Iowa Citizen Action Network

Civil Justice and Consumer Protection

Iowa Values Fund

Governor signs law providing funds to the Iowa Values Fund

June 19, 2003 was a good day for Iowans. On that day, Governor Vilsack line-item vetoed portions of a bill passed in special session of the Iowa Legislature. He vetoed portions of the bill that would have rolled back worker and civil justice protections, and signed into law portions of the bill that provided funds to the Iowa Values Fund. The highly contentious fight over this legislation galvanized ICAN and many of our organizational affiliates. We worked in coalition with other groups to support the Iowa Values Fund, and strongly oppose the regulatory rollbacks.

This fight was often described as a fight over economic development. In reality, it was much more than that. It went to the heart of the government’s role in providing quality of life for its citizens. It is an important function for the state to invest in long-range economic development to ensure future growth and prosperity. But the government also ensures the security of its citizens – economic security, health security and environmental security. Gutting the protections afforded by the civil justice and workers’ compensation systems devalues workers and seriously debases the quality of life in Iowa, and ultimately hampers efforts to create a robust economy.

Consider who is protected when we rollback worker and civil justice protections. Such rollbacks only reward bad corporate behavior, and do nothing to help responsible businesses that provide safe working conditions and produce non-defective products. The businesses who require such lack of standards to locate in Iowa are not the type of businesses we want to attract. Corporations that want to sell defective products with no legal consequences and skirt their responsibility to pay workers compensation benefits should not be rewarded by the state. Our economic development dollars should be spent on good neighbors, not bad apples.

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