michael Reasoner of Creston, and Republican state Reps. Thomas Sands of Wappello and Erik Helland of Grimes. A coalition of group’s is pushing for passage, including the Iowa Catholic Conference, the Child and Family Policy Center and the Attorney General’s office.

“From what I know and have seen, this is the most momentum this issue has had in many years and a great coalition pushing for its passage,” Covington said. ” I am optimistic, but know we’ve got to keep pushing”

Scott Brown, the Republican newly elected to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has been surprisingly forthcoming about his vote in favor of the health reforms adopted by Massachusetts a few years back — reforms that include the same individual coverage mandate that many Republicans on Capitol Hill have declared unconstitutional.

And while many Republicans are spinning Brown’s victory as an indictment of the Democrats’ health reform push, The Washington Post’s Alec MacGillis today points out the inaccuracy of that argument.

Brown, he writes, “rode to victory on a message more nuanced than flat-out resistance to universal health coverage: Massachusetts residents, he said, already had insurance and should not have to pay for it elsewhere.”

“We have insurance here in Massachusetts,” he said in a campaign debate. “I’m not going to be subsidizing for the next three, five years, pick a number, subsidizing what other states have failed to do.”

What Brown failed to mention is the inconvenient fact that the Massachusetts reform plan (1) focused on coverage, not cost containment (not exactly an approach championed by the fiscally conservative), and (2) relies heavily on federal subsidies to fund an expansion of the state’s Medicaid and CHIP programs, among others. In October, the New England Journal of Medicine, using state data, reported that the federal government dedicated $688 million to Massachusetts health care in 2006, before the reforms took effect. In 2007, after the reforms were in place, that number jumped to $816 million. In 2008, it was $888 million. Last year, it was projected to approach $1.3 billion.

So while Brown says he’s not going to subsidize what other states failed to do, other states are busy subsidizing what Massachusetts has done. He should at least acknowledge that fact as he continues to oppose the Democrats’ proposals.

Mike Lillis covers Congress for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site. ]]> http://iowaindependent.com/26171/the-irony-of-scott-brown%e2%80%99s-opposition-to-health-care-reform/feed 0 http://iowaindependent.com/25991/house-committee-to-take-up-lobbyist-gift-bill http://iowaindependent.com/25991/house-committee-to-take-up-lobbyist-gift-bill#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:44:12 +0000 Jason Hancock http://iowaindependent.com/?p=25991 State lawmakers will discuss rules governing public disclosure of lobbyist-sponsored legislative parties Wednesday at 11 a.m.

Iowa law currently dictates that lobbyists file disclosure reports within five business days following the date of receptions they host during a legislative session where all lawmakers are invited. Those reports must be filed with the legislative ethics committee.

House Study Bill 506 changes to deadline from five business days to 21 calendar days. But the report must now be filed with the nonpartisan Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (IECDB), a key change good-government advocates say will drastically improve the process.

In 2005, lawmakers stripped the IECDB of its oversight authority of lobbyist-funded events, and the result, some say, was a dramatic drop in the number of “session reports” being filed. There were 117 reports filed in 2005. That number dropped to 101 in 2006 and 104 in 2007. By 2009, only 90 reports were originally filed concerning lobbyist-sponsored functions held during the legislative session where all lawmakers were invited. That number increased to 101 after problems with the system came to light.

The situation came to a head after state Rep. Kerry Burt, D-Waterloo, was arrested last year for drunk driving the same night he attended a reception at Embassy Suites in downtown Des Moines that was paid for by the Iowa Pharmacy Association (IPA). The reception was attended by 20 lawmakers and Gov. Chet Culver.

It took five months for the IPA to file its “session report,” and it only did after reporters began asking questions about the party in light of Burt’s arrest.

The legislation being discussed Wednesday does not appear to address another concern with current rules governing lobbyist parties. Section 68B.31 of Iowa’s campaign law lays out the powers, responsibilities and format of the legislative ethics committees. It can prepare rules relating to lobbyists and lobbying activities, issue non-binding advisory opinions interpreting the intent of constitutional and statutory provisions, recommend legislation and hear complaints against legislators or lobbyists. But neither the House nor the Senate has the powr to initiate an investigation on their own, meaning someone has to discover a violation took place and file a complaint before the ethics committees can get involved.

