After virtually no meaningful debate and only a single, relatively inconsequential, amendment, Gov. Kim Reynolds’ massive state government reorganization bill, Senate File 514, passed both houses of our Republican-controlled Legislature in less than two weeks. This month, Reynolds signed the bill into law.

Unsurprisingly, the new law, which originated in the executive branch, will result in a significant transfer of power from the legislature to the governor. Sadly, in both Washington, D.C., and Des Moines, our legislators (regardless of their party affiliation) have regularly displayed far greater loyalty to their party than to the constitutional system of separated powers to which they swore their allegiance upon assuming office.

While I am thus entirely unsurprised by our Republican legislators’ abdication of their constitutional responsibilities, I am deeply disappointed at their willingness to subvert the local administration of justice in our state in the process. Ironically, the political party that has always claimed to defend local government against those who would otherwise centralize power is systematically stripping our local elected officials — including our county auditors, school boards, and county attorneys — of their discretion.

While Senate File 514 may have much to commend it, buried in the 1,512-page bill — which I suspect very few of our legislators actually read — is a provision that will fundamentally change the way crime is prosecuted in our state. Section 2047 empowers “the attorney general … (to) prosecute a criminal proceeding on behalf of the state even if a county attorney does not request the attorney general to act.”

For the first time, our state’s attorney general now has express authorization to take over a local criminal prosecution without being invited to do so by the local county attorney. This marks a radical departure from the historical practice in our state.

For two reasons, all Iowans should be greatly distressed at this revolution in our criminal justice system.

First, Section 2047 undermines local control over the prosecution of crime. Previously, the people of each county elected their respective county attorneys and expected them to exercise their judgment in accordance with local values and sensibilities. The people of a county have considerable control over the identity of their county attorney but very little control over who is elected attorney general (and even less control over the appointment of the assistant attorneys general who actually prosecute cases on the attorney general’s behalf).

Four years ago, the current Greene County treasurer defeated her predecessor by a single vote. At the local level, a single voter can determine the outcome of an election, promoting the responsiveness of municipal officials to their electorates. In order to ensure that the administration of justice is under meaningful popular control, the decision to initiate or to discontinue a prosecution must be made at the local level by our state’s county attorneys. However, with the enactment of Senate File 514, this decision-making authority has now been centralized in Des Moines.

Second, Section 2047 will needlessly politicize criminal prosecutions in our state. Do we truly want a criminal justice system in which every defendant, defense attorney, lobbyist, or wealthy party donor can ask the attorney general to take over a criminal case being prosecuted at the local level? What if a wealthy donor to the attorney general’s own re-election campaign asks the attorney general to intervene in a case simply to dismiss it once double jeopardy has attached, thereby preventing the defendant from ever being brought to justice for his or her crimes?

As a result of the passage of this law, there will be opportunities for corruption in our criminal justice system that did not previously exist, and even if the attorney general were to execute their duties impartially, there will now be situations in which citizens will be left wondering whether the attorney general intervened in a case, or chose not to intervene in a case, for personal or political reasons. Indeed, due to the huge number of criminal prosecutions pending in our state at any given time, it will be impossible for the attorney general to apply politically neutral criteria when determining which cases to wrest from the control of local prosecutors, and there can be no doubt such power will be exercised only when the attorney general deems it politically expedient to do so.

The concentration of prosecutorial power in the attorney general’s office will undermine the political accountability of our state’s county attorneys by making them subservient to the attorney general rather than to the people who elected them. It will politicize the prosecution of crime in our state by allowing the attorney general to cherry-pick which cases to prosecute based on personal, partisan, or political considerations. And our state’s Republican legislators, who are more loyal to their party than to the institution in which they serve, are likely unaware of the role they have played in the subversion of the local administration of justice in our state.

Thomas Laehn is the Greene County attorney. He is the only Libertarian to hold an elective partisan office in Iowa.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Taking discretion from county attorneys like me is perilous