The Dickey Dispatch – January 31, 2025

by Senator Adrian Dickey
Happy rainy Friday Senate District 44!

This week started with visits from many of the school superintendents and school board members in SD 44. Understandably, they were in the capitol asking for increased funding for the next school year and to “make education spending a priority”. It bothers me to no end how many in our education community might ask for a 5% increase, we might provide a 2% increase, and they then portray that as a 3% CUT. If you go to your employer and ask for a 50% pay raise and you get a 10% raise, you don’t go around and say you got a 40% pay cut! To be clear, the last time state funding to schools in Iowa was actually cut was in 2010 when the Democrats had a trifecta. Since the Republicans took control in 2017, investing in our K-12 education from the state has NEVER been cut!

So in response, I asked the school administration members that visited with me, “How much spending does the State of Iowa spend each year on education? If you don’t think we are funding education as a priority and you are here asking for more, but please tell me how much do we already spend?” I was blown away with their answers. The highest that any of these school officials guessed that the state currently spends on K-12 education was $1 billion annually. The fact is, the State of Iowa spent $3.9 BILLION directly on K-12 education in 2024, and nearly 60% of our entire state budget is on education! Then public schools receive another $1.8 BILLION from property taxes and another $600 million in federal funding. I am tired of being told “that we don’t make education spending in Iowa a priority” by people who are in education and have no idea how much money we already provide to education year after year.

For the past 33 years, I have been proud to serve my community as a Volunteer Firefighter with the Packwood Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department. On Wednesday the Iowa Volunteer Firefighter Association hosted their day at the Capitol. I enjoy meeting many of my firefighter brothers from all over the state of Iowa who traveled to the Capitol to discuss their issues with their fellow legislators. The highlight was joining the “red coats” (for decades, the officers of the Iowa Firefighters Association wear red sport coats while they are in the capitol, making them the easiest group to identify) in speaking with our Senate leadership team concerning the challenges our volunteer firefighters (and first responders) are facing in Iowa.

In this meeting, I was speaking to my Senate leadership team as a volunteer firefighter from Packwood, not as a fellow senator. Because I am the only firefighter in the Iowa capitol, my perspective on the challenges that these men and women face is received with more appreciation. From the extensive training requirements, the difficulty in recruiting, to simply reinforcing to my fellow senators that in Iowa 92% of our firefighters, 14,000 of them, are VOLUNTEER firefighters. I pointed out that in Iowa, these men and women are only given a $250 credit on their income taxes. That is it. And if these men and women were paid, it would be at a cost of over $1 BILLION every year to Iowa taxpayers.

For the past 5 years I have been working on a LOSAP bill to assist in their needs. LOSAP stands for Length of Service Award Program and essentially is a very small retirement plan that is focused on volunteer fire departments and based on the number of years their volunteers serve. Its main benefit is to be used in recruiting and retaining volunteer firefighters. For the program to be effective, the state’s contribution needs to be $10 million, however the financial ask of the state to start this program has been scaled down to $1 million just to get the program started. While I have made the proposal for many years, every year it gets scrapped due to funding.

While I fully support our GREAT teachers in Iowa, I told our Senate leadership team that it is time to make some changes to our “funding priorities”. We have a group of men and women who every day put their lives on the line and do it for FREE at a SAVINGS of $1 BILLION to Iowa taxpayers. If we can budget another $235 million INCREASE in education spending (which is a pretty consist increase year after year) on top of the current $3.9 BILLION, surely we can make the men and women who save our loved ones lives and our state $1 BILLION every year, a priority for just $1 million.

We are just starting this session, so a lot of time is ahead of us to sort this out. I will be certain to keep you posted on this and all issues that concern our GREAT state!

Posted by on Jan 31 2025. Filed under Local News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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