UPDATE AT NOON: The House Ethics Committee passed HSB506 unanimously.

The alfalfa seeds in question, like most of Monsanto’s products, are resistant to the active ingredient glyphosate used in the company’s trademark Roundup herbicide. Although the seeds were initially approved for use in 2005 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the approval was done after the department determined it did not need to conduct a formal environmental review. Environmental groups and a conventional seed company, Geertson Seed Farms, began their lawsuit in 2006 to force federal officials to fully explore the environmental impacts of the seed.

A federal judge agreed that a full review should have been completed by the USDA prior to approval of the seed, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling. Although farmers who had already planted the crop were allowed to continue, Monsanto was barred from further distribution of the product. In October 2009, Monsanto filed with the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of the case.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, called the case “truly a ‘David versus Goliath’ struggle.” His organization joined in the 2006 lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of non-profits and farmers who wished to retain the choice for plant alfalfa which was not genetically modified. Although such an argument would be a moot point in Iowa due to a 2005 law that prevents local authorities from deciding what types of crops will be grown, the case originated in Oregon where local entities can still determine the types of crops that will be allowed.

As the case has made its way through the courts, the USDA has continued processing an environmental review of the seed, and began a 60-day comment period on its draft impact statement in mid-December.

“That Monsanto has pushed the case all the way to the Supreme Court, even though the USDA’s court-ordered analysis is now complete, and the U.S. government actively opposed further litigation in this matter, underscores the great lengths that Monsanto will go to further its mission of patent control of our food system and selling more pesticides,” Kimbrell said.

Environmental groups point out that alfalfa is the first perennial crop, open-pollinated by bees, that has been genetically engineered. While farmers have learned to take steps to prevent contamination of modified crops to non-modified crops, environmentalists argue that insects are not as easily trained and can cross-pollinate at distances of several miles. Alfalfa is primarily used for livestock feed, and is planted in the spring or fall. The U.S. currently has about 22 million acres of alfalfa, according to documents filed with the court, and, due primarily to the court-ordered delay of Monsanto distribution, roughly 1 percent are planted with the modified seeds.

While the case the U.S. Supreme Court is set to review specifically addresses alfalfa seeds, there is another Monsanto biotech crop at risk — one in which the company has far more invested. In September 2009, a California judge ruled that the USDA wrongly approved the sale of modified sugar beet seeds in 2005, and also ordered the federal agency to more fully review the environmental impacts of the crop. While the judge did not specifically order a ban on distribution of the seed, the environmental groups who brought the case are now seeking a similar court injunction as was placed on alfalfa, pending the more extensive impact statement from the USDA.

While modified alfalfa makes up only 1 percent of the U.S. crop, modified sugar beets — which provide the U.S. with half of its sugar — comprise more than 90 percent.

“[The] USDA’s regulatory approval process was short-circuited without any hearing to consider the views of impacted farmers and consideration of sound science,” Stephen Walker, lead for Monsanto’s alfalfa and sugar beet interests, said in a prepared statement. “We view the Supreme Court’s action to hear our appeal as important for American farmers and look forward to presenting our case to the Supreme Court in the coming months. We believe alfalfa growers deserve choice in the products that are available to them.”

In a brief filed with the court, the Washington Legal Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for free enterprise, urged the Supreme Court Justices to review the case and overturn “an appeals court decision that virtually requires a federal court to grant an injunction against proposed federal action whenever it finds that the federal government has not adequately completed a required environmental impact statement in compliance with federal law.” The organization believes that constraints granted under the National Environmental Policy Act should be automatically denied unless they are awarded on a basis to prevent irreparable harm.

“Unfortunately, environmental groups have been permitted for too long to use injunctions granted under NEPA to delay indefinitely those federal policies with which they disagree,” said Richard Stamp, chief counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation.

Justice Stephen Breyer will not take part in the case because his brother, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, issued the initial 2007 ruling against Monsanto.

The study, commissioned by Cedar Rapids-based environmental law center Plains Justice, found that CAFOs can serve as breeding grounds for bacteria and dangerous pathogens.

“My hope is that this report will help legislators and the public understand the potential health risks that confined animal feeding operations pose,” said Donna Wong-Gibbons, a public health specialist with Plains Justice who wrote the report. “In addition, I hope that it will help underscore the important role that agencies like the Iowa Department of Natural Resources can play in helping reduce these risks so that we can all benefit from safer practices.”

