It’s only been three weeks since the start of the 2019 Iowa Legislative session, but for one new lawmaker, he’s already filed his first bill.

District 47 Representative Phil Thompson of Jefferson is sponsoring a bill to change current Iowa Code to allow public school boards more authority in determining how long students can ride the bus. The current law is that students can ride the bus up to 60 minutes, but Thompson’s bill increases that time to 75 minutes, with the ability for school boards to hold public hearings if they believe more time should be added to certain routes.

“Some school boards are put in some pretty tough positions as far as figuring out how to get those bus routes down. And obviously sending out another bus route costs a lot more money.”

Thompson points out by making this change, it gives more local control to individual school boards, which Thompson believes they should know more about their situation than the lawmakers would at the statehouse.

“We trust those people and if we think they made a bad decision than obviously we can hold them accountable for that. But what I don’t like is, especially an administrative rule, restricting what they can do, and really taken a lot of control of a lot of our resources out of their hands.”

Thompson hopes his bill gets some momentum and is able to be passed through the House and Senate and signed into law by the end of this year’s session.