Iowa Legislature adjourns 2025 session with many GOP priorities checked off

Yahoo

15-05-2025

A portion of Iowa Capitol rotunda as seen May 14, 2025. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The Iowa Legislature adjourned Thursday at 6:01 a.m. in the Senate and 6:31 a.m. in the House, finishing the 2025 legislative session with many priorities from the majority party met — but with several major goals, including property taxes, not making the cut.
While leaders reflected on successfully moving forward on many of their top objectives, the final few days of the 2025 legislative session were tense between some members of the majority party. Twelve Republican senators had announced they would not vote in support of any budget bills until the Senate voted on House File 639, a bill containing multiple measures related to the use of eminent domain in carbon sequestration pipeline projects.
On Monday, the bill passed the Senate 27-22 following hours of heated debate and days of closed-door meetings discussing the measure, which included many barbed comments traded between Republicans.
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Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison, told reporters he believed the eminent domain legislation was the most pivotal bill to move during the 2025 session.
'The fact that it was finally taken up in the Senate certainly sticks out to me,' Holt said. 'But unfortunately, it also sticks out to me … as a Republican, the unfortunate debate that occurred in the Senate, in terms of Republicans sort of going after one another. It's something that we don't normally see, and I hope we never see again.'
Holt said he was 'confident' that Gov. Kim Reynolds will sign the bill into law, though other lawmakers have expressed doubts that she will grant the measure final approval.
While the pipeline bill was brought up for debate, another high-profile measure from the session was not — the Republicans' property tax proposal. The Senate Ways and Means Committee approved Senate File 651, the most recent version of the proposal eliminating Iowa's 'rollback' system of calculating local property taxes, in a meeting earlier in May, but the measure was not brought for floor debate in either chamber.
Here's what Iowa lawmakers did on marathon final day of session
House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said her biggest takeaway from the 2025 legislative session was that lawmakers did nothing to lower costs for Iowa families.
'If anything, all they did was raise costs, especially when it comes to property taxes, that now could go up and count the districts across the state because they didn't fund public education enough,' Konfrst said, referring to the K-12 funding package that Democrats said will trigger property tax increases in many Iowa public schools. 'They did nothing, nothing for housing … They did nothing to fix health care costs, except put 182,000 people, their health insurance at risk. They did absolutely nothing to help the economy.'
Reynolds said in a statement early Thursday property taxes would be a top issue in the 2026 session, alongside further government efficiency efforts.
'I look forward to continuing this work next session — especially when it comes to reducing Iowans' property tax burden,' Reynolds said in the statement. 'And to make sure tax cuts remain sustainable, even as we continue to make smart investments, we'll keep streamlining government. Our alignment efforts, so far, have already saved taxpayers more than $250 million, and we're just getting started.'
Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver said the Legislature did take action to lower costs for Iowans as the the state's economy 'is under a lot of pressure from outside issues,' pointing to the bill passed Thursday to reduce unemployment insurance taxes, a priority of Reynolds.
'At the start of this legislative session, we told Iowans, 'We hear you,'' Whitver said in a statement on his closing remarks for the session. 'We hear your concerns about the high costs in our everyday lives, the concerns about costs and access to health care, and concerns about safe communities.'
In the final days of session, the Legislature approved some of the top proposals laid out by Reynolds for the 2025 legislative session, including the unemployment insurance taxes, as well as the bill on paid parental leave for government employees and another aiding rural health care and expanding medical residency slots. Several of the goals she laid out in her January Condition of the State address — like the two bills restricting cellphone use during class time and behind the wheel of a car, and her bill providing natural disaster aid for communities impacted by 2024 floods and tornadoes, were all signed into law earlier this session.
But there were some bills that did not make it to her desk. The House did not take up Senate File 445, the governor's child care infrastructure bill to shift funding from Early Childhood Iowa (ECI) and some federal funds to establish a new grant program for preschool and child care centers providing full-day care for children, though it was passed by the Senate. Her energy proposal that would have given existing utility companies the right of first refusal to new transmission projects — which received pushback from the U.S. Department of Justice — also did not advance.
The first measure signed into law in 2025 was the repeal of gender identity protections under the Iowa Civil Rights Act. The law came up in budget discussions in the days before session ended, as the health and human services spending bill included a restriction on Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy for transgender individuals. Some GOP lawmakers said this limit is now legal because of 'gender identity' was removed as a protected class under state civil rights law, but Democrats argued the measure remains unconstitutional — as ruled previously in courts — under the Equal Protections Clause.
Republican legislative leaders did not mention the gender identity law in their closing comments, but did praise the passage of a bill setting Medicaid work requirements on Iowa's expanded Medicaid program.
The bill sent to Reynolds Wednesday would set an 80-hour work requirement per month for people on the Iowa Health and Wellness Plan, or IHAWP, to retain eligibility for health coverage. IHAWP provides Medicaid coverage for low-income, able-bodied adults between ages 19 to 64. The bill passed includes certain exceptions to the work requirements. It also includes 'trigger' language that would end the program if the federal government first allows Iowa to enact work requirements and then later revokes approval.
The governor and Iowa Department of Health and Human Services have independently pursued IHAWP work requirements, submitting a federal waiver for similar requirements at 100 hours per month to keep health coverage with exceptions. Senate President Amy Sinclair said in her closing comments for the session work requirements are 'common sense.'
'There is dignity in work, and the vast majority of Iowans know this,' Sinclair said in the written comments. 'Having a sense of purpose and accomplishment is not only good for one's well-being, but it is good for our state. Enacting policies that help put people back to work, like work requirements for able-bodied Iowans on assistance programs, provides opportunities for Iowans to earn a living, find a sense of purpose, and contribute to the growth of our economy.'
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