According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report, Iowa ranks first in the nation for both hog and egg production and second in the nation for commercial red meat production. This translates into large numbers of animals being raised in the state while the total number of farms in Iowa has declined. The result is a smaller overall number of facilities housing many animals in a relatively small area.

Health professionals fear the health impacts that could arise from these facilities, including an increase in treatment resistant bacteria. CAFOs are also considered breeding grounds for new viruses. When the H1N1 virus first began making headlines, many felt CAFOs were to blame.

There are also serious concerns over air quality for residents living near CAFOs. Among the health effects documented for CAFO workers are altered lung function and an assortment of respiratory complications including a worsening of existing asthma, asthma-like symptoms, and chronic bronchitis. Workers in hog confinement facilities have also been identified as being at risk for hydrogen sulfide poisoning as a result of prolonged exposure.

Gibbons calls for several steps that could be taken, both at the state and federal level, to protect public health — improved monitoring and surveillance of air quality in areas surrounding CAFOs; remove arsenic from poultry feed; and include CAFO workers in vaccination programs to help stop the spread of animal-to-human disease, among others.

“The Plains Justice report proposes some science-based, but common-sense, approaches to reducing the health and environmental risks posed by CAFOs,” said Francis Thicke, a farmer and candidate for state Agriculture Secretary. “Policy makers should take heed.”

The comparison, though, isn’t as clear cut as Cillizza would like to believe.

From Cillizza’s blog:

Chet Culver/Ted Strickland: A cold chill almost certainly went down the spines of the governors of Iowa and Ohio when they heard about Ritter’s retirement. Both Culver, in Iowa, and Strickland, in Ohio, find themselves in positions similar to Ritter — once considered unbeatable they have seen their state’s faltering economies (and their responses to it) erode their popular support. Do one or both men reconsider their re-election plans as a result?

For starters, I can’t remember Culver ever being considered “unbeatable,” but his popularity has certainly taken a nose dive over the course of the last year, with the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll finding the first-term Democrat with a 40 percent approval rating in November.

The comparison to Ritter goes deeper than just plummeting approval ratings. Both have also had a prickly relationship with organized labor, traditionally considered the base of the Democratic Party.  Culver drew labor’s ire when he vetoed an expansion of collective bargaining rights back in 2008, and in 2007 Ritter struck down a bill making it easier for workers to form unions.

But where Culver has made some efforts to repair his relationship with labor, namely coming out strongly in support of prevailing wage legislation during the 2009 General Assembly (even though he spoke out after the bill was considered dead), Ritter vetoed two more labor-backed bills during 2009. Those vetoes resulted in union members protesting the governor with signs asking, “Why does Ritter hate working families?”

The other big difference is the Republican opposition. Ritter knew who his likely Republican opponent was going to be, as former Colorado Congressman Scott McInnis had emerged as the clear front runner. For Culver, Republicans are looking at a contentious primary that as of now has four potential candidates. While he is losing to two of the four candidates in recent polls, the uncertainty of who he will face off with in November (and how damaged that candidate is after a bloody primary) will likely keep him in the race.

Iowa is also a more hospitable climate for Culver than Colorado was for Ritter. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in Iowa by more than 100,000 voters. In Colorado, the parties are nearly even in registered voters.

So, while Culver is certainly in danger, the likelihood that he will retire instead of seeking re-election is incredibly remote.

The year began with another in a string of disappointing legislative sessions. None of labor’s four priorities — choice of doctor, prevailing wage, open-scope bargaining and fair share — garnered the 51 votes needed in the Iowa House to pass, despite a 56-44 Democratic majority that organized labor helped build.

Then the economy crashed, creating a gaping hole in the state’s budget that was filled with across-the-board cuts. The group most affected by these cuts was public sector employees, who agreed to re-open their contracts in order to avoid nearly 500 layoffs.

Now, with the 2010 General Assembly set to gavel into session next week, more budget cuts are on the horizon. So while their four principal legislative goals remain unchanged, the focus has shifted to ensuring legislators make sound budget decisions and avoid massive layoffs.

