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Rep. Sharon Steckman explains her “no” vote on water quality bill

The following is a legislative update from Rep. Sharon Steckman of Mason City –

This week, the House voted on SF 512 which dealt with water quality. I wanted to let you know why I voted against it. Last year, I voted in favor of HF 612 which also dealt with water quality – but in a much better way.

Neither of those bills passed in the opposite chamber, so both were carried over to this year. On Monday afternoon, the minority party was informed that the Senate bill was going to be debated on Tuesday. After I looked at the bill closely and discussed it with experts in the field, I realized that:

• SF 512 was rushed through before we even began to attempt to figure out how we were going to balance the current budget.

• The bill would do little to clean up our waterways

• The bill was crafted behind closed doors with no minority members included, but with much input from lobbyists.

• There is little accountability and it does not use a watershed approach that gives local stakeholders a role.

• Takeaways are used for the funding. Dollars from SAVE (schools), RIIF (infrastructure) and the water excise tax are used…in other words, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul

• The water excise tax is paid by consumers who get their water from local utilities and is not paid by people in rural areas who have their own wells.

The Education Committee met late into the evening Wednesday on the “Omnibus” bill to which a many-paged amendment had been added on Tuesday. I had served on the subcommittee that advanced the bill and I had no prior knowledge that the amendment would be added before we debated the bill in committee. However, the main objection that I had to the bill was that it opened up the state to even more for-profit online schools (other than the two that are already operating within Iowa) and it removed the cap on how many students can participate in online learning with very little oversight. Last year, over $6 million was diverted from public schools to online for-profit schools. Among other problems, there is no way to reclaim that money when students drop out and that rate has been shown to be approximately 50%.

We must turn around the ever-escalating trend to deprive our public schools of the funds necessary to produce well-educated citizens and a skilled workforce.

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