[tomder55]

Musk will leave . Recently Kim Reynolds Guv Iowa announced she will not seek reelection for personal reasons
Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds announces she won't seek reelection in 2026 | AP News

She was practicing DOGE in the state before there was a DOGE February she testified to the House Oversight Committee.

When we started our alignment work in 2022, state operations hadn’t been reviewed in forty years – and it showed. Layers of bureaucracy had accumulated over decades, expanding government beyond its core function, keeping us from working effectively as one team, and hampering our service to Iowans. We were too big, too fractured, and too inefficient. One example became clear during COVID where the separation of our Public Health and Human Services agencies resulted in both duplication and gaps in service. We consolidated them into a single Department of Health and Human Services in 2022 – the first big step in our work to align state government. And there was a lot of work to do, as we saw similar problems of fragmentation across state government. We had eleven separate state agencies operating workforce programs; 136 professional licensing functions were spread across eleven agencies; and our administrative code had ballooned to more than 20,000 pages and 190,000 restrictive terms. At one point, I even discovered that the state owned a cow-calf operation. And to make matters worse, it operated at a loss! Given our limited staff, and the vast scope of the initiative, we partnered with an outside firm. We also brought agency directors and their staff into the discussion early, and together, we asked the hard questions that bring accountability and change. What is the core mission of each agency? How is it funded? How is it staffed and what does it own? Are the agency’s programs working? How did the structure of the agency compare to other states? Where is there duplication or misalignment? What can we cut?

Reynolds-Written-Testimony.pdf

In 2023, we introduced a 1,300-page bill that ultimately passed with only one technical amendment and took effect less than one year after we began the process. I also instituted a moratorium on new rulemaking and ordered a comprehensive review of rules already on the books utilizing a new technology platform.

Together, these actions cut 21 agencies from my cabinet, eliminated 600 open positions, removed 1,200 regulations in year one, and identified 4700 acres of [state-owned] farmland to sell.

Nearly all licensing functions are now in one agency, and we’re currently in the
process of consolidating six separate licensing platforms into one. We also created a one-stop shop for building permitting. One agency that used to operate out of ten buildings now operates out of just one.

Altogether, we’ve saved taxpayers $217 million in just eighteen months, surpassing our initial projections for the first four years.

And our government isn’t just smaller; it’s better.

I know she has reasons to leave the Statehouse now. Hopefully Trump can enlist her in the future to continue her work on a national level.