Tepid water plan draws a stiff rebuke at Iowa’s Statehouse

State lawmakers do a lot of talking during your average legislative session. Occasionally, one of them says something worth hearing.

'So to the people of Iowa who might be tuning in this morning … you are being stiffed,” said Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, on the Senate floor first thing Wednesday morning. 'You are being robbed. Your votes are being stolen again.”

Johnson is a conservative who represents a district in conservative Northwest Iowa. But he's not railing on some liberal Democratic scheme to stiff and steal. The senator is responding to a late-session water quality plan unveiled by his fellow Republicans in the Iowa House.

Johnson harbors the odd notion that when 63 percent of Iowa voters in 2010 approved the creation of a constitutional Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund, they actually expected lawmakers to raise the sales tax by three-eighths of a cent to fill it. After all, voters in Iowa can't enact a tax increase on their own.

Much of the $180 million that would flow annually into the fund would be spent on efforts to clean up Iowa's impaired waterways and watersheds.

It took more than three years to craft that constitutional plan. The amendment had to be approved by two General Assemblies. The spending plan also was crafted and approved by the Legislature. The process was difficult and transparent. The voter verdict was clear.

And yet, more than five years later, the conventional wisdom under our golden dome of ultimate wisdom is that we really don't want the fund filled. That 2010 vote was just a suggestion that has since expired.

'The people of Iowa, our constituents, are still waiting. Don't be fooled by the shell games going on elsewhere in this building,” Johnson said of the House plan. 'The people's House has forgotten the people of Iowa.

'I think we need some courage here in this chamber. We need some leadership,” he said.

The House plan would direct $232 million over the next 13 years from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund to pay for water quality projects administered by the state Department of Agriculture. It also redirects $245 million from a tax on water bills to urban water quality projects, including drinking water treatment.

Courageous, it isn't. In tapping RIIF, its backers are yet again bellying up to the gambling tax trough, lawmakers' favorite politically pain-free source of funding. Because they've already promised that money to other projects in the short term, it takes five years for the House plan to ramp up to full funding. Unlike the constitutionally protected trust fund, there is no guarantee future Legislatures won't break the House promise.

What happens after year 13? Who knows? Cross your fingers.

House Republicans say their $232 million pot will be in addition to current funding, which they peg at $268 million over the next 13 years, along with federal and local funding sources. Sounds like a lot of scratch. But according to Iowa's Water and Land Legacy, a coalition which backs the trust fund, as much as $128 million generated annually by the three-eighths cent tax would be directed to water quality initiatives, or $1.6 billion over 13 years, and on into the future.

As Johnson notes, it's estimated the cost of meeting the ambitious 45 percent reduction in farm pollutants outlined in the state's Nutrient Reduction Strategy could top $1 billion annually. No plan covers that full cost. But this is a problem whose scope demands a permanent, predictable and protected source of funding, not a patchwork of promises that may or may not be kept down the road.

It also demands a real plan, with whole watershed-based strategies, clear objectives, benchmarks for measuring success, deadlines for meeting those benchmarks and robust water quality monitoring that tells taxpayers whether their money is buying actual results downstream.

No plan floated so far has contained these critical elements. Regardless of how you want water quality funded, the notion of throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at a problem without knowing if it's actually buying solutions would be a huge mistake. So far, the House plan is a vehicle for pumping more money into what we're already doing, not into a true, measurable plan for cleaning up Iowa's water. The trust fund effort hasn't moved far enough to spark a discussion of benchmarks and objectives.

Maybe this looks like a typical Statehouse tussle over bucks. But the implications are massive. Efforts to reduce farm runoff carrying pollutants are intertwined with the critical objectives of preserving the state's valuable soil and mitigating increasingly severe and costly flooding. Iowa's economy is dependent on the quality of our state's natural resources.

'If you talk to anybody about jobs in this state, about the people in this state, about keeping young people here, and economic development, we need two things. We need a solid career-oriented education for every child in this state. And we need to protect our natural resources,” Johnson said. 'Clean water out of the tap. Opportunities to hunt, fish, bike and hike.

'And if we don't improve that quality of life. If we don't assure that quality of life, the 10-cent per-gallon tax increase we approved on our fuel taxes will do nothing but build a giant exit ramp out of this state. The need is immediate,” Johnson said.

But few of Johnson's GOP colleagues have joined him. Many more lawmakers in both parties insist the three-eighths cent tax isn't politically possible. Our votes don't amount to a hill of beans alongside election year political calculations. Some of our elected leaders are far more concerned about their opponents putting a negative ad on the radio or a glossy mailer in our mailboxes than they are about pollutants flowing into our waterways.

Maybe, in the end, we get the House plan. It's certainly far better than nothing. And it will give many lawmakers something to talk about back home.

But for the sixth session in a row, they didn't listen to Iowa voters.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com