“Because of what we went through the last couple months with having to sit down with the governor to come up with an understanding and then having a statewide vote by our members to take five unpaid days to save 479 jobs, our priorities have shifted somewhat,” said Danny Homan, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Iowa Council 61.

AFSCME’s members are understandably concerned, Homan said, and “some are probably very pissed off.” The bulk of what has been done to this point to balance the state budget “has been done on the back of the state’s employees,” and now they are worried about what will happen to them in the next fiscal year.

“At some point, doing more with less just breaks down, and I think we’re at that point,” he said. “I think we have to figure out how to keep what we have, because we just can’t keep doing more with less. The less is running out.”

Homan said one of the first goals would be to work out an early retirement package so that some state workers can leave their jobs voluntarily instead of being forced out. The union is also going to push for a comprehensive overhaul of the state’s workforce.

“The system right now is heavy on management,” he said. “We want to go in and take a look at the level of management we have in state government and make sure that’s at an appropriate level and come up with ways to, instead of always laying off the folks who do the front-line work, maybe eliminating some middle management positions that have grown during good times.”

The hardest work, though, will be reworking Iowa’s tax system to make it fairer, said Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO.

“We are at one of those critical points where we as a state are going to have to decide how we’re going to do things in the future,” Sagar said. “Are we going to continue to give tax breaks to people so they can buy airplanes, or, are we going to take those tax breaks back and fund education?”

Legislators, especially in the wake of the film tax credit scandal, have already vowed to look at all tax credits offered by the state to evaluate their worth. Homan said that while no one wants to pay more taxes, there are obvious examples of tax breaks that benefit the few that could be eliminated.

“You don’t pay any sales tax on ostriches,” he said. “Somebody that goes out and buys an airplane, they don’t pay a sales tax on an airplane, nor do they pay sales tax on the parts to repair that airplane. Clearly, legislators don’t want to raise taxes, but there are things they can do that won’t raise a single tax on a large majority of Iowans.”

Another example of smart budgeting would be combined corporate reporting, which would close a tax loophole allowing multi-billion dollar corporations that do tens of millions of dollars of business in Iowa to avoid paying Iowa income taxes, said Marcia Nichols, political and legislative director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Iowa Council 61.

“For a corporation to come in here and make money off of Iowa citizens and pay no taxes, we’ve been harping on that for eight years now,” she said. “That’s not going to affect the average citizen, but it will put more money in the state government to allow us to continue to provide services to the most vulnerable citizens and education of our children.”

Four principles

Despite an historic budget crisis, Nichols said labor will still be working to pass the four principles it has been advocating for many years. While the votes are there in the state Senate, in the House a handful of Democrats have blocked the passage of labor’s priorities. And when a bill expanding collective bargaining rights of public employee unions cleared the legislature in 2008 it was vetoed by Gov. Chet Culver.

Republicans and business groups like the Association of Business and Industry have been adamantly opposed to labor’s agenda. House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, told the Mason City Globe-Gazette that as long as the labor bills remain on the table, some employers would not invest in Iowa or its work force.

Sagar points to one of the four bills — changing Iowa workers’ compensation law to allow employees the right to designate a doctor to treat them for workplace injuries — as an example of the hypocrisy of the opposition.

“When people were opposing health care reform, one of the principal things they talked about is that ‘By God, we have to make sure you don’t lose the ability to choose your own health care provider,’” he said. “And yet, here in Iowa it seems to be almost sacrilegious for people to choose their health care provider if they happen to be injured on the job. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”

One unlikely ally labor has garnered is Steve Deace, the host of a Christian program on Iowa’s largest radio station and an influential voice in the social conservative community. While he doesn’t necessarily support labor’s agenda, he called Republicans “hypocrites” for opposing things like “choice of doctor.”

“They don’t want to let the little guy go to the doctor of his choosing, yet they’re also concerned the Mitt Romney-[Barack Obama] health care omnibus bill is going to allow the government to dictate what health care you can get and from whom,” he said. “Huh?”

Deace also pointed to prevailing wage, which would require contractors to pay the same hourly wages and benefits on public projects as they would pay on private sector projects, as an example of Republican hypocrisy.

“A lot of the same Republicans railing against things like prevailing wage also have no problem with raiding taxpayer money for their corporate buddies,” he said. “For example, how many of the top Republican donors in Iowa are getting rich off of taxpayer-subsidized industries like ethanol or state-sanctioned gambling?”

