Friday, May 25, 2007
Governor Culver Signed Several Additional Bills This Evening
(Des Moines) This evening, Governor Chet Culver has signed several additional bills into law:
House File 641:
- This bill allows for persons to enter into an installment agreement with the county attorney to pay fines, penalties, court costs, or surcharge. After the agreement has been entered the department of transportation can reinstate the persons’ license. The person must submit a financial statement to the county attorney in order for the person to receive the installment agreement. The installation agreement shall be executed in the county where the fine was imposed. If there is no installation agreement program in that county, the person can execute an installation agreement in the county in which they reside. If the county in which they reside does not have a program then an agreement can be executed in any county that offers an installment agreement program. Civil penalties can be assessed as an amount owing under the installment agreement. If the installation agreement is in default, the county attorney shall notify the department of transportation and they shall suspend the driver’s license. People may enter into more than one installment agreement if additional fines and court costs are added. A person is allowed to enter into 5 installment agreements in a lifetime. The bill allows for individuals to receive temporary restricted licenses for appointments with the person’s parole or probation officer. The bill also permits the city to offset any amounts owed by the clerk to the city prior to distributing any amounts owed the clerk. The effective date is January 1, 2008.
Senate File 263:
- This bill concerns gambling games on gambling structures and removes the requirement that gambling structures be built with water under the gaming floor. Originally designed to limit gambling to excursion boats, this law is in effect only requiring that land-based casinos build a man-made water body under their buildings. This bill will save the expenses of building and maintaining such a water body, but does not approve any further gambling expansion.
House File 932:
- HF 932 creates the TIME-21 Fund which consists of any moneys appropriated by the General Assembly and any revenues credited by law to the Fund, and provides a formula to allocate the money in the Fund. This legislation increases the amount of Revitalize Iowa’s Sound Economy (RISE) funds to counties by changing the formulas for allocating motor fuel tax revenues from the Road Use Tax Fund to the RISE Fund and the Secondary Road Fund. It also changes the formulas for allocation of RISE moneys to the Primary Road Fund, as well as for county and city road projects.
Senate File 564:
- SF 564 creates a new section in the Code of Iowa for the regulation of wild animals to be administered by the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) in cooperation with local governments.
House File 912:
- A bill for an act to provide upgrades to Iowa’s tax system related to sales tax, use tax, and property tax for computer related businesses. It requires these businesses to make an Iowa investment of at least $200 million.
Senate File 369:
- This bill makes voter-marked paper ballots the standard for elections, rather than just electronic voting machines.
- The bill requires counties whose voting systems shall replace the system with an optical scan voting system only and those counties that utilize both a voting machine and an optical scan voting system shall when replacing a voting machine, replace it will an electronic ballot marking device. This device will be compatible with an optical scan voting system.
- The bill also requires a paper record.