PROOF _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ STATE OF IOWA Senate Journal THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2021 Printed daily by the State of Iowa during the sessions of the General Assembly. An official corrected copy is available for reference in the Secretary of the Senate’s Office. (The official bound copy will be available after a reasonable time upon adjournment.) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4th Day THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2021 99 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE __________ FOURTH CALENDAR DAY FOURTH SESSION DAY Senate Chamber Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, January 14, 2021 The Senate met in regular session at 9:06 a.m., President Chapman presiding. Prayer was offered by the Honorable Jason Schultz, member of the Senate from Crawford County, Schleswig, Iowa. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Senate Page Isabel Hanson. The Journal of Wednesday, January 13, 2021, was approved. LEAVE OF ABSENCE Leave of absence was granted as follows: Senator Nunn, for the 2021 Session, until he returns from his military service, on request of Senator Whitver. In accordance with House Concurrent Resolution 3, the Senate proceeded to the House chamber led by the Senate President and the Secretary of the Senate. JOINT CONVENTION In accordance with law and House Concurrent Resolution 3, duly adopted, the joint convention was called to order at 9:54 a.m., President Chapman presiding. 100 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE 4th Day Senator Whitver moved that the roll call be dispensed with and that the President of the joint convention be authorized to declare a quorum present, which motion prevailed by a voice vote. Senator Whitver moved that a committee of six, three members from the Senate and three members from the House, be appointed to escort Governor Kim Reynolds to the House chamber. The motion prevailed by a voice vote and the Chair announced the appointment of Senators Bisignano, Klimesh, and Rozenboom on the part of the Senate, and Representatives Bush, Hall, and Stone on the part of the House. Senator Whitver moved that a committee of six, three members from the Senate and three members from the House, be appointed to notify the Major General of the Iowa National Guard, Benjamin Corell, that the joint convention was ready to receive him. The motion prevailed by a voice vote and the Chair announced the appointment of Senators Dawson, Giddens, and Reichman on the part of the Senate, and Representatives Cahill, Graber, and Thompson on the part of the House. The joint convention stood at ease at 9:57 a.m. The joint convention resumed session at 10:01 a.m., President Chapman presiding. The Executive Council was escorted into the House chamber. Lieutenant Governor Adam Gregg was escorted into the House chamber. Major General Benjamin Corell’s family was escorted into the House chamber. The committee waited upon Governor Kim Reynolds and escorted her into the House chamber. The committee waited upon Major General Benjamin Corell and escorted him to the Speaker’s station. 4th Day THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2021 101 President Chapman presented Major General Benjamin Corell, Adjutant General of the Iowa National Guard. Major General Corell delivered the following Condition of the Guard Address: President Chapman, Speaker Grassley, Governor Reynolds, Lieutenant Governor Gregg Distinguished members of the Iowa General Assembly, state officials, friends, family and my fellow Iowans Good morning and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to provide you an update on the Iowa National Guard. As I begin this morning I want to thank Governor Reynolds and Lieutenant Governor Gregg for their strong and ongoing support of our Soldiers, Airmen, their families and civilian employers. In a year like 2020, your untiring efforts on behalf of our Soldiers and Airmen is truly appreciated. Additionally, I want to thank you, our Iowa legislators for all you do for the Iowa National Guard. Your continued support is vital to our success. I can report to you that is that Iowa National Guard is focused and is prepared to accomplish every mission we are assigned, whether at home or abroad. 2020 was an extraordinary year, it was humbling to see firsthand the collaborative efforts by so many local and state agency partners come together to support Iowans throughout this pandemic. These partnerships, at every level reflects the sense of community and teamwork that Iowans expect and depend on. These many partnerships facilitated our ability as a state to respond rapidly to emerging threats to help our fellow Iowans during this time of need. This response effort was truly all hands on deck, everyone working together. As we have done throughout our history, the Iowa National Guard played a critical role while working together with our local, state, and federal partners responding to the needs of our citizens. Because of the unique nature of our Citizen Soldiers and Airmen and our locations across the state, the Iowa National Guard is able to quickly fill critical gaps in response efforts. Not since the historic floods of 2008, has the Iowa National Guard played such a diverse role in coming to the aid of Iowans during their time of need. What makes the Iowa National Guard unique is the fact that the communities we serve are OUR communities. We live here. We work here. We are part of the community. When a disaster strikes, we are called upon to ensure our neighbors, our towns, our families and friends recover as quickly as possible. We have been involved in so much this past year. I’d like to highlight some of what we have accomplished: During our COVID-19 response efforts, the Iowa National Guard had over 900 Soldiers and Airmen on duty supporting Iowa’s response to this pandemic. We were honored to assist Lt Governor Gregg and the “Feeding Iowans Task Force” helping Iowan’s who needed a hand obtaining food to feed their families through the support of our network of food banks and food pantries located in communities all across our state. Soldiers and Airmen from the Iowa National Guard supported this effort by building over 20,000 boxes of food to hand out to our citizens and by delivering over 312 tons of food to our food banks and pantries. 102 JOURNAL OF THE SENATE 4th Day The Iowa National Guard safely drove over 420,000 miles ensuring personnel protective equipment was available to first responders and health care professionals across the State at the same time ensuring timely delivery of Test Iowa lab samples to the State Hygienic Lab. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly 17 trips around the Earth without serious incidents or injuries. Our Soldiers and Airmen provided operations and management expertise to 12 Test Iowa drive through locations across the State ensuring all aspects of required site resources remained available to safely operate those Test Iowa sites. Out the over half a million COVID-19 tests completed at all Test Iowa site locations, the Iowa National Guard assisted with more than 70% of these at our drive through Test Iowa locations. Our Soldiers and Airmen made thousands of phone calls supporting the Iowa Department of Public Health’s Call Center’s helping to track down and mitigate the spread of Covid-19. In November, at the request of Governor Reynolds, the Iowa National Guard began assisting with a patient transfer hotline to help manage increased demands on hospitals across the State. As we know, the true heroes of the pandemic response have been our frontline healthcare workers, local first responders and public health professionals. The men and women of the Iowa National Guard are honored to have played a small role in supporting these professionals meet the needs of Iowans as we collectively work to mitigate the suffering caused by COVID-19. I am extremely proud of all of our Iowa National Guard members and their commitment to help the people of Iowa during this challenging time. The extended duration of this event and the diverse type of missions we conducted highlight the value of our Citizen Soldiers and Airmen to the State of Iowa. These missions at home did not stop us from supporting federal missions around the world through various active duty deployments. In total this past year, we provided over 1700 Iowa Soldiers and Airmen to serve on active duty missions throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. We also supported domestic operations at the Southwest border, and this past summer’s California wildfires. 2020 saw the largest number of Iowa National Guard members deployed overseas in more than 10 years. I could not be prouder of their accomplishments as they execute these missions and we look forward to their safe arrival home later this year. In addition to our COVID-19 support and active duty deployments, we responded to numerous other missions supporting the people of Iowa. The most significant was the Derecho that devastated portions of Iowa on August 10th. In the days following the Derecho, our mission focus was to support power restoration efforts in Linn County. The Iowa National Guard responded with over 200 Soldiers and Airmen with their equipment and removed over 1400 loads
Details
-
File Typepdf
-
Upload Time-
-
Content LanguagesEnglish
-
Upload UserAnonymous/Not logged-in
-
File Pages15 Page
-
File Size-