According a reliable source in the Iowa City GLBT community who met with Iowa state representative, Mary Mascher, over the weekend, the bill to give gays the same rights as the rest of us in the workplace is being stalled in the house by the party that is in power in all three branches to supposedly focus on wrapping up the budget. The source claims that the GLBT community has "counted the votes" and has the numbers they need to pass the bill and curiously, it is on hold.
Remember this is legislation that the Governor Chet Culver supports and that sailed through the senate. Culver met privately with House Democrats Thursday afternoon to try to convince more of them to back it, too. "Nothing's easy around this place. It takes a lot of hard work and heavy lifting to get important public policy measures all the way through the process and this is one I fully support and I expect we will have some success with but it sounds like it will take a little more work," Culver says.
Can the gay community believe Democrat majority leader Kevin McCarthy who says he doesn't have 51 Democrats willing to vote for the legislation, and Republicans who support it aren't willing to vote for it unless Democrats put up those 51 "yes" votes first. Or is it something else. Is Speaker Pat Murphy caving to folks back home or is the push for the Governor's 25 million incubation of the Power Fund more important than the equal protections of all Iowans ?
Or is it that the representatives are unwilling to the people's work off the clock? There is no statutory end for the session, but daily expense payments to lawmakers end on April 27th.
Remember when being a public servant used to mean something?
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