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ACHIEVEMENTS:

I had the honor of getting to chair the subcommittee on HSB 555, which is a bill that deals with public utilities, specifically by adding electric storage unit and nuclear to the list of energy production facilities. It also removes an annual report to the legislature on small wind innovating zone applications and also requires electric storage units over 25 megawatt hours of electricity to have a generating certificate. Not only that, but it increases the amount for affiliate transactions that are exempt to $250,000 and increases the statement of franchise for cable and video services from 10 to 25 years. In simpler terms, this piece of legislation would essentially increase reliability, reduce costs, and clean up the code when it comes to energy. This bill ended up passing that subcommittee and was brought before the Commerce Committee and ended up passing that as well. Now it will move forward to the House Floor where it will be voted on to determine if it will become a law or not.

EXCITING NEWS:

An exciting bi-partisan issue that I am helping to champion is cancer prevention. Iowa is the number two state in the nation in terms of cancer cases and that is the wrong podium to be on. Representative Austin Baeth, myself, and others have collaborated to find the best possible solution to tackle this problem. We have a number of bills that are being put forward that are related to one another in terms of cancer prevention. Typically, when an issue like this is put forward, a group of bills will be put together, which would be called an omnibus bill, where all the bills are wrapped into one that would cover the whole issue. However, we have decided to come at this problem from a different angle. Instead of wrapping all the bills into one, we have divided them out into individual bills that will be sent to different subcommittees to stand on their own merit. I have the opportunity to then go to each of these subcommittees and speak on behalf of these bills.

One of the bills that we are pushing for is a tax on cigarettes. If you’re anything like me, the last thing you want is more taxes, but what this bill will do is help generate a new source of revenue that will help fund the research on cancer. Another bill that we are putting together is a bill that would help to implement a plan to reduce obesity in our state. Cancer has been shown to be linked to obesity, so tackling this issue will not only help to prevent cancer, but also just generally keep us healthy as well.

Please join me at www.wilzforiowa.com and on Facebook at Hans for Iowa House District 25 to stay up to date on everything I’m doing!