Capitol Letters: The Alons Archive Week 4

ScottFairbairn

Week four of the 2025 legislative session is completed and it started with a somber event – the tragic passing of Representative and retired Brig. General Martin Graber.  Martin was a highly respected leader who was a lifelong public servant – I had the pleasure of knowing him personally and considered him a friend.   He will be sorely missed and reminded me of my late father who had a similar life story (both went on to their eternal reward far too soon).

I have been working on several bills that focus on protecting the children of Iowa and rights of Iowans and several of them are out of draft and are at the subcommittee stage.

SF207 – A bill that requires age verification to access online obscene material.  This bill would add Iowa to a list of over 15 states that have this access requirement to ensure that children do not stumble onto pornography online which has become so pervasive on the internet and leads to addiction, harm and sexual violence in a desensitized culture.

SF181 – This bill adds a requirement that contracted services for electronic resources in schools, libraries and public agencies would comply with federal and state rules on obscene materials and non-compliance with these statutes would be a breach of contract resulting in non-payment.

SF180 – This bill defines a right to refuse a medical service, such as a biologic, vaccine, drug, gene therapy, etc – when declared as a countermeasure under the PREP Act or Emergency Use authorized.  As we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant mandates, people lost their jobs, their right to receive medical services, organ transplants, promotions, or other loss of rights if they made the choice to refuse an mRNA vaccine.  This is and was unconstitutional and the bill will ensure the rights of Iowans are protected.

Attention remains on education in the state, with a bill from Governor Reynolds that focuses on math proficiency and civics education.  Math skills are so critical to nearly every field and an increased focus and raised expectations in math education will serve Iowa students well.  A requirement to pass the US civics test with a 60% score to graduate is another commonsense requirement that will help ensure our students understand our country’s history and form of government.

Since the election anomalies witnessed across the nation in 2020, our election laws have been enhanced to ensure our elections are fair, reliable and reflect the will of the people.  Election integrity is a major issue, and is addressed on the State Government committee that I now serve on.  Several steps have been taken since then to increase election security such as requiring voter ID, added transparency and accountability and cleanup measures that have resulted in 180,000 stale voter registrations being cancelled after not voting in the last 3 general elections (all citizens are always able to register and vote).  I will continue to be engaged on this election issue, and will use my technical background to ensuring our systems and processes are faithful, accessible and accurate.

Thank you for sending me to Des Moines to represent Senate district #7.