If corporations and millionaires are going to be allowed to “raid the treasury, then it’s only fair to let the little guy who does most of the living and dying in this state get his cut as well,” Deace said.

Election year power

In recent years, national and international unions have played a significant role in Iowa elections. In 2008, AFSCME International donated $346,000 to the political action committee of its Iowa local, AFSCME Iowa Council 61. Among other big unions donors were the Service Employees International Union, which donated $125,000 to its local, and the Laborers’ International Union of Illinois, which contributed $200,000 to the Great Plains Laborers’ Council Iowa PAC.

That money helped Democratic candidates and county parties around the state, and Democrats expanded their majorities in both the House and Senate.

But after Democratic majorities failed to move key components of organized labor’s agenda from 2007 to 2009, some Democrats are quietly concerned that national labor groups won’t direct resources to Iowa, instead moving on to other states where large investments seem more likely to pay dividends.

Homan said who the union ultimately supports will be up to the members, just like it has always been.

“Who our members want to go out and work for are the candidates we will work for,” he said. “Frankly, it’s never been about how much money this union gives. It’s about people we can put in the streets working for candidates. We will work for candidates who will work for working people issues.”

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said during a time of economic trouble, labor bills would help bolster the state’s middle class.

“We’d like to grow the middle class in Iowa and we think those issues will help strengthen the voice of ordinary people in the work place, and that’s important,” he said. “It’s hard to tell whether the votes are there to pass them. I can’t say I know at this point what the best opportunities are, but if we find the votes we will certainly go forward with them.”

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and his family (file photo)

Dodd held a press conference at his home Wednesday making his retirement from the Senate official. He will not seek a sixth term in office, and recent polling indicates even if he didn’t retire he’d likely be out of a job by November.

But back in 2007, with his home-state popularity still high, Dodd entered the Democratic presidential primary. And while Connecticut voters initially had no problem with Dodd seeking the country’s highest office, his campaign, and the subsequent move his family made to Iowa in October 2007, marked the beginning of his constituency souring on him.

From the Courant:

Dodd’s problem was that he became the guest who wouldn’t leave after the party was over. Things were turning sour in Connecticut, and the folks wanted him back home, not taking up residence half a country away.

Iowa was the first white cap in a brewing perfect storm.

As The Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis points out, the presidential campaign was quickly overshadowed in Connecticut by a number of other issues.

Then the money started pouring in from Wall Street — and it didn’t help that, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd was on the campaign trail through much of 2008 as the economy was toppling under the weight of Wall Street’s collapse.

Then came more revelations of Dodd’s connections to the banking industry. In summer of 2008, Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd had been given preferential rates when he refinanced two mortgages through Countrywide Financial. In February of last year, the Hartford Courant uncovered that another industry connection had yielded Dodd a sweetheart deal on a vacation cottage in Ireland. One month later, he was embroiled in the AIG bonus scandal — and it didn’t matter that it was the White House, not Dodd, that was culpable for allowing those bonuses to be paid. The populist champion was morphing into a baron of industry.

And while President Barack Obama may not agree, candidate Obama made it clear during an Iowa campaign stop in December 2007 that it was behind-closed-doors negotiation that doomed health care reform during the Clinton administration.

During a speech to a crowd in Washington, Iowa, Obama said the Clintons failed at health care reform because “they went about it the wrong way, they went behind closed doors and tried to come up with a plan without even including some members of Congress, including members of their own party.”

He went on to say he would try to work differently: “This is all going to be on C-SPAN, the American people will be watching, so it’s not behind closed doors, it’s open.”

Here is an Iowa Independent video of the speech:

Obama followed up his comments during a debate the next month, where he said he favored “broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process.”

Blogging at The Des Moines Register, political consultant Graham Gillette, who attended the above speech, called for Obama to apologize for going back on his promise to hold health care negotiations in public.

“We will never know what price we Americans have paid for these closed door meetings, because the President has opted to govern as usual instead of abiding to the lofty promises he made on snowy days when he was a candidate to bring change and openness,” Gillette wrote. “I know it is silly, but as a person who cheered him that cold day in Washington, Iowa and on countless other days and sites across the country when he said he would open the doors to his White House, I kind of feel he owes me a personal apology.”