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Your Capitol Voice: Law forbids merchant lines from gaining condemnation authority
Op-Ed · May 18, 2017


In my last column I wrote about three bills that were passed and were awaiting the Governor’s signature.


The Governor has signed into law the bills legalizing fireworks, allowed school testing using a test widely supported by Iowa educators, and legalizing medical cannabis oil.

The Governor has also concluded his budget work. All of the budgets were signed into law.

There were a few vetoes this year, but not nearly as many as in past years. I will go over a couple of the vetoes in this column, but first I want to talk about an important piece of legislation that the Governor did sign.

This will give much deserved relief to my constituents in northern Cedar County.

Three years I embarked on a journey with over 100 Cedar County landowners to stop the Rock Island Clean Line from condemning their land.

RICL is a multi-national company worth billions. Their arrogance and misleading line of spin was obvious.

It became clear very quickly that the Clean Line had no intentions of working with Iowans to transport their wind energy. They made no offers to service any Iowa customers and they repeatedly “spit in the face” of our Utilities Board.

They were determined to achieve one of the largest condemnations of land in Iowa history.

As of today only 4 of 122 affected Cedar County landowners had signed agreements.

State-wide, RICL had only obtained 177 voluntary easements out of 1540 people affected.

That is a staggeringly low of only 11.4% voluntary easements obtained after three years of negotiations.

Once it became clear people did not want this private company using their land, RICL repeatedly tried to get the state to issue them condemnation authority.

I am happy to report today that the Governor signed the bill I authored and pushed for three years. This bill forbids merchant lines such as the Clean Line from ever having condemnation authority.

After all these years, those who have been facing constant threats of having their family farms used and scarred by an out-of-state corporation can rest easy.

This is a historic victory.

While the current project would have only affected Cedar County in our district – the success of the Clean Line would have set a dangerous precedent and sent the message that in Iowa, if you have enough money, you can take anyone’s home or family farm and make it your own for your own economic purposes.

A thank-you to everyone who stood with me and who fought so hard to make this happen against overwhelming odds.

We did it! And to my constituents in northern Cedar County, I am so proud to see you fight for your land, your homes, and your dreams for the next generation.

I will forever have the image of my people back home in the Capitol and advocating for the very essence of rural Iowa and our family farms.

In an era of skepticism and doubt about politics in multiple areas and in both parties … we scored one for the average citizen.

We have sent a message to the nation about Iowa and what we value here. I still strongly support wind energy in this state and continue to advocate for energy independence, but not at the expense of property rights.

You do NOT have to choose between the two.

Other Branstad vetoes:

• Many of you contacted me about keeping open the Leopold Center at Iowa State. The Leopold Center does a lot of research for a wide variety of agriculture as well as environmental and water quality work. The Governor chose to keep this facility open and it will be up to Iowa State to choose how to fund it. In response to your many messages and emails, I did contact the Governor and asked him to save this resource. Grass roots advocacy made the difference. We may very well have to revisit this issue next session if Iowa State can’t find a sustainable source of funding.

• Funding for the Cultural Affairs building – The Legislature passed language that would have instructed the Department of Administrative Services to look at vacant state buildings. If they determined they should be sold, half of the funds would have went into our infrastructure budget and the other half would have gone towards much needed repairs to our Cultural Affairs building. The Governor vetoed this language citing that he “wants a sustainable and predictable funding source for the Cultural Affairs building not speculative earmarks.” Next session we will look again for a solution.



You may contact Rep. Kaufmann at bobby.kaufmann@legis.iowa.gov, 515-281-3221 or 1527 330th St. Wilton, IA, 52778