Lawmakers settle into budget work

DES MOINES - State lawmakers began the trench work Monday of assembling competing state budget plans that eventually they hope to merge into a spending plan they can approve, send to the governor and adjourn their 2015 session.

The House Appropriations Committee voted 14-11 to approve a higher education funding measure that would commit $977.6 million in general fund appropriations to Iowa's regent universities and special schools, community colleges, workforce training efforts, private college tuition grants and other programs. The overall funding level would be $8.5 million below current levels.

Rep. Cecil Dolecheck, R-Mount Ayr, chair of the education budget subcommittee, said the funding level was in line with House Republican spending targets in a tight budget which require 'very painful cuts” and will not guarantee a third straight year of status-quo tuition for resident undergraduates attending Iowa's state universities.

Before finalizing work on the spending plan which could see full House action as early as Thursday, majority Republicans approved an amendment offered by Rep. Walt Rogers, R-Cedar Falls, which shifted $12.9 million from the University of Iowa to fund performance-based increases of $6.6 million for the University of Northern Iowa and $6.3 million for Iowa State University.

Rep. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport, said the House GOP approach was 'woefully inadequate” by setting a target that was $44.8 million below Gov. Terry Branstad's recommendation and $48.3 million below a bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week.

'This is an example of a budget that does not reflect the priorities of Iowa,” said Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City.

During his weekly news conference, Branstad called the proposed tuition freeze for a third straight year at state universities 'a good thing to do” in pledging to work with leaders of the split-control Legislature to 'work out these differences.”

Meanwhile, the full Senate voted 26-23 to approver a status-quo funding level in fiscal 2016 for agriculture and natural resources programs financed via the state's general fund.

Senate File 494 proposed to appropriate $43.1 million from the general fund and earmark $42 million in spending from the state's Environment First Fund. It included $4.4 million for the Water Quality Initiative to help fund projects and practices to reduce nutrients in Iowa's waterways and $12.85 million in funding for various soil conservation and water quality programs from the Environment First Fund.

The bill also appropriates more than $41 million from the Fish and Wildlife trust fund for conservation programming at the state Department of Natural Resources. It now goes to the House Appropriations Committee, which likely will assign it to subcommittee Tuesday in hopes of expediting the process of getting dispute budget bills to House-Senate conference committees.

”I would like to see this get done in the month of May, and we're going to try to do everything we can to facilitate that,” Branstad said of the ongoing negotiations.