March 6, 2014 Washington should look to Iowa to get a clue as to how democratic government should work. Washington has a Democratic Senate, a Republican House, and a Democratic chief executive. Iowa has a Democratic Senate, a Republican House, and a Republican chief executive. In Washington, the Senate leadership labels the minority as liars and obstructionists, the House seldom considers anything approved by the Senate, and the President attempts to bypass both through executive fiat. In Iowa, the Governor has laid out his agenda for consideration by the Legislature, House and Senate leadership meet on a regular basis to find mutual priorities and then allow the members of each chamber to work through the process needed to achieve those priorities. The fact that a divided government can work has never been more apparent than it has been this week. On Wednesday morning the House and Senate released joint budget targets. This is the first time this has occurred in several years and possibly the first time ever when there has been divided control of the House and Senate. Not only have the House and Senate agreed on the overall size of the budget at just shy of $7 billion, they have also agreed on the targets for each individual budget area. With these agreements in place, a lot of the wrangling over priorities has been eliminated. There will be no debate between the House and Senate as to the spending in the various budget committees. No discussion as to whether we take $20 million from Agriculture and put it in Education or do we take $10 million from Health and Human Services and put it in Justice Systems. Due to the hard work and cooperation of House and Senate leadership, along with input from the Governor’s office, the big ticket items have been discussed, negotiated and agreed upon. The $6.98 billion budget that has been agreed upon meets the first and most important principle that the House has operated under for the last four years. We will not spend more money than the State takes in. The $6.98 billion is over 99% of the revenue available as projected by the Revenue Estimating Conference. The REC meets again late this month to reassess the revenue estimate. If the revenue estimate is up, the Legislature will ignore the increased revenue and maintain our budget targets; if the revenue estimate is down, the House will lower our spending targets and our budget chairs will have to make cuts to meet the new targets. All of our other principals our still in force and will be adhered to. It will be the responsibility of the budget chairmen to craft their spending around those principles--we will not use one-time money to fund ongoing expenses, we will not deliberately underfund any item in order to balance the budget, and we will return the overpayment of taxes to the people of Iowa. These principles have brought Iowa from a budget shortfall of $900 million four years ago to a positive ending fund balance in excess of $800 million for 2014. From now until the end of the session most of my time will be consumed in the budget process. On Wednesday, as chairman of the Justice Systems Budget committee, I was allocated just over $729 million to fund the departments under the purview of the committee. From this we will need to fund
the entire court system in the state, from the clerks of court all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Department of Public Safety which includes the Highway Patrol, Fire Marshall, Division of Criminal Investigation and Crime Lab. The largest line item in our budget is the Department of Corrections which runs our prison system, our community corrections systems and is responsible for the parole system. Other departments include Civil Rights, Homeland Security, National Guard, the Law Enforcement Academy, Board of Parole, and others.
PLEASE JOIN ME AT THE FORUMS AND COFFEES; I WILL BE HAPPY TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND DISCUSS ISSUES WITH YOU.
March 22 10:00 am King’s Pointe Regatta Grill
