Today’s guest post is by Larry Hodgden of Tipton. Larry is a retired Viet Nam era veteran of the USAF. He and his  wife of 40 years, Sharon, have three children and seven grandchildren who keep him very busy. Family, education, church and politics have been a lifelong passion.

As this legislative session nears the end so does this column. Not withstanding some comments about “extreme partisan negativity”, this column has presented many positive alternative approaches and attempted to inform the public about some serious flaws in proposed legislation. If you have been following this column you know our position on K-12 Education, property tax reform, on-line education, voter ID and many other issues so I won’t spend time and news space recapping them. There are other issues which are a serious threat to all of us.

How many of you, like myself, knew nothing about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) before this column? You’ll hear nothing about it from Republicans because it is a national legislative initiative with 2,000 state Republican legislators signed on to introduce copycat legislation in states with Republican majorities in the legislature. Financed by the billionaire Koch brothers and other wealthy interests, they have originated legislation such as the “Stand your ground” law passed by the Florida legislature in 2005 and signed by Jeb Bush. With the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, we find that police are hesitant to file charges and prosecutors would rather not take on the difficult task of prosecuting cases related to this law. Now we find the Iowa House Republicans have introduced and passed this same bill (HF2215).

Do we really want our legislators adopting these ideas formulated in other states by people with extreme political views? Are our legislators unable to think for themselves and in the best interest of Iowans? You will remember that recently the House Democrats walked out of the session because of Republican attempts to ram this particular bill through without proper consideration. The Republican House passed this bill but luckily the Senate Democrats stood in their way or this would now be the law in Iowa. The Republican legislator who introduced this has promised to introduce it again next year, fortunately there will be an election before then so we have the opportunity to oppose this and other bad ideas.

There should be a rule that the legislature can not waste one minute on frivolous bills like this until they have completed work on the budget, on K-12 and higher education funding, on infrastructure and on veteran’s affairs. There’s a bill in the House that has merit and that is the “Jobs impact” bill which requires a study of the impact of regulations, etc. Let’s extend that to legislation and require the public release of the impact and affect on Iowan’s of every piece of legislation introduced.

Fortunately very little damage has resulted from this year’s session, thanks in part to a divided Legislature and to major opposition by both parties to Governor Branstad’s proposals for Education and property tax reform. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Jeff Kaufmann on 10 year’s service to Cedar County. While we agree on little politically, I respect his commitment and dedication to the political process and his service to the citizens of Cedar County.