Political Football

I don’t normal post these directly from Jeff (I do post pdfs of his notes here) but maybe I should start posting them here too. Below is a clear outline of what our representatives have to deal with when the democrats control everything. hold on to your wallets, they are after the hide when the money is gone… (bolding below is mine for emphasis) -pf

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Your Capitol Voice
Representative Jeff Kaufmann

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The Legislature adjourned on Saturday morning at 2:30 a.m. I arrived at my home at 5 a.m. dead tired and wondering about a process that would pass one of its most important bills in the middle of the night with all legislators significantly fatigued.

The session ended with some great news for my District and some major disappointments in a final flurry of votes. In this column I will focus on the last week of session. Next week will include a general session overview.

The last week began with a final battle over the statewide SILO. The Senate debated this bill that passed the House with strong bipartisan support.  An alternative idea was proposed that I believe was intended to kill the statewide SILO initiative.  A few legislators, including myself, reacted with equal energy to advocate for passage and point out the serious flaws in the alternate plan.

On Tuesday, the Senate debated and passed the Statewide SILO bill (34-15). It is now on its way to the Governor where he is expected to sign it.

Against great odds and a great deal of misinformation from interest groups and a few urban legislators, a crucial piece of legislation will now become law. This is not a perfect bill but it has a perfect goal: equity for rural/small town Iowa. This will mean millions to Cedar and Muscatine counties in school infrastructure needs and property tax relief. It has been a long battle, but upon reflection I wouldn’t hesitate to take the lead all over again.

It became obvious last week that the new spending would continue to explode. By the end of the week a two-year total for new state spending now surpassed 900 million dollars (17% increase). This means that next year, there will be a 500 million “hole” in the budget before we even begin the session. The 6.4 billion dollar budget passed on a straight party-line vote. We are headed for an imminent “fiscal train wreck,” hence my “no” votes on the budgets

As we moved into the last day of session, the Legislature debated the large Standings bill, which is a “catch-all” for almost any kind of policy. Also debated was a large infrastructure bill infamous for its pork projects. Some of us first fought an ill-advised cut in the funding of county fairs, but it passed on a near-party line vote. Here we are in the midst of record revenues and record spending and funding was cut to county fairs. The Legislature should be ashamed of itself.

We did have success when language was inserted that would weaken Iowa’s drunk driving laws (legislation pushed by the ACLU). Our initial attempt to remove the language failed again on a party-line vote. (The party tends to vote together in the last few days.) Immediately a small group of us contacted the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Transportation and received strong statements against the language. We then approached the media and shortly after a Des Moines Register internet article exposed the party-line vote to protect this weakening, it was reconsidered and removed. This was a small victory but a sign of future bad ideas that may succeed if everything remains the same in the Legislature.

And then there is the pork spending! Millions of dollars for pet projects in specific districts. Even though we heard phrases like “tight budget year” and “tough budget decisions” we still found $80,000 to restore an historic organ in one legislator’s district. There was also over 3 million to develop a park in southern Iowa, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a depot, refurbish a school in Des Moines, build trails, and the list goes on and on.

Although the projects may be worthy, each project can be traced to a specific legislator (usually either a leader or a legislator with a tough race ahead of them). The bottom line is that we cut the county fairs, couldn’t find money to avoid community college tuition increases, and nearly emptied the Senior Living Trust, but we funded an organ restoration for $80,000. I proudly voted no.

What did I learn last week? When the two parties worked in a bipartisan manner common sense often prevails. When policy is shoved through on party-line votes, poor fiscal decision usually occur. For District 79, cutting the county fairs at the same time we found millions of dollars of pork is a great symbol for the worst of the session…it was a long drive home.

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