Making Good Use of An Empty Capitol

I prepared written notes to members of the Iowa Legislative leadership. My message stated that I hoped they would support the governor's budget proposal to allocate $400,000 to fund the revival of the Iowa Film Office. Jay Villwock and I knew the capitol would be vacant today because legislators usually return to their homes for the week-ends, but we knew getting our notes into the hands of key leaders was important so we made the trip anyway. And we knew that Wendol Jarvis would be there to meet with the governor or others and we always enjoy chatting with him.

We immediately found Wendol.... actually, he found us, and together we entered each empty legislative chamber. We were helped by the senate master-at-arms as he kindly took our notes to senate leaders' desks or mailboxes. And on the other side, the house chamber, we found a secretary behind the chamber who gave us a form to fill out which allowed our notes to reach certain state representatives.

For anyone wishing to contact these same leaders and ask for their support of Governor Branstad's budget allocation of $400,000 for reviving the Iowa Film Office, here is who to contact, and their contact information is available on the internet and their email addresses are easy to copy and paste:

Here are the names of those who did receive our notes:

The President of the Senate is Democrat Jack Kibbie of the 4th District (Emmetsburg). The Majority Leader is Democrat Michael Gronstal of the 50th District (Council Bluffs). The Minority Leader is Republican Jerry Behn of the 24th District (Boone).

Regarding the House: In the House, the Speaker is Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, and the Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Kaufmann, R-Wilton. Partisan House leadership includes Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, R-Mason City, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines.

Members of the Iowa Senate Appropriations Committee: Robert Dvorsky is Chair, Matt McCoy is Vice Chair, Bill Dix is ranking member.

I believe that our friend Wendol Jarvis will return to lead the Iowa Film Office. He's worked tirelessly for several years to lay the groundwork to make the film industry work well here. I know he has driven thousands of miles and spent a lot of his own money to do this. And I have personally heard the governor say that he feels Wendol would be the best choice to run the film office.

When governor Culver terminated the film program the Iowa Film Office files mysteriously disappeared. This includes many thousands of photos and information in the locations file, places in Iowa for producers to consider for shooting future movies. And the Iowa film production guide was also removed from the office, plus posters and other items. As a result, the production guide must be re-created and the locations information and photo files will also need to be gathered yet again.

I hope some of you who may be reading this will take action, to bolster the chances of the Iowa senate and house approving the specific recommendation of the governor's budget plan.

gene l. hamilton
(photo shows Jay and I with Iowa film industry's strongest ally, Senator Bill Dotzler, Jr.)