No negotiations, but parties continue to spar over school aid

DES MOINES - Legislative Democrats and Republicans continued to squabble over K-12 school funding, but neither party has budged from their initial bargaining positions.

It's been more than two weeks since a conference committee met to reach a compromise between the 1.25 percent increase in supplemental school aid Republicans have offered and the 4 percent Democrats.

'We've reached out to Senate Democrats to try to get that (bill) downstairs,” Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said. 'We continue to be ready to commit 1.25 percent, which when added with all of the other pieces represents half of all the new dollars that are coming to the state.”

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, called Republicans' offer 'abysmal support in terms of dollars for K-12 education.”

Democrats also were critical of House Republicans pushing through House File 549, what the majority party called 'common sense fixes” to Iowa's arbitration process. It would allow an arbitrator to choose an award between the offers made by the school district and teachers' union rather than choose one or the other.

It would except that its 'dead on arrival” in the Senate, Gronstal said.

'They knew that when they were passing it. Everybody in this building knew that bill was dead on arrival in the Senate,” he said, adding that it was simply a political statement.

That's regrettable, Paulsen said. He pointed out that changes to Iowa's Chapter 20 collective bargaining law were among the first items Democrats considered when they controlled the House, Senate and governor's office in 2007.

'But now all of the sudden, that shouldn't be part of the conversation. I don't understand that,” Paulsen said.

Gronstal rejected the idea changes in arbitration will be a bargaining chip in the negotiations over school aid.

'Categorically, we are not going to weaken the collective bargaining law,” Gronstal said.