Government : Hello, Iowa House District 84 from the State Capitol!

Week 13 turned out to be a somewhat slower week, as the Iowa House Appropriations and the Ways & Means committees held meetings to work on the fiscal budgets. On Tuesday, the House passed 8 bills on Tuesday, April 8th.

The most impactful bill passed was the Supplemental State Aid (SSA) bill for public schools across Iowa. The passage of this bill by both the House and Senate was delayed due to differences in spending. Through negotiations, the House was able to get an additional $5 per student, which equals more than $105 million more in aid. Also included in the bill is the second phase of the teacher salary increase, which amounts to almost $35 million more for public schools. Additionally, the operational sharing cap increases from 21 to 25, which is an additional $942,087 more for public schools. So, to simplify these numbers, it will amount to an overall increase of $162 per student. There is also an additional 3% increase in transportation equity on top of the 2% increase, which will add up to over $1.5 million more for public schools. Adding all these together, this amounts to a 2.8% increase overall to total $7988 per student.

There have been some misunderstandings of the Education Savings Accounts program. This is in the third year of implementation, and it's getting the same increase as public schools are. The fiscal year 2025 overall spending of the state budget for public schools is 43.62%, while the ESA spending is 2.01% of the state budget, a huge difference.

One of the top priorities this year in the legislature was property tax reform. House Ways & Means chairman Bobby Kaufmann and the senate counterpart have introduced a new bill, House Study Bill 328, to address people's concerns with this bill. It does the following: It increases the homestead exemption to $50,000 to help residential property taxpayers. It also removes the rollback for all classifications except agriculture, starting in the FY27 budget.

HSB 328 implements a CPI adjustment with a 2% revenue restriction to help local entities manage high inflation times. It also provides a minimum budget guarantee to provide small communities certainty in their budgeting process. If you have any comments on this, please let me know by email, Thomas.gerhold@legis.iowa.gov and I will try to get your answer.

On Friday, April 11th, Governor Kim Reynolds announced that she will not be running for re-election in 2026. She has made many bold decisions throughout her years as governor, but her outstanding leadership during the very difficult covid years made the economic overall recovery third best in the nation, according to https://wallethub.com/edu/states-covid-recovery/90947. Thank you, Governor Reynolds, for your leadership!

Have a safe and healthy week and support our local businesses. I hope you have a blessed Holy Week and Happy Easter!