With the 90th Iowa General Assembly now over, one Iowa lawmaker is looking back on the session.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green (R-Boone) reflects on some bills he helped run as the chair of the Senate Local Government Committee. He says a bill that got to the governor’s desk was on county compensation board reform. Green points out the legislation requires the board to show its reasons why they decided the way they did for salaries for elected county officials, and that each board member must go through training to be on the board.

Green says another local government committee bill concerned the county board of review. 

“Obviously we’ve seen a lot of assessment protest and we made it for flexible for the boards to meet so that they can hear these protests and make sure that their constituents are taken care of in that regard.”

Other bills Green saw through the legislature this session included eliminating the requirement for someone to have a high school diploma or a graduated education degree (GED) to be a tattoo artist and work on the Food Freedom Bill. Green explains that this bill cleaned up some of the regulations for someone to sell up to $50,000 of processed food within their own home if they underwent the training, such as serving food below 41 degrees. He adds another change was done for farmers market vendors.

“If they need inspection they would need to get an expensive license in every county that they sell at, and within this bill, it made it so that there’s only one statewide license that they need to get. So it’s going to be a money saver for them.”   

Green points out some major new laws that were passed this session included changes to food assistance programs, the governor’s realignment bill, and medical malpractice cap of $2 million for non-economic damages.