Setting legislative priorities

With budget woes, priorities, solutions need to be identified

By MARK NEWMAN Courier staff writer

OTTUMWA — Yes, your legislators will have a balanced budget this year. But they won’t forget the things that are important to Iowans: public safety, education and creating jobs.

Five state lawmakers — Rep. Mary Gaskill, D-Ottumwa, Rep. Curt Hanson, D-Fairfield, Sen. Keith Kreiman, D-Bloomfield, Sen. Becky Schmitz, D-Fairfield, and Rep. Kurt Swaim, D-Bloomfield passed that message along to more than 50 constituents.

The citizens were attending a Saturday forum hosted by the League of Women Voters and the Ottumwa Area Chamber of Commerce.

“We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” said Hanson at one point while discussing possible cuts.

But while there may be intentions to pay attention to priorities, one lawmaker offered a word of warning.

That caveat, said Swaim, is that if an idea, even a good one, costs money, it may have to be set aside.

“There are programs that can save you four dollars for every one dollar you spend,” he said. “But we have to make sure we have that first dollar.”

Lawmakers said public forums are one of the ways they decide which programs get the dollars.

But that didn’t mean any good, low-cost idea would be approved, either.

At first, lawmakers said they’d consider the suggestion of a state employee concerned that highly experienced, management-level supervisors were being laid off, while many of the lower-level state workers kept their jobs. There could still be a savings by allowing, for example, a child welfare investigator with 10 years experience to give up the supervisor rank, then take a pay cut and “bump” a one-year employee out of their job.

It wouldn’t cost much, and all that experience wouldn’t be walking out the door.

Lawmakers said they’d look into that — until they heard from audience member and union negotiator Steve Siegel of Ottumwa.

He said he’d been privy to those delicate negotiations between management and the union. There has to be “give and take” in such talks, he said. For example, workers may have agreed to five unpaid furlough days if supervisors agreed they would not “bump” them out of their job.

At least two of the legislators said that would change things for them and that they’d be more likely to honor a contract that supervisors and workers had already agreed upon.

But legislators did express concern when they heard from a correctional officer in the crowd that a community-based correctional facility — a halfway house — for recently released convicts might get closed in Judicial District 8.

“Left out without a halfway house, I feel [the tendency to reoffend] would land [offenders] right back in prison,” said Gaskill.

But besides the idea that prisoners being helped to become productive citizens can be a benefit to society, Gaskill and the others seemed intrigued by the financial figures, too.

Right now, the officer said, there are 400 people in prison at an annual cost of $31,000 each whom parole boards have approved for release to a halfway house. There, former prisoners pay their own rent, find work and pay taxes. The 400 people eligible for halfway houses remain in prison because there isn’t enough room at the more economical community correctional units.

Yet, said Kreiman, money is being just given away to wealthy companies in Iowa. Tax credits mean some large businesses get to keep the taxes they would have paid into the system. The hope originally was that businesses would stimulate the economy and provide jobs, thus, tax incentives to draw businesses.

Sometimes it works, said Kreiman, but it appears there are millions of dollars being lost with companies that have not created a single job.

Schmitz said the governor has already ordered $50 million to be cut from current tax exemptions for businesses.

“We need to see [which ones] are working,” said Hanson.

Small businesses, especially, are a place where jobs are created, he said. The others agreed.

“Imagine if some of these millions in tax credits that haven’t created jobs were put back into commercial property tax relief,” said Kreiman.

Other discussions and questions were wide ranging and included an NRA member who asked the elected officials to support the bill to make obtaining a weapons permit a more fair, more objective and more unified process in Iowa.

An educator told lawmakers that cutting the education budget could result in larger class sizes. In addition to impacting academic achievement, larger class sizes create a safety hazard as students become more difficult to control.

Advocates for the Iowa Family Planning Network asked that funding be renewed and that coverage be expanded to include assistance for women up to age 54 and for men.

A supporter of spousal safety was assured there were bills currently under consideration that would make choking a spouse a more serious offense than it is now and would make it more difficult for known domestic abusers to obtain weapons.

Hanson said he’s working on a “texting” safety law, concerning those who type messages on electronic devices while they are driving. He thought a recent editorial cartoon had some validity. In the drawing, a car had a bumper sticker that read, “Honk if you love Jesus. Text if you’d like to meet him.”

Mark Newman can be reached at 683-5358 or by e-mail at mnewman@ottumwacourier.com.