“Real progress” reported in Iowa Legislative talks

DES MOINES -- Roving bands of lawmakers occasionally meeting to discuss unresolved priority issues were the few public vestiges of progress being made Thursday as the split-control Legislature pushed toward adjourning the 2013 session – possibly by next week.

Top legislators assured reporters that key players on the big four issues – property tax relief, education reform, health care expansion and the state budget – were holding private talks and making progress in closing their differences on the session's 116

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calendar day. Most of the rank-and-file senators and representatives took an extended weekend while skeleton crews conducted brief floor work Thursday.

“I continue to believe we're making significant progress,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs. “There are still lots of hurdles, lots of disagreements, but real progress is being made.”

Enough that he said he was hopeful the 2013 session could adjourn sometime next week, although Senate President Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, said the split-control Legislature probably could “wrap it up by another week or so.”

Thursday produced an offer from legislative Democrats aimed at resolving a health care expansion dispute. However, Republicans said more work was needed to close the gulf between Democrats plan to expand Medicaid to 150,000 needy Iowans versus a scaled-back Healthy Iowa model pushed by Gov. Terry Branstad that emphasized wellness, prevention and personal responsibility.

Also, conference committee members trying to reach a deal on property tax reductions said work was under way to forge a hybrid version of competing plans passed by the House and the Senate.

“I do think that people are moving closer to a meeting of the minds on what is possible. People of good faith are working through their differences and that's not just hype,” he said. “I'd say today I'm passed hopeful, even perhaps passed optimistic. I think we're going to get something.”

Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, a co-leader of the property tax conference committee, said he believed a compromise proposal being worked on by top House and Senate leaders could “pop” next week and “once we know the details, we want to walk that back to our communities and see how it impacts them.”

Rep. Tom Sands, R-Wapello, a conferee who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, was equally enthused that a property tax resolution could come this year after two previous failed attempts.

“As each day progresses I become a little more optimistic that something actually will happen. Obviously, it won't be the far-reaching plan that I might have originally hoped for,” Sands said.

“I believe there is going to be something yet this session. It will be a step in the right direction. Everybody will get something, but nobody will get all they want. That's what compromise is,” he added. “I would be tickled to death if the first compromise agreement to get settled would come out of the Ways and Means committees and be that conference committee. Realistically, it could happen.”

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