DES MOINES – Iowa Governor Terry Branstad revealed millions more in state funding cuts to the highway patrol, prisons, community colleges and more late Friday, and lib’s are fuming.
Democrat Chris Hall may have said it best, reporting that “just days after 3,000 college students had their scholarships rescinded, Branstad-Reynolds issue more cuts to community colleges, state universities, and public safety. To drop this at 4pm on Friday is shameless.”
Mason City’s Sharon Steckman, a House Democrat and fervent fighter for public education, backed up Hall’s claim, saying “the governor is making more cuts to education…. At about four o’clock this afternoon, Governor Terry Branstad’s staff revealed details about more cuts in the present year’s state budget. The spending reduction plan legislators approved a few weeks ago directed the governor’s budget director to make another $11.5 million in cuts on his own. That plan from Department of Management director Dave Roederer calls for community colleges to pare another $1.7 million in spending between now and June 30, 2017. The University of Iowa must cut $1.2 million deeper. Iowa State University must cut nearly a million and the University of Northern Iowa about half a million. Also in the note it said the state corrections would cut a quarter of a million in the highway patrol another half a million all this by June.”
The state is trying to trim over $110 million from the budget this year.