With the end of the fiscal year quickly approaching, I’ve been at the Statehouse working on a sensible budget compromise in the best interest of Iowa families, students, businesses and communities. |With the end of the fiscal year quickly approaching, I’ve been at the Statehouse working on a sensible budget compromise in the best interest of Iowa families, students, businesses and communities.
While things are not final yet, we’re getting close. We need to complete the budget by July 1 when the new fiscal year begins so that state government continues to operate efficiently and meet the needs of Iowans.
In the last few days, the Senate has approved a complete state budget that avoids a two-year starvation diet for Iowa schools, preserves key job-creation efforts and protects the pocketbooks of Iowa taxpayers. This compromise budget is balanced, does not raise taxes and meets the top two demands of the Governor and House Republicans: it spends less than $5.99 billion for next year and puts in place a two-year budget.
The House and Senate continue to find common ground in additional areas. On the Economic Development Budget, for example, we’ve agreed to keep local workforce offices open to help unemployed Iowans find jobs and businesses find workers. We’ve agreed to support efforts at Iowa’s state universities to encourage economic growth, including research parks and small business development centers. And we’ve agreed on funding for Iowa’s Commission on Volunteer Service, which leverages millions of dollars for volunteers to improve our communities.
On the Health & Human Services Budget, negotiators have agreed to keep giving vulnerable Iowans the care they need to stay in their own homes. It’s less costly than institutional care and offers a better quality of life for Iowans with disabilities, the elderly, and those with serious diseases.
Differences do remain, however, and I hope the House and Governor can work with us to reach resolution. A couple key differences include:
** Support for our local schools. I’m not happy that Iowa’s K-12 schools will receive no new state support next year. As a compromise, I voted to accept that, and I hope the House will in turn agree to a modest 3 percent increase in state support for local schools in 2013.
** Commercial property tax relief. The Senate supports a $200 million commercial property tax cut that provides a bigger tax break for four out of five commercial property taxpayers than the plan supported by the House and Governor. The Senate plan supports local economic development without increasing residential property taxes. The House and Governor should come around on this issue. Surely we can agree that helping small businesses and protecting homeowners is more important than giving big tax cuts to large out-of-state corporations.
We were all elected to make Iowa a better place to live, work, and raise a family. We don’t always have the same ideas on how to reach that goal, but I believe we are very close to agreement and hope we will complete our work by July 1.
