Telegraph Herald. February 4, 2024.

Editorial: Iowa should make hands-free driving law

It’s high time that Iowa joined 30 other states and banned handheld use of cellphones while driving. Law enforcement officials have been asking for this law for years to address the critical problem of distracted driving.

Pay attention the next time you’re on the road, and you will spot many drivers, phones in hand. Now, texting and driving is already illegal in Iowa. But people are allowed to hold their phones to activate GPS or take calls. So how is law enforcement supposed to discern texting while driving from calling up GPS directions?

As a result, the no-texting law seldom is enforced.

An Iowa Senate subcommittee last week advanced a measure that would ban any use of a phone by hand while driving and establish fines for drivers who use their phones without voice-activated or hands-free technology. Fines for the offense would go from the $45 fine for texting and driving to $100 — or more if the violation causes an injury crash.

Good deal. Who could disagree with that? Should sail right through, right?

Only this time, the Senate bill has added in another measure — banning traffic cameras statewide. And then the plot thickens.

Both Dubuque Mayor Brad Cavanagh and Police Chief Jeremy Jensen attended the subcommittee hearing and spoke in opposition to the bill. As you can guess, Cavanagh and Jensen don’t oppose the hands-free driving law. It’s the traffic camera ban that had them pleading their case.

Dubuque City Council members in November approved implementing automated speed cameras in the city, and city leaders currently are seeking vendors to supply and maintain them. Council members are expected to consider approving a vendor March 6.

Whatever your opinion on traffic cameras — and it sure seems like most citizens oppose them — the two measures shouldn’t be tied together in the Legislature.

Cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year, according to National Safety Council, causing some 390,000 injuries. In 2023, texting while driving was the cause of one out of every four vehicle crashes in the U.S. A hands-free device and distracted driving bill would give law enforcement officials more tools to crack down on motorists who can’t manage to put down their phone and drive.

Passing a hands-free driving measure shouldn’t be controversial. Can’t we just get that done without tossing in the can of worms that a ban on traffic cameras would be? Such a ban might be wildly popular with most drivers, but surely the cities invested in the cameras (or about to) will fight it. If it’s that piece that leads to Iowa’s failure to get a hands-free driving law on the books, that would be a shame.

Both laws are worth discussing. Both deserve citizen input and a full airing in the Legislature. But each should be considered on its own merits so that one does not sink the other.

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Des Moines Register. February 4, 2024.

Editorial: We need leadership on immigration. Will Joni Ernst or other Iowans meet the moment?

It doesn’t take much to stand out as a more reasonable voice on this topic.

The number of people seeking to enter the United States, especially from the south, has never been higher. America needs new border policies and more resources.

Republicans are not wrong about that. But they belie their cries of national crisis if they’re unwilling to work with Democrats to craft solutions.

Step one is leadership in Washington, D.C., to work out new policies and appropriations. News reports indicate some senators from both parties, including Iowa’s Joni Ernst, have been demonstrating such leadership. Many other elected officials and candidates for office are actively thwarting solutions. But with Congress’ narrow margins, individual House Republicans possess leverage. Any single member of the Iowa delegation, looking out for our state’s well-being, could help make the difference between an untenable status quo and real improvement.

The practical consequences of hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border each month are many and momentous. Demands for housing and other services have spiked throughout the country. More granularly, a Denver hospital says migrants not paying for visits meant the unpaid care that doctors provide rose by $10 million in a year. A New York high school was shut down for a day so that migrants had a place to sleep during a storm. President Joe Biden has been slow to treat the crisis with urgency, raising the stakes for what happens next.

What’s happening in Congress

House Republicans passed an impractical Secure the Border Act last spring. Their negotiating position is that only that bill can fix anything. But analysts have correctly criticized its myopic focus on physical barriers, and the White House said it “does nothing to address the root causes of migration, reduces humanitarian protections, and restricts lawful pathways, which are critical alternatives to unlawful entry.” Further, Democrats control the Senate and the presidency, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s Republican House majority has shrunk to as small as a couple of votes in recent weeks, putting his party in no position to draw lines in the sand if members want to get anything done.

It appears, though, that getting nothing done is exactly what Johnson, former President Donald Trump and others want. They’ve pilloried an imaginary bipartisan Senate immigration bill (imaginary because senators are still negotiating its details) and indicated that they’re satisfied to wait indefinitely on both border policy and aid for Ukraine. Instead, the House is concentrating on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, an action that will not change conditions at the border. Trump sayshe wants negative headlines about suffering tied to immigration to last until the presidential election in November. It’s the very worst of politics: cynicism that cares not about suffering but only about who gets blamed for it.

News reports about the Senate negotiations suggest a proposal that includes authority to more swiftly reject people’s entry into the country but is also more thoughtful about such vital pieces of the puzzle as expedited asylum proceedings. More reports were trickling out Saturday. Johnson and other Republicans have delivered unserious responses to those reports, such as suggesting that there should be “zero illegal crossings” in a day.

Secure-the-border obsession ignores labor shortages

Those ideas, and plans like Trump’s for mass-scale deportations if he becomes president again, build from the false premise that the United States is unequivocally worse off for having migrants move here. The hard-line Republican policies represent a logistical and humanitarian nightmare whose best-case outcome is that the country is left with a breathtaking labor shortage.

That last part isn’t Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blathering. Take it from a member of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Cabinet, Iowa Finance Authority and Economic Development Authority director Debi Durham: “What we have to do is attract people,” she said at a Business Record event last month. “By the year 2030 we’ll have our first county in Iowa that the minority will be the majority population. I am in communities of all sizes two to three days a week, and I will guarantee you I do not see diversity around decision-making tables in those communities. So that’s got to change.”

The country needs better management of the flow of people seeking opportunity that’s not available in their home countries. It doesn’t need to pretend it can completely stop that flow.

Amid the din, a reasonable voice can stand out

Iowa’s most senior elected officials, unfortunately, are mostly participating in that fantasy. Reynolds was scheduled to be in Texas today with other Republican governors who have declared that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is right to challenge the federal government’s border agents in response to an “invasion” of his state. Attorney General Brenna Bird was the lead author on a letter to Biden and Mayorkas that, to be fair, included more substance before concluding, “Until you reverse the policies that tell people they will be rewarded for their attempts to violate American immigration law, your Administration engenders the very human misery it purports to oppose.” In Congress, all four Iowa representatives supported the Secure the Border Act, and Sen. Chuck Grassley seems content to post on X, “PAST TIME 2ENFORCE OUR NATIONS LAWS.”

That leaves Ernst. The Hill reported Jan. 25, citing senators it did not name, that Ernst “asked colleagues who have endorsed Trump to intercede with the Republican presidential front-runner and ask that he hold off on criticizing the emerging deal.” Asked for an update after another week of developments, Ernst released a statement through her office: “It’s clear we have a border crisis that is only getting worse. While President Biden refuses to address it, the Senate is working to reverse his failed policies.”

It doesn’t take much to stand out as a more reasonable voice on this topic. This approach from Ernst meets at least that standard. If senators do produce a bipartisan bill, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn and Randy Feenstra all have the capability, given their party’s narrow majority, to change the landscape by publicly standing up for better conditions for migrants and the communities that welcome them, and for new workers and families for Iowa.

Reynolds sent state troopers and soldiers to Texas last year, purportedly to help defend the border. If there’s a next trip, perhaps they could serve our state better by bringing some new Iowans home with them.

END