Not much happened in the Iowa Legislature last week - not just on our issues, but on any issues. The House adjourned on Wednesday afternoon for the week. Apparently the House and Senate are at an impasse on crucial budget items that will need to be worked out by the leaders before work can continue.
That gives us an opportunity to be sure our voice is heard on our priority issues. One of those is our K-12 tobacco-nicotine-free schools language, which we hope will remain in the education reform bill and become law. That is now up to the conference committee negotiating differences between the House and Senate on the bill. We sent out an Action Alert on this last week and have generated 68 e-mails to the 10 members of the conference committee. It is not too late to be heard! If you have not had a chance to respond, please do so now. I would love to see 150 e-mails on this subject. That will make it very hard for conferees to ignore!
Unfortunately things look quite a bit less rosy for adjournment than they did a week ago. The House and the Senate remain far apart on several big issues and this week did not show many signs of wanting to compromise.
And as always, feel free to contact me directly with any questions or concerns - peggy.huppert@cancer.org.
