State representatives Ann Meyer and Mike Sexton will lead committees in the Iowa House of Representatives during the upcoming legislative session.

Meyer, R-Fort Dodge, will again lead the Human Resources Committee. She was the chairwoman of that panel for the last two years.

Sexton, R-Rockwell City, will be the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. He is currently the House majority whip, but he will not seek that position for the 2023 legislative session.

The appointments were announced Wednesday by House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford.

Although its name may suggest some kind of personnel management function, the Human Resources Committee is actually the health care policy panel in the House. Meyer is a nurse and nursing instructor who led the committee in 2021 and 2022.

Meyer said Wednesday evening that her goal is to increase health care access, especially access to mental health care.

She said she is already having two health care bills drafted. One would expand a student loan repayment program to include additional mental health professionals. The goal of that legislation is to get and retain more of those professionals in Iowa.

The other would place a hard cap on the non-economic damages that could be awarded in a medical malpractice lawsuit Meyer cited a recent case in Iowa City in which a plaintiff won a $90 million award which bankrupted a clinic.

“We need to rein that in a little bit,” she said.

Sexton has served as an assistant majority leader and as majority whip, a role in which he was one of the highest ranking Republicans in the House. But he has never been the chairman of a committee.

Sexton, who is a farmer, said six or seven other farmers will be leaving the House at the end of this year. Because of that, he decided against another term as House majority whip and asked Grassley to make him a committee chair. He said he was hoping for the Agriculture Committee, where the current chairman is retiring.

“My overarching goal is to make sure agriculture is protected, that we don’t have any unnecessary regulations coming out against agriculture,” he said.