Budget constraints may limit Iowa lawmakers’ water quality actions

Sen. Rob Hogg hopes 2017 is the 'Year of Water” in the Legislature.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Lee Hein, R-Monticello, urges him to think of a longer time frame - as in 'Years of Water.”

'Water quality problems didn't happen overnight and we probably won't have the magic bullet this session or maybe not next session,” the Jones County farmer said.

While there is general agreement among lawmakers and policy groups on the need for water quality improvements, interest groups pushing for action are concerned that lower revenue estimates and the impact of low agricultural commodity prices will limit the Legislature's ability to pay for water quality efforts, said Kirk Leeds, chief executive of the Iowa Soybean Association.

That's one of several groups backing a sales tax increase that would channel three-eighths of every new penny of revenue into the voter-approved Iowa Water and Land Legacy.

Gov. Terry Branstad and fellow Republicans have all but ruled out that approach, despite the fact they already have to cut spending by $100 million during the last six months of the current budget year.

The Revenue Estimating Conference also projected lawmakers will have $51 million less to work with in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

'I don't think there is an interest in raising the sales tax,” Branstad said at a Statehouse news conference Wednesday. 'Even when Democrats controlled the Senate they never passed it. I certainly don't expect the Republicans to do it.”

Although some Republicans suggest a sale tax increase could be part of a broad tax reform effort that includes income tax and property tax relief, Branstad doesn't.

'I don't see the interest in raising the sales tax,” he repeated.

However, legislative leaders say there will be a water quality discussion and indicate the Iowa Water Quality Improvement Plan that 65 House Democrats and Republicans endorsed in 2016 is a good starting point for the discussion when the Legislature convenes Monday in Des Moines. That plan, Branstad said, would provide a 'growing, reliable source” of water quality funding.

Hogg, the Senate minority leader from Cedar Rapids, doubts lawmakers can find the resources in the current budget to fund water quality and other priorities. Like Democrats in general, he sides with groups representing farm, water, environmental, recreational and natural resources interests in supporting a sales tax increase.

The sales tax, Leeds said, would provide water quality with the same sustainable funding source the state made to transportation with the constitutionally protected Road Use Tax Fund.

'We've got to have a long-term commitment,” Leeds said.

He also suggests lawmakers might not want to dismiss Branstad's earlier proposal to use some revenue from an extended school infrastructure sales tax for water quality improvements. Branstad projected schools still would be getting $20.7 billion for infrastructure otherwise funded by property taxes, while $4.7 billion would be channeled to improving waterways.

Although that idea is opposed by school boards, administrators and teachers, Leeds said that as a school board president he knows that school districts - especially in districts where enrollment and the property tax base are not growing - need the infrastructure tax extension. Pairing it with another Iowa priority - water quality - may provide the political compromise needed, he said.

Debating funding schemes might be getting the cart before the horse, according to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan. He believes the biggest water quality issues facing lawmakers this year are identifying and defining the problem, and reaching consensus on the degree of water quality Iowans want to achieve.

'We have a lot of different interpretations of poor water quality,” the Delaware County farmer said. Iowans - lawmakers included - need to go through an education process to understand water quality issues.

'I'm not comfortable spending money throwing a solution after something that's not necessarily a problem,” he said.

Hogg, a lawyer who has written a book on climate change and its environmental impacts, acknowledged that some legislators remain skeptical about water quality problems.

'There are people who just want to pretend it's not our problem and they think if you make the Clean Water Act go away the problem goes away, and that's just wrong,” he said.

l Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com