Linn County still needs state's help for flood protection, lawmakers say

Rejection of extending a local option sales tax to pay for flood mitigation doesn't mean Cedar Rapids voters are against flood protection, Linn County legislators said today.

Linn County legislators Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, and Rep. Nick Wagner, R-Marion, said that despite the defeat of the 1-cent sales tax to pay for flood walls and other flood mitigation projects in Cedar Rapids last week, they remain optimistic the Legislature will approve a bill giving some Iowa communities access to sales tax revenues to pay for similar efforts.

Hogg and Wagner were guests on Iowa Public Radio's River to River Monday.

Dubuque, Des Moines and the Cedar Falls-Waterloo area have expressed interest in Senate File 2217, which would allow communities to use the growth in sales tax revenues to pay for flood-related projects. To be eligible, communities also would have to get state and federal funds as well as private sector support.

In the Linn County metro area, the measure was defeated 14,024 to 13,445.

That shouldn't be read as voters opposing the city's plans to protect downtown as well as neighborhoods on the west side of the Cedar River, according to Wagner and Hogg.

“You have to take into account the whole political environment today,” Wagner said. “There are a lot of people who don't trust government. I think that played a big part in it … as well as an anti-tax increase environment.”

The defeat at the ballot box does nothing to reduce the need for flood protection, Hogg said.

“If (flooding) were to happen again it would be the end of downtown Cedar Rapids and those neighborhoods,” he said. The city would be unlikely to obtain the billions of dollars of aid from the state and federal government, he said, and people who drained their life savings to rebuild homes and businesses would not have those resources.

“It was economic and emotional trauma for people and we can't go through that again,” he said.

The community will keep working on a plan for flood protection, he said, because it would be “untenable” not to protect the community on both sides of the river, Hogg said. The Army Corps of Engineers has plans for a flood wall on the east side, but said there isn't an economic justification for west-side flood protection.

“So we need to do something,” Hogg said. “We'll keep looking at it. We'll working at it. This is something the state has to deal with.”

SF 2217 was approved by the Senate 50-0 and has been approved by the House Appropriations Committee 21-4. It's now in the Ways and Means Committee.