Found Under Carnal Knowledge

State agencies and legislators already have a pile of bills to sift through even before they begin the new legislative session.  They're called "pre-filed" bills, and they give you a window into the kind of world the legislature will face in 2009.

Among the things the legislature will be asked to consider:

• Making it easier to arrest you if you accidentally leave your curtains open at night.  The Iowa Attorney General wants to change the state's indecent exposure law to make it easier to convict someone who is seen naked or in a sex act by another.  Current law says the state has to prove the "exposer" was trying to arouse the "viewer".  The new changes wouldn't be that strict.  Just having the curtains open accidentally during a moment of sexual intimacy could engender a conviction under the new law.
• Regulating more political speech.  The Ethics and Campaign Finance Commission wants to go even further than current state law, which allows them to require financial reporting for third-party groups that run ads that support or oppose specific candidates.  Now, they want to be able to regulate any group that runs ads that merely mention a candidate.  These are the so-called "...call Candidate X and tell him/her..." ads that groups have run with increasing frequency.
• Making casinos smokefree.  Rep. Mark Smith (D-Marshalltown) has the inevitable bill that would make smoking illegal in casinos, VFW halls and any public place where it's now allowed.
• Imposing a statewide burn ban.   The Iowa Department of Natural Resources wants to ban burning of anything in any city or a quarter mile of any city by the year 2013.  The size of cities affected gets gradually smaller until it's every community.
• Testing for writing skills.  Must be an old journalism professor working at the Iowa Department of Education, because their pre-filed bill would require testing for "writing skills" in the third, sixth and tenth grade.  The bill never really defines "writing skills" to say if it means handwriting (oh, no...future doctors will be mortified!) or actually putting words together into sentences.  Am that a gud thing?
• Allow the ICN to start buying up more fiber optic lines or building more without asking you first.  The legislation currently in place requires the state to lease existing facilities for anyone added to the state fiber network.  (We spent a billion dollars building a network that became outdated as soon as it was lit up, remember?)  Now the ICN wants to have carte blanche to buy dark fiber or do its own thing to provide services to government entities.  (Watch out, legislators...this could be a repeat of the legislation that created the dark hole into which all the money has been thrown for the ICN)
• Take the property tax levy used to fix up schools to pay the light bill.  The Iowa Department of Education wants to allow school districts to siphon off the property tax levy commonly called the "schoolhouse fund" that is used to fix up and maintain the school buildings and use it to pay for transportation of students and to pay utility bills.  Fewer school repairs, bigger transportation departments.
• Siphon state sales tax revenue for the DNR.  An amendment to the state constitution is proposed that would dedicate the first roughly two cents of each dollar in sales tax collected by the state and hand it over to a special fund maintained by the DNR.  This would put the DNR on par with the Iowa Department of Transportation, which has its own special fund to play with.  

These are a few of the bills that we'll be watching this year.  What are yours?  Let me know!!!