Three main areas where work will be done this year by the legislature were discussed when state senator Joni Ernst met with a dozen area residents in the first legislative coffee of the year Saturday in Mount Ayr.
Road funding, the education reform blueprint and mental health service redesign were focused on in Ernst’s presentation on what loomed ahead in this year’s legislative session.
State representative Cecil Dolecheck was at a meeting at Iowa State University and could not attend the session.
In general, she noted that governor Terry Branstad had given his budget recommendations three weeks early to give the legislature more time to look at them.
Appropriations committees are looking at the targets to set their budget targets and once that is done, work on the budget can begin. Legislators are working to get the budget issues handled in a more timely manner this year, she said.
Many of the major issues will be worked on first in the house and then sent to the senate as the house has Republican leadership, she noted.
Road funding questions
Transportation and road funding will be a major issue this year as well, Ernst said.
Ernst noted that a citizens advisory committee had studied the road funding issues in the state over the summer and came back with a recommendation for a 10 cent per gallon increase in fuel tax.
“This was not palatable for a lot of people, especially governor Branstad,” Ernst said. “After his first response he has backed off his opposition to the point of saying he would look at the matter if the legislature passes it.”
The latest proposal is to increase the gas tax by four cents per gallon in 2013 and another four cents per gallon in 2014 to generate more revenue to the road use fund.
Governor Branstad asked Iowa Department of Transportation director Paul Trombino to identify efficiencies in his department to try to free up more money.
Trombino has come up with $50 million in possible efficiencies, but several of them would take a number of years to realize, Ernst said. The $20 million in savings the first year won’t go very far to meet the projected $220 million a year shortfall in keeping up the state’s road infrastructure.
Some of the issue for the rural areas of the state is the Time 21 funding formula that took money originally going to counties and redistributed it to more urban areas of the state.
This rural-urban split will be part of any discussion of new money, Ernst predicted.
“Cecil Dolecheck and I have talked about this and if we are going to have a fuel tax increase, we want the money shared on the original funding formula where counties received a larger portion of the pie,” Ernst said.
Ernst said as a rural legislator she is basically in favor of trying to do something. She has been taking polls at her legislative coffees in the area to see what those attending think about a gas tax increase to help keep up area roads.
She noted that the people were fairly evenly split in Lenox while a large majority seemed to favor in increase in Osceola, Creston and Adams county. The majority of those attending the Ringgold county session also indicated they would favor something being done.
Kevin Kilgore said he felt that something should be done to bring down costs of road construction and mentioned that changing regulations that say union wages must be paid on state construction projects might help.
Another suggestion was to tax all fuel the same instead of having special taxes for ethanol and fuel used on the farm.
“The equipment used in the field has to get there somehow and most often it is over a road,” someone chimed in.
Special licenses for hybrid cars that use less gasoline and licensing Amish buggies or requiring rubber tires for horse-drawn equipment were also thrown out.
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