Lawmakers get an earful at forum
By Bob Fenske
Local librarians and their patrons came to Saturday’s legislative forum en masse and voiced their concerns to two area state lawmakers about bills making their way through the Legislature that they say are either not needed or a threat to the institutions.
And while State Sen. Sandy Salmon, R-Janesville, and State Rep. Charley Thomson, R-Charles City, did get a chance to provide updates on the 2025 session of the Iowa Legislature, this was a forum that was dominated by libraries.
Yet both Salmon and Thomson said that the bills — most notably one that would make libraries subject to Iowa’s obscenity laws without exemptions for education, art or history — are needed because they claim there are public libraries in some Iowa communities that have inappropriate books in them.
That’s phooey, said New Hampton Public Library Director Carrie Becker. Instead, she said the bill is one in search of a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.
“Parents were terrified in Iowa because people said they’re giving sex books to your toddlers and that’s just not happening,” she said. “There are already laws in place about obscenity. Our kids are protected.”
She went on to say that she was “horrified” when she looked at national trends on books that are being banned from public libraries.
“Most of the books that are being banned are not about LGBTQ agendas. They are in fact about race or they are about free-thinking. They’re banning ‘1984.’ That’s not an obscene book. It tells you to challenge authority, it tells you to think about who your leaders are,” she said and added that the road Iowa is going down is “a very slippery slope. That’s a very dangerous ideology.”
Salmon countered that the bills Becker was referencing “have to do with sexually explicit books that are in our libraries. I can’t speak for your library, but they are in Iowa libraries.”
Ionia Community Library Director India Watson challenged both Salmon and Thomson to produce proof that sexually explicit materials are in public libraries.
“I didn’t bring any samples with me today, but they are out there,” Salmon said, but Thomson said he would email information to those who wanted it.
“We’ve been faced with active movement — again, not in New Hampton but in places like Waukee — where they think it’s a great idea to push this out to kids, the younger the better,” he said, “because they’re trying to educate kids in their way. My view of libraries is they are not in the business of educating kids, they’re in the business of maintaining collections and making them appropriate for the public.”
Becker said that there are already “avenues to address it, and an obscenity law in place to address it,” and also took the lawmakers to task for another bill that would deny Enrich Iowa funding to libraries that are members or have directors who are members of the Iowa Library Association.
“It’s unnecessary legislation and it’s the targeting of librarians because now you’re making it personal,” she said. “You’re saying you won’t get funding if you’re a member of the ILA … and you’re going to go to jail.”
New Hampton resident Bill Riley, meanwhile, took issue with a state law passed several years ago that took away voter-approved tax levies for libraries and places like the Carnegie Cultural Center, the New Hampton museum where he has been a longtime volunteer.
“It’s kind of disheartening because we actually voted to put it back on ourself to sustain the Carnegie and the library,” he said, “and I just don’t think that’s fair.”
In the end, Thomson said he remains bullish on the state’s libraries.
“The bills I would support I don’t support banning books first of all. I’m a First Amendment advocate,” Thomson said, “and I think libraries are very important and they’ve been historically important in Iowa and I think they have a great future.”
With updates from Salmon and Thomson taking up 30 minutes of the hour-long forum that was sponsored by the Chickasaw County Farm Bureau and the discussion on libraries taking another half-hour, Salmon had to “tap out” because she said she had another meeting to attend.
Thomson stuck around for about 30 more minutes, but much of that time was spent discussing the bill that removes civil rights protections for transgender Iowans that was approved by the Legislature.
Still, the two lawmakers did cover a lot of ground with their updates, including:
• Salmon said that lawmakers will soon tackle the state’s 2025-26 budget and said that Gov. Kim Reynolds has proposed spending $9.4 billion from the General Fund, an increase of 4.5 percent.
The state senator said that “we’re going to do like we have in the past and pass a conservative budget, looking to put taxpayers first.”
She added that there has been a “little dip” in state revenues with the implementation of tax cuts, but that she wasn’t overly concerned.
Salmon said Republicans in control of all the House, Senate and governor’s office are focused on education, Medicaid and public safety, and that after “some time they rebound, the economy rebounds and the state revenues also rebound as well.”
She said work on the state’s budget will begin in earnest once the Revenue Estimating Conference meets this month and provides lawmakers with an estimate on how much they can expect Iowa to have to spend in the fiscal year that begins on July 1.
• Thomson said that he is continuing to push for changes in how the state funds education, arguing that the current system in which school districts, no matter their size or location, all receive the same funding increase hurts rural Iowa.
“It’s important that it be redone because it’s unfair to the smaller, rural schools,” he said. “So when you talk about 2 percent or 2.25 percent, there were people in the House caucus who wanted it to be 4 percent but I think to be fair for rural schools, they need more than 4 percent but you can’t do that statewide.”
• Thomson also said he hopes a bill he is proposing — one that would sharply increase fines and other legal remedies for those clocked going 100 miles per hour while also raising the state’s speed limits — will make it through the session.
“We need to increase the penalties for people who are driving crazy speeds,” he said but added that he would like Iowa to be in line with much of the rest of the country as states have raised speed limits by 5 miles per hour.
“According to the statistics,” he said, “raising speed limits sensibly actually causes a decrease in the number of accidents.”
