Senator Tim Kapucian

Greetings from Des Moines as a busy week goes by!

This week is the first funnel week; the point in time where the Iowa Legislature begins to narrow their work load.

We started the week with over 140 bills. These bills were sponsored by our members and ended up still languishing in committee, waiting to be voted out so they can be placed on the debate calendar for full consideration by the senate.

While some of those bills have moved forward this week, many excellent pieces of legislation have unfortunately been killed by committee.

Even if some of these well thought out ideas do not remain alive through this week in bill form, we will continue to offer our suggestions through amendments as opportunities are provided.

I believe Iowans deserve a full debate on the issues and we look forward to working hard in the weeks and months ahead.

Starting next week, we will be pulling together all of the numbers to build our budget in subcommittee. Once the budget subcommittees vote out their budgets, they will be put together to form the overall state budget.

The other issue we need to address before wrapping up this year’s session will be re-districting. We hope to see the first proposal in the next couple of weeks. This happens every ten years after the Census. As many of you know, we will be losing a Congressional District. This also affects district boundaries for State Representatives and State Senators. The goal of the process is to equally distribute the population among the representatives. Every house member should represent 1/100th of the state population. Every senator represents 1/50th of the state population. Currently, that roughly translates into 30,000 and 60,000 respectively.

Re-districting can be relatively simple, if we accept the first proposal, but if we request changes it can become drawn out and eventually go to the Supreme Court. So we all hope for a plan that can be accepted by everyone early on.

If you need anything, please get in touch with me. I can be reached at:

tim.kapucian@legis.state.ia.us or 515-281-3371. See you out and about District 20.

Senator Tim Kapucian

Tama, Grundy, Benton and Iowa countie