It was standing room only as over 40 people attended the first Meet Your Legislator event of the year at the Welcome Center at Thomas Jefferson Gardens of Greene County on Saturday.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green (R-Boone) and House District 47 Representative Carter Nordman (R-Panora) were on hand. Before the forum started, attendees were asked to write down a question or a concern that they had for the legislators. Then after Green and Nordman  each gave an update, the moderator, Rick Morain, started with the topic that had over one dozen questions pertaining to proposed changes to public libraries. 

Green started by saying he heard from city councils and city administrators had issues with unfunded mandates from the state to levy taxes on, including libraries. However, Green said he focused his bill on allowing cities to change their ordinances of how a library director is chosen by the city council. Nordman said he was disappointed with the Iowa Library Association claiming that the organization is lying to the public and are acting in bad faith because he agreed with allowing a change for the library system to be by ordinance for more flexibility for city councils. Both agreed that the bill doesn’t target, and they are not intending it to target content within a library.

The other main topic of discussion was about the proposed changes to the Area Education Agencies (AEAs). Green told the crowd that he wants to empower school boards more flexibility in spending funds and control of what entity should be getting funds for services, but that 99-percent of the services the AEA offers won’t change. Nordman said the governor’s AEA bill was shut down by the House Education Subcommittee and now the House is looking at an entirely different bill. He added that the AEA chiefs were also in favor of some kind of reform and need for better proficiency in special education services. He also believes the salaries for the nine AEA chiefs is incredibly high and both Nordman and Green thought the Department of Education should have oversight of the AEAs.

Other topics that were covered included parsitan city elections, which both opposed; if there were bills that changed the legislator’s minds due to strength of argument and not politically, and mental health issues. 

Thomas Jefferson Gardens Board member Alexis Stevens thought the event went well.

“We had probably more people than we’ve ever had. I think people are really concerned about the issues that are going on down in Des Moines right now, and they wanted more clarification. You know, we didn’t even get to all of our questions. We were here for an hour (and) we could’ve sat here for another couple of hours, our crowd was so big.”

The next Meet Your Legislator event will take place March 9th at 10am.