The Iowa Senate recently voted to pass Governor Kim Reynolds’ proposal to consolidate the state of Iowa’s government.

Senate File 514 cleared one hurdle of the Iowa Legislature with a vote 37 to 16 which proposes to cut the number of agencies in half from 37 to 16. Senator for District 14 Sarah Trone-Garriott (D-WDM) calls this piece of legislation a sweeping transformation of state government and consolidates power all under the umbrella of the Governor. She has concerns about how fast the bill is moving and how this will change how some departments function. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio that a number of consumer protections and government accountability pieces disappear with this bill.

“Putting up a lot of red flags for folks. So the Office of Consumer Advocate is going to be put under the attorney general. And these folks, they stand up for consumers on all kinds of utilities issues, which right now with the pipeline issue, a lot of people are really concerned about that. And the AG can just fire them if they’re investigating something that they don’t want.”

House Representative for District 28 David Young (R-Van Meter) says that this restructuring is long overdue and this legislation is about making state government more efficient. 

“We have about 37 different directors out there. Many of the states around us are in the single digits or the low teens regarding directors of different departments and agencies in their state government. And there’s a lot of duplicity and duplicating of the same programs and jobs. So this is really about streamlining our state government, making sure that it is efficient and not bloated, and making sure that it’s accountable to the people we Iowans.”

This piece of legislation is proposed to save $215 million over the span of four years and now since it passed the House, it is now in the Senate for consideration.