Capitol Comments

In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds has made improving economic opportunities to all areas of the state a top priority. To do this, she has placed a particular focus on rural Iowa and the challenges faced by those communities.

Since 2018, state and community leaders have taken part in the governor’s Empower Rural Iowa Initiative in order to address the challenges facing the state’s rural communities. The initiative’s work resulted in legislation and a set of recommendations for continued action.

Sixty percent of Iowans live in counties with populations less than 100,000 and 30 percent live in counties with less than 25,000, making rural Iowa critical to the entire state, says Iowa Sen. Mark Lofgren.

It didn’t take long for the Midwest’s legislators, and farmers, to jump at one of the new opportunities provided in the 2018 federal farm bill — the legalization and cultivation of industrial hemp. According to a CSG Midwest survey of state departments of agriculture, more than 70,000 acres of land were licensed in 2019 for hemp production across eight of the region’s 11 states.

The three states without any licensed hemp growers in 2019 were South Dakota, where the governor has vetoed legislation to allow production, and Iowa and Ohio, which have been awaiting U.S. Department of Agriculture approval of their regulatory plans. (Ohio’s plan was approved in early 2020.)

Most U.S. states (including all in the Midwest except South Dakota) now have laws in place allowing for legal hemp production, for research and/or commercial purposes. Despite these major policy changes, though, questions remain about how hemp will be regulated and where farmers will find markets for this crop.

Aspiring barbers, nurses, electricians and many others must first be licensed by the state in order to enter their chosen profession in Pennsylvania and all other states. Current Pennsylvania law designates the authority of licensing boards to deny licensure if the applicant has been convicted of a felony and certain specific misdemeanors.

In December of 2019, however, the Pennsylvania House joined the Senate in alleviating barriers which restrict former convicts from obtaining...

Delaware’s Constitution requires that three state courts be balanced between the two major political parties. The main question before the Supreme Court in Carney v. Adams is whether this scheme violates the First Amendment. In an amicus brief the State and Local Legal Center (SLLC) argues it does not.  

Per Delaware...