Lobbyists, city staff summarize major 2025 Iowa laws and issues affecting Iowa City

Deputy City Manager Chris O’Brien and lobbyist Doug Scribe of Carney & Appleby summarized highlights of the 2025 Iowa legislative session at the July 8 meeting, telling the City Council which measures city staff are tracking and identifying areas where the city will need to change local code.

Scribe described the session as active and noted a number of changes that affect local governments. He said a law banning DEI programs became statute and that enforcement rests with the Iowa attorney general’s office; the city is awaiting AG guidance. He also described a broad civil-service bill that increased minimum civil-service board membership (which affects the city’s civil-service code), expanded discovery and appeals and allowed broader discovery and de novo review in district court.

Scribe and O’Brien flagged other measures that could affect the city’s costs or operations: a cancer-presumption law for police, fire and other first-responder classifications that expands coverage and will apply to retirees for a limited post-retirement period; a signed retainage law that narrowed earlier proposed contractor rules and reduced retainage from 5 percent to 3 percent for public works; and multiple, unresolved proposals on property-tax caps and tax-increment financing (TIF) reform that the lobbyist said will likely resurface next year.

Why it matters: Scribe told the council the DEI statute is enforceable by the attorney general and that the city currently lacks AG administrative rules; until the AG issues guidance the city must consult legal counsel to assess local programs. Scribe said the civil-service changes will require code revisions — including increasing the minimum members on the city’s civil-service board to five — and that the law broadened discovery and changed appeal standards.

Councilors asked about accessory dwelling unit (ADU) preemption in state law; Scribe and City Attorney Eric said the state provision will preempt local rules that required owner-occupancy and that staff would propose code amendments to comply. Councilors also asked about other specific bills; Scribe said many measures will return in future sessions and that the state budget constraints make new ongoing appropriations difficult in the short term.

Ending: Staff said it will prepare code amendments where state law preempts local rules and will work with the attorney general’s office and the city attorney to interpret enforcement obligations on newly enacted statutes.