First steps for new leaders

By Jonathan Narcisse

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When Terry Branstad left the governor's office a decade ago, he had a Republican House and Senate. While he managed the status quo much better than Gov. Chet Culver did later - thanks to dozens of tax hikes and data manipulations - Branstad and the GOP did not repair, restore or rebuild Iowa.

Now that he and Republicans have returned to power, simply invoking a term such as “conservative” isn't good enough. This group of statehouse leaders must lead and have a specific vision of how we fix Iowa.

My basic message during my gubernatorial campaign was that government the education system and the economy in Iowa are broken. The budget hole is real, property-tax hikes were real, the loss of yet another congressional seat is real. All high schools and 95 percent of the middle schools in our 10 largest cities are officially failing. The media won't report that fact, statehouse politicians and edu-crats deny it, business leaders refuse to believe it, activists apologize for it.

Here are the first steps the Branstad administration and the new GOP leadership ought to take to fix Iowa:

1) Institute a four-year flexible freeze, capping spending at the current level.

2) Resist simple and irresponsible remedies such as not filling current vacancies and across-the-board cuts. Instead, a department-by-department, program-by-program examination of state government must take place. The fat needs to go, but the Culver-sliced lean needs to be restored. For example, we are about 100 state troopers short.

3) End the practice of spending 99 percent of estimated revenues and move to zero-base budgeting. Fund what we are supposed to do: keep courts open, public safety, etc., and veto every non-essential expenditure from Planned Parenthood to church projects. Private dollars should fund such things.

4) Institute a bounty program, rewarding state workers who help us save money by giving them a bonus.

5) Reorganize state government, reducing it to fewer than 10 bureaucracies within the governor's line of authority. For example Regents, College Student Aid, K-12, and Cultural Affairs should all be under one roof sharing one administrative team. The vast bureaucracy supporting each must go.

6) For too long, agencies such as Department of Human Serivces have used full-time, permanent consultants to avoid inflating employment reporting, and at much more expense than our regular work force. End that permanent consultant class.

7) Institute real reform at DHS, beginning with requiring work and personal responsibility.

8) Institute real reform of our justice system and courts; end the notion that building prisons is economic development, and restore work details. We have lots of strong backs in prison that can build new jails and prisons as needed.

9) Begin the systematic elimination of the 12,000-plus useless bureaucratic positions in public education and end the practice of funding nonexistent students.

10) Allow parents to decide who educates their children and let the money follow.

11) Allow real academic competition to exist by allowing independent academies to be formed.

12) Introduce a comprehensive plan to phase out corporate taxation; institute real property-tax protection for all Iowans; reduce the sales tax; and phase out the individual income tax.

There are many other reforms that ought to take place. These are things that can be done right away by the new leadership and would prove they are committed to true small government with free-market principles.

Jonathan Narcisse was the independent Iowa Party candidate for governor. More information at NarcisseForIowa.com. Comments: info=narcisseforiowa.com@mcsv168.net