Get down to business, lawmakers

By Iowa City Press-Citizen

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Let's hope the Iowa Legislature managed to get all the ideological turf wars out of its system last year and that lawmakers this year will be ready to get down to the business of governing the state.

As a result of the House Republicans playing offense and the Senate Democrats playing defense last year, the session went into legislative overtime and didn't end until New Fiscal Year's Eve - the deadline after which Iowa would have experienced its first government shutdown.

Amid some of the overheated debates, however, there were some strong examples of lawmakers finding common ground. And if our legislators have learned the right lessons from the mistakes of that bloated session, they may find themselves able to make substantial progress on some of the most intractable issues of state politics.

Mental health reform

When it comes to Iowa's mental health system, legislators on both sides of the aisle agree it's time to address the dysfunctional status quo of having 99 different county-based systems often work at cross purposes. And most of the players agree that moving to a more regionally administered system would improve the quality of care and would help eliminate some of the confusion and inequities in the system.

Not surprisingly, however, the urban and rural counties don't agree about who should be making the decisions for the new regions. Those in less populated counties want to ensure that every county gets the same level of influence. Those in counties with more people think the decision-making and voting should be population based.

Nearly everyone also understands that any centralization of the mental health system - whether statewide or regionally - will require a substantial initial investment if it really is expected to improve access to quality care. But, not surprisingly, lawmakers disagree about how much money should be put into the new system and for how long the state should be on the tab for that increase in funding.

Property tax reform

For more than three decades, lawmakers have been paying lip service to addressing the unfair way Iowa bases commercial property tax rates on 100 percent of assessed value while it bases residential and agricultural property tax rates on a much lesser percentage of valuation. There has been study after study on how to make the system more equitable, but no one has come up with the right plan at the right time for ensuring that neither the taxpayers nor the city/county governments will take too much of a hit.

Amid all the fighting last year, there was some progress made. The House Republicans, the Senate Democrats and the governor each came up with a different plan for resolving the issue, but the plans were not so far apart that compromise wasn't possible. Unfortunately, the negotiations didn't begin until much too late in the session and then collapsed under pressure of the countdown to government shutdown.

With so many of the differences already having been identified and discussed, leaders from both parties say they're hopeful this year that they'll be able to succeed where so many other Legislatures have failed. And because the governor has listed tax reform as one of his administration's top priorities, he is likely to sign on this year to any workable compromise.

Education policy reform

Many new policy proposals have grown out of the Education Summit that Gov. Terry Branstad hosted over the summer. But before lawmakers begin debating the worth of those proposals, they need to reaffirm that school districts are going to see an increase in the amount of money they can spend per student.

Last year, lawmakers and the governor made a deal that held local school districts to a 0 percent accountable growth rate for the current school year - meaning that districts couldn't spend any more per child this year than they did last year. Lawmakers promised that they would allow districts to increase that amount of spending per pupil by 2 percent next year, and they need to be clear that, whatever other educational policy reforms are made this session, districts can count on at least that 2 percent.

Then lawmakers can discuss the implications of the many good (and not-so-good) proposals for ensuring Iowa students are able to complete in a 21st-century global marketplace.

Election-year politics

With lawmakers eager to get back home to start campaigning for this year's primary and general elections, it's unlikely that this year's session will go beyond the 100 days already scheduled. There already is talk of keeping the session to only 90 days.

But we don't want lawmakers to rush for the sake of rushing. We want them to talk about these issues openly and deliberately. And we want them to know that, if they do manage to reach pragmatic compromise on these difficult issues, then they really will have accomplished something worth being re-elected for.