Miner Queries: What’s the vision for Iowa?

In 2001, I moved back to Iowa with my family. I am on the brink of my second child graduating from Iowa schools, but I’m not encouraging her to stay in this state – because Iowa has no economic vision. Her brother ended up in Minnesota, whose economy is more stable.

Since I was a kid, I have watched this state lose ground. And state leaders have done little to stem the bleeding.

Instead, I’ve watched leadership, particularly under Republican administrations, cut funding for vital services and defund government under the guise that lowering taxes stimulates growth. That’s a marketing message with no evidence to back it up. Lining historic U.S. tax cuts up with periods of growth quickly debunks it. More recent state level experiments with it in Kansas also clearly demonstrate its debilitating effects.

I’ve also watched legislation written in recent years focus on outside entities and their interests, rather than constituents in Iowa. Iowa’s Stand Your Ground law is an example.

As is education and its funding. In 1992, Governor Branstad politicized school funding by doing away with the funding formula, which was one of the premier school funding models in the U.S. By eliminating it, Branstad and his Republican colleagues were able to consistently defund our schools and erode our public education system.  This is death by a thousand cuts. Meanwhile, the state has increased funding for private schools, home schooling and online schools. If an educational program is private, it should NOT receive public funding. Parents choose private schools; they should pay. Period.

But decreased school funding doesn’t just affect schools. Iowa communities fighting for life have constricted further as schools, often the largest employer, close. Meanwhile, state government has not invested in building Iowa-based businesses and infrastructure to sustain and attract residents. Instead, we’ve courted outside corporations to bring in jobs – most of which haven’t materialized.

These decisions are always disguised as balancing the budget and being fiscally responsible. But it’s more marketing messaging. Take it from this former marketing and PR professional. As the state has cut, cut, cut, local taxing authorities have hit property owners harder. So our state officials may say, “We cut taxes,” but really all they’ve done is shift the burden. Eventually people catch on.

If we want to rebuild Iowa, we must invest in our people – starting with education. We also must take care of our people with health care (This includes mental and women’s health care. As a woman who experienced recurrent miscarriages and had multiple D&Cs, I know abortion needs to be part of that.), and we need to provide support for economic development with financing and infrastructure.

So does our one-party state government even have a vision for Iowa? Or is it simply out to protect the interests of that party and its primary funders? Do representatives vote with the caucus and accept the party’s talking points, or are they really dreaming big for Iowa?

Iowans don’t have to be fighting for crumbs. We can build a better state if we have a vision and political will. But we must stop being led around by unproven political and economic ideologies and engage in some critical thinking. We must get over party loyalty and be willing to stand up and question leadership, especially our governor and state legislators.

If you mandate it, why not fund it?

As I was doing my morning reading last week, I did a quick check of my Facebook page to discover a post by a friend and member of a local school board. It linked to a KMA story about the Iowa Senate passing a school radon bill. My friend’s comment noted without the funding, the bill wasn’t much help to schools.

In other words, it’s just another “unfunded mandate.”

From my years tracking state education legislation, I can say this follows the usual pattern of picking issues and pushing through one-size-fits-all fixes. These fixes often turn into political theater, giving legislators issues on which to run their next campaign. But they create headaches for local level officials charged with implementation because they are passed without the funding that would make them work.

In this case, without additional funding to help schools pay for installation of any needed radon mitigation system, requiring it becomes a burden more likely to erode a district’s education program by taking money away from kids’ learning or other district needs. Currently, that’s how the legislation reads.

And such legislation distracts from the real responsibility of legislators to tax and spend for the common good. Their job, first and foremost, is to provide the means (money) for public services, not the details of their operation.

As one southwest Iowa legislator noted when I made a visit to the Capitol in February, from the beginning of his legislative career, he specialized, serving on agricultural and human service committees. Too many issues come before the legislature for him to be an expert in all, he said.

Which leads me to ask why legislators are passing legislation at this level of detail, instead of appropriating adequate education funds to allow local officials to do the job of providing safe schools? Ironically, this same legislator registered a similar complaint about working with the federal government on water quality standards in Iowa.

But getting back to radon, it is very definitely a public health issue, and we want to protect our children. If it’s a priority, then it’s the legislature’s job to appropriate the funds to pay for this public safety law. However, without the funding, it’s simply marketing for the next election.

If legislators are serious about public needs, they need to be willing to fund them. That’s why Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to tax. And our state constitution states: “Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people.” No government can perform these duties without funds.

Likewise, schools can’t fix a radon problem without funds.

So if state legislators really want to protect our schools from radon, they need to provide the funds for it. Either attach appropriations to the radon bill or increase allowable growth to cover it instead of asking schools to cut already tight budgets or local property taxpayers to pick up the bill.