No threat of government shutdown, Iowa leaders say

DES MOINES - For weeks the Iowa Capitol chambers have been mostly empty, with only top leaders working daily on the state budget.

Yet as June 30 and the end of the state fiscal year draw closer, those leaders insist there will not be a government shutdown, nor the threat of one akin to the 2011 session that was not resolved until the final day.

Legislative leaders continued to meet Thursday as they tried to work out an agreement on a spending level for the state budget. House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said they continue to make progress, but they also continue to emerge from negotiations without a budget agreement.

'I am absolutely serious about this. This is no hype. I feel like we're making progress every day,” Gronstal said. 'But it is tough work.”

In 2011, the split-control Iowa Legislature did not resolve its differences until June 30, threatening a state government shutdown the next day.

Gronstal and Paulsen, both of whom were in their positions of power four years ago, said they do not believe this year will be a repeat of that session, that there will be no threat of a government shutdown this year.

'A lot of people like to draw the parallels to 2011. I suppose if you look for them you could find some similarities. I don't actually see it as particularly similar,” Paulsen said. 'I just think, for whatever reason, this particular session has just been much more deliberative as we go through things. Each (session) is a little bit different, and that's just kind of the personality of this session.”

In 2011, the Capitol underwent dramatic changes in its power structure. The November 2010 elections took Iowa from all-Democratic control of the governor's office and the Legislature to divided control with Democrats leading the Senate and Republicans in charge of the House and governor's office.

Budget negotiations completely stalled at one point that year.

This year, although negotiations have been protracted, leaders have met daily.

'My confidence just comes from the fact that I think all the principals, and, quite frankly, all the members, have an expectation of everyone to sit around the table in good faith and try to work toward a resolution,” Paulsen said.

While those daily negotiations have not yet produced the big payoff - a tentative budget agreement - Gronstal and Paulsen believe the talks are moving the two sides closer.

'Every session feels the same and different in lots of different ways,” Gronstal said. 'I continue to believe essentially every day - maybe not every day this week - we have made some level of progress each day.”

Thursday's discussions focused on the roughly $2 billion Health and Human Services budget, leaders said. Part of the challenge of that budget, they said, is not only agreeing on a spending limit but also on which state funds are used to support each program.

'We have people meeting, trying to make sure everybody is comparing apples to apples as it relates to the Human Services budget,” Gronstal said. 'We're trying to come up with a budget that works in practice in state departments.”