SF 2160, a bill introduced to the Iowa Senate by Republican Senator Jeff Taylor of Sioux County, would have closed a loophole in Iowa’s current eminent domain laws and prevented corporations from using eminent domain for private projects that are not in the public good.
On Wednesday, Feb. 16, the Iowa Senate Commerce Committee suddenly removed the matter from the agenda.
By removing the bill from their agenda, Republican Senators, under the leadership of Chairman Schultz, killed it.
They killed it not by voting it down, but by putting their tails between their legs and pretending that it didn’t exist. Turns out, stopping the use of eminent domain for private corporations was so important to us—the hundreds of people who have written to their legislators about this issue—that Senators refused to vote on it.
They did not have the courage to even discuss it.
We did our part. We educated ourselves on the issue. We learned that carbon pipelines were never about reducing carbon emissions but about capturing the CO2 for use by the oil and gas industry (for enhanced oil recovery). We read the reports about the damage that pipelines do to our soils and our ecology. We investigated the dangers of CO2 pipeline ruptures. We discussed it, neighbor-to-neighbor, in heartfelt conversations. We decided what was right—we decided what we should do. We participated in our democracy. Hundreds of us contacted our senators and representatives—the most public comment on any bill in memory, according to subcommittee member Senator Klimesh.
And what did our elected officials do? They did not even have the decency to bring it up for a vote.
I think that we must ask: to whom are our civil servants responsible? To corporate executives, to private investors, to donors from industry, to powerful former politicians? Or, are they responsible to us—the people—whose land will be condemned and communities put at risk?
Please, I ask that every neighbor look into what is happening here. For my part, I am convinced: the pipeline fight isn’t about NIMBY—it is about a system that forcibly condemns the land of honest, hard-working Iowans so that corporations and politicians can continue to take more and more for themselves.
You and I hold ourselves to a higher standard than our politicians, but that cannot be a reason to abandon our democracy. We know how to stand together and help each other—we know how to live with decency, honesty, and good will toward our neighbors. Our politicians, on the other hand, have been deafened by the siren’s call of power and money. But we can hold them accountable for their choices. Please, continue to make your voice heard in the halls of Des Moines, and take your righteous outrage to the ballot box in November. I do believe that through our steadfast patience—our quiet but firm insistence that government belong to us, the people—we can transform a temporary setback into the momentum for change.