David Alan Millage, a Bettendorf lawyer who represented his hometown in the Iowa House of Representatives for twelve years and later chaired its Appropriations Committee, died September 26, 2026, at 73, according to a Dignity Memorial notice arranged through The Runge Mortuary & Crematory in Davenport.

Millage grew up far from Iowa. Born February 26, 1953, in Portland, Oregon, he came to Iowa City for college and stayed, earning a bachelor's degree in business administration with distinction from the University of Iowa in 1974 and a law degree, also with distinction, four years later, according to his official biography with the Iowa Legislature. He built a law practice in Bettendorf that eventually became Gallagher Millage & Gallagher, concentrating in family law for clients across the Quad Cities, and belonged to the American Bar Association, the Iowa State Bar Association, the Scott County Bar Association, and the Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce.

Voters sent him to the Iowa House in 1990, and he took his seat representing Bettendorf's District 40 on January 14, 1991, at the start of the 74th General Assembly. Redistricting moved him to District 41 two years later, and he held it for five more terms, serving on the Judiciary and Labor and Industrial Relations committees and, between sessions, on interim study panels that examined fiber optics and telecommunications policy in 1993 and 1994 and criminal sentencing the following year. Republican leadership eventually put him in charge of the Appropriations Committee, the panel that writes the state budget, a post he held into his final term in 2003. In February 2001, as Appropriations chair, he proposed freezing legislative and staff travel spending for five months, arguing that lawmakers who were asking state workers to be frugal needed to set the same example themselves. "Lawmakers are asking state workers to be frugal, and legislators need to set an example," he told Radio Iowa at the time.

After twelve years in the House, Millage sought statewide office in 2002, clearing the Republican primary for Iowa attorney general unopposed. He lost the general election to longtime Democratic incumbent Tom Miller, 612,167 votes to 364,480, according to the Iowa Secretary of State's general election canvass, closing out his run for elected office.

He is survived by his wife, Sandra, and their four stepchildren. What Millage left in Bettendorf is not a single building or statue but a paper trail: twelve years of Iowa House votes, a state budget he helped write for years as Appropriations chairman, a statewide campaign for attorney general, and a law firm still practicing family law under his name in the town where he spent his career.