County Supervisors listen to an annual update by the Johnson County Historic Preservation Commission during the Johnson County work session in Iowa City on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

On April 10, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 75 into law, requiring counties housing a public university, specifically Johnson (University of Iowa), Story (Iowa State University), and Black Hawk counties (University of Northern Iowa), to transition from an at-large to district-based election for county supervisors.

In at-large elections, residents could vote for all three open supervisor seats. Now, residents will vote for the county supervisor seat in their newly created district. Johnson County will be split up into five districts,
each split based on the 2020 census.

Final district maps are due by December 31, 2025, and remain undetermined as of now. Additionally, each of the five supervisors will be up for election in 2026, rather than the usual two to three seats.

“I think it’s a constitutional violation of the equal protection clause,” Jon Green, Johnson County Board Chairman, said.

“This legislation only targets counties with regent institutions. It’s basically 150 legislators saying, ‘Hey, we know better than the 160,000 residents of Johnson County.’”

Green said the at-large system for electing supervisors has been in place for more than 50 years. Changes to the supervisor structure have occurred before, such as Linn County reducing its supervisor count from five to three following public requests in 2019.

Green hopes that if the public disagrees with the change, they will take it up with Iowa’s House and Senate.

“I think it would be very fascinating to see how things would play out if citizens did present a petition demanding that we go back to plan one,” he said. “I think that might spark a court fight, which would find Senate File 75 to be unconstitutional.”

Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan also disapproved of the bill.

“I think it’s unfortunate legislation because I think it unfairly singles out the voters in three Iowa counties,” he said. “I think anytime you do something like that, that’s really bad legislation. If it’s good legislation, it should be good for all 99 [counties].”

Sullivan believes the bill, specifically aimed at counties with regent universities, sets a dangerous precedent in the state legislature.

“It’s just wrong to use the government to target one group of people,” he said. “I would hope that when Democrats take control, and someday they will, they won’t do the same thing.”

For Supervisor V Fixmer-Oraiz, the bill is not surprising given what they see as a pattern of legislation enabling increasing state overreach over the years.

They cited House File 295, which restricted the county’s ability to keep the minimum wage in line with the state’s, but also smaller bills that would take away the county’s ability to manage stormwater regulations.

“The state is now proposing bills that will take away the ability for us to do that,” they said. “That’s not something that’s necessarily going to make the front news, but it is something that’s important to our residents, and especially as Johnson County, we highly value our clean waters and our healthy soils.”

They also criticized other aspects of the bill, such as the requirement that the board must now hold special elections for vacant seats rather than appointing a new member themselves. Fixmer-Oraiz worries the special elections, which can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, will hurt the wallets of Johnson County residents.

“I think it sets a precedent that is dangerous, quite frankly,” they said. “And again, it is targeting, taking away local control from the residents, from the local governments who serve those residents.”