Eggs and Issues Wraps Up For The Season

Senator Tom Rielly (D) speaks at Eggs and Issues April 8th 2011

The 2011 Iowa Legislative Session is winding down, and with it, Eggs and Issues.

Saturday at Smokey Row there were nearly 100 people, with questions and comments covering everything from commercial property taxes to education. We will cover a couple of questions that made up the conversation on Saturday.

Guy Vander Linden (R) opened by saying that there is a lot of business yet to do at the statehouse, and they are hoping to be able to finish things up by the end of the month. Vander Linden said that the house has been working on appropriations bills.

Senator Paul McKinley (R) was next up and touched on the meetings that Republicans and Gov. Branstad have been conducting meetings, townhall meetings, around the state called “Re-open Iowa for Business”. That tour made it’s stop in Oskaloosa on February 12th of this year. STORY HERE . They have been talking with people on what rules and regulations are making it difficult for them to do business here in Iowa. McKinley stated that the meetings have been extremely successful, and that they were, “probably the most successful initiative I’ve seen in my 11 years in the legislature.”

Senator Tom Rielly (D) stated, “I think crop prices and live stock prices, where they are, that’s helping Iowa. But I got to tell ya, unless things start changing at the Federal level… increasing this deficit,  it’s weakening our dollar, and I am firmly convinced that’s what is driving a lot of this [inflation].” Sen. Rielly made this statement over rising gas prices and cost of goods Iowan’s are experiencing.

Local resident Amanda Reynolds was the first to stand up and asked, “I noticed everyone was speaking about the economy and the future, and you were talking about jobs, nobody said anything about education, and to me all of those go together. If we don’t fund education now, it can effect jobs and the future.” “Could you tell us a little bit about what’s going up there [State House] with allowable growth or education funding now.”

“Senate Democrats are still continuing to support two percent allowable growth.” said Senator Tom Rielly. “That’s going to be a healthy discussion I think between the House, the Senate and the Governor.” continued Rielly.

Senatory Paul McKinley (R) was on hand for the final Eggs and Issues for 2011

Sen. McKinley took up the subject next. “We’re very supportive of education as well, but we like to look at, instead of how much spending we’re doing, how are the kids achieving. And one of the things we know is that Iowa kids are not achieving at the level that they need to be achieving in order to be competitive in the global marketplace. As a matter of fact, in 1993 our Iowa 8th grade math students were number one in the nation, they’ve slipped to 28th. They’ve shown less achievement growth in students in all but one other state in the Union. In reading it slipped even more. That’s what we want to concentrate on. We don’t believe it’s a money issue. We’re spending over sixty percent more per student than we did in 2001. So we got a lot of things that we have to do in education, in addition to funding.”

Reynolds then asked McKinley, “How does cutting spending or zero percent improve those test scores, and the only thing that’s going to improve scores is having more teachers and having those relationships. With 35 kids in a class, it’s really hard to teach all of them and make sure they are getting the individual needs [met] that they have.”

Vander Linden took up the first question posed by Reynolds. “Allowable growth is one of those things that is a bumper sticker. It looks like the Senate wants to increase allowable growth and the House doesn’t.” “If you look back at what has happen in the last two legislators, it’s not nearly that clear. Last years legislature allowed four percent allowable growth and provided zero dollars. Now if you want a promise that we’ll provide, pick a number, eight percent allowable growth and provide no money for that. I guess we could do that, but that makes no sense to me. What the House has done, is said zero percent allowable growth; however, we’re going to provide two hundred and sixteen million dollars to cover last years failure to provide any money what so ever. We’re also going to provide another forty seven million dollars for those school districts that are losing enrollment.” “So if you want promises, we can give you promises. I prefer to give you dollars, and that’s what the House bill will do.” continued Vander Linden.

“We are not cutting education, we are not anti-education. We’re trying to get back on an even keel. Get the States budget under control. Get tax revenue flowing back into the State, so we can allow allowable growth and do the kinds of things your looking for.” said Vander Linden, finishing up Reynolds question.

Sen Rielly came back to the question after Vander Linden. “We didn’t have the funds last year, and we went through a huge decrease in revenues. We cut almost two hundred and eighty million dollars. There was severe cuts last year and the allowable growth was part of it. I worked with school boards, I worked with school administrators who came to me and said last year ‘I’m very skeptical about setting anything higher than zero percent’.” Rielly said, in stating he wasn’t sure if there would be funds, “I take exception that our education results or test scores, we’re still ranking one two top five in the nation in ACT and SAT scores. We have well educated kids, and their hard working kids.”

A Mr. Dickenson made a comment, that he was getting really tired of the word mandate. “You talk about tax savings and stuff under new programs, but you have a lot of programs that might have a lot of corruption and white collar crime in them. Economic Development, Association of School Boards to name a few. We have a job training program for retraining workers that’s ten times higher than the national average cost per individual for retraining. “Why isn’t some of this being looked at instead of making new programs. Why not clean up the other programs, that are problems, and save us money. It just seems to be easier for you to pass something new instead of going back and trying to take care of, basically, white collar crime that we’re perpetuating here and not doing anything about.”

Senator Rielly started off by saying, “I think we’re trying to get our arms around that; whether it’s the School Board Association or CTECH, whoever it might be.”

Representative Guy Vander Lander checks some notes during Eggs and Issues April 8th, 2011

Representative Vander Linden said, “I agree with you that there are some things we need to get under control, and I don’t think any of us up here (sitting at the legislators table) would disagree with each other that that needs to happen.” Vander Linden went on to explain that some programs have been starting to be “put back into a box” and used the example of the Iowa Film Office that was rocked by scandal in recent years. “Certainly there are people out there that will take advantage of any program we start, and it’s the duty of the legislature and the executive branch, in particular, to see that that doesn’t happen.” Vander Linden finished.

Thank you to everyone that attended, and to those in office that took time out their busy schedules to be with us, Joe Public, on Saturday mornings.