The preschool program will be at the center of Democratic opposition to a “deappropriations” bill the Iowa House Appropriations Committee approved this week. Republicans say House Study Bill 1, which has been renamed House File 45, would save $500 million over three years. Nearly a third of that total would come from eliminating the statewide voluntary preschool program for four-year-olds (estimated to cost $69.9 million in fiscal year 2012 and $75.1 million in fiscal year 2013). Click here for a summary listing the budget cuts and supplemental appropriations in House File 45.

On January 13, House Democrats launched a website to help mobilize Iowans who value the long-term benefits of preschool. Ending the program could affect 20,000 children across the state. This chart (pdf file) shows the preschool enrollment for four-year-olds and cost to the state for each school district. For instance, in the Des Moines area there are 1,335 children enrolled in the preschool program through the Des Moines Community Schools, 235 in the West Des Moines school district, 208 in Johnston, 207 in Southeast Polk, 163 in Norwalk, 147 in Urbandale, and 122 in Ankeny. In the Cedar Rapids area, 473 children are enrolled in preschool through the Cedar Rapids school district and 175 in Linn-Mar.

A public hearing on House File 45 will take place Tuesday, January 18 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the House chambers at the capitol. Only 40 people will be allowed to speak, but any Iowan can send written comments on the bill to lioinfo AT legis.state.ia.us, with “testimony” in the e-mail subject line. House Democrats are also asking members of the public to post comments at the Save Preschool site.

Statehouse Republicans and incoming Governor Terry Branstad want to replace the preschool program with a voucher system geared to low-income families. However, many middle-income families in Iowa are also unable to afford preschool, which can easily cost $700 to $800 per month. If state assistance for middle-class families disappears, many preschools could close for lack of students.

It’s unfortunate that preschool became a partisan issue in Iowa. A Pew Center on the States report published last month found, “Despite persistent budget shortfalls, the majority of state legislatures have once again made the prudent decision to protect pre-k programs.” In addition, more than a dozen states “with control of the executive and legislative branches split between the two major parties” nevertheless “protected their pre-k investments from budget cuts.”

Iowa’s U.S. Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley were among a large bipartisan majority that voted to advance a bill to extend unemployment benefits, the Bush tax cuts and various special tax breaks and credits. The Senate passed the cloture motion by a vote of 83 to 15. Just 10 members of the Democratic caucus and five Republicans voted against cloture for various reasons. A handful of senators who voted for cloture may vote against the bill itself, but the bill will pass easily.

The Los Angeles Times summarized key points in the Senate’s version of the deal President Barack Obama negotiated with Republican leaders in Congress:

The package extends the Bush tax cuts for two years on families at all income levels, including the wealthiest 2% who have incomes above $250,000 a year. Obama once campaigned against tax cuts for those earners.

The package also continues unemployment insurance through 2011 for up to 7 million Americans who otherwise would see their extended jobless aid expire.

One key change for most taxpayers will be a 2-percentage-point reduction in payroll tax worth up to $2,000. It replaces the so-called Making Work Pay tax cut for 95% of Americans, a break that expires Dec. 31.

The package also reinstates the estate tax that lapsed this year under a quirk of law. It establishes a 35% rate on inheritances above $5 million for singles and $10 million for families. […]

[T]he Senate added $10 billion in energy assistance, including nearly $5 billion in ethanol and coal credits that environmentalists oppose. But it also included an extension of grants for renewable energy developers, which supporters credit with having doubled solar plant production in 2010.

The package also includes a long, $55-billion list of specialty tax breaks that tend to be extended each year – help for Puerto Rican rum makers, racetrack developers and Los Angeles film producers.

I don’t have time to list all the shameful aspects of this deal tonight, but I discuss seven big problems after the jump. UPDATE: I recommend Rortybomb’s post on “who got what” in this package.

The Board of Regents unanimously approved requests last week for 95 sabbaticals in the coming year, to be taken by faculty at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. That number was way down from the 167 sabbaticals approved a few years ago. But Republicans, including the next Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, had called for a moratorium on sabbaticals to save money.

House Republicans have estimated that eliminating sabbaticals at the regents universities for a year would save taxpayers $6 million. However, “According to the regents, the 95 sabbaticals carry a $422,000 cost for replacement teachers, and last year’s sabbaticals generated $5.2 million in grants.”

Oops. The Republican savings estimate is off by more than a factor of ten. How did that happen? The Iowa City Press-Citizen explains:

[Iowa House Republicans’] projected savings apparently includes salaries that professors will earn whether they are on sabbatical or not.

Great fact-checking there on the House Republican staff. You’ve been circulating this $6 million figure for months, based on a false assumption that if universities stopped granting faculty sabbaticals, they could stop paying those professors’ salaries.

In a rational world, politicians wouldn’t try to micromanage affairs at the state universities, and would recognize their mistake in exaggerating the cost of sabbaticals. But Republicans have found an issue with a lot of symbolic punch. Like Paulsen says, “Why should the taxpayers of Iowa be paying to basically give these folks a year off from teaching?” Good universities have controls to ensure that faculty have research and publications to show for their sabbatical time, but the breaks from teaching can easily be portrayed as a big paid vacation for elitist eggheads.

Steve Kettering, who will be minority whip in the Iowa Senate, told the Press-Citizen that the regents’ vote on sabbaticals “is a thumb in their eye […] It just furthers the distance the people of Iowa feel about their universities. There is just a difference between the lives Iowans lead and the lives of the people in the university sector.” Kettering said legislators may respond either through reducing appropriations to the regents universities, or by passing a law to stop sabbaticals. I don’t think Republicans would be deterred by a Legislative Services Agency analysis showing the cost savings in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars, rather than the $6 million Republicans dream of.

Under Democratic control, the Iowa Senate probably would not pass a specific law halting sabbaticals, and senators would resist deep cuts to the regents universities’ budgets. However, if the Republican-controlled House appropriates far less to the universities, citing the regents’ failure to control costs, the final budget deal struck between the state senators and representatives could end up reducing appropriations by a lot more than the true cost of sabbaticals. The three state universities’ operating request for fiscal year 2012 is about $639 million.

A related concern is that yet again, we learn that a Republican proposal to save millions of taxpayer dollars isn’t supported by facts. Paulsen has made big promises about cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget in the current year and beyond, in order to pay for GOP tax-cutting plans. Where will that money come from? Laying off some state employees and axing a few Democratic initiatives, like the Power Fund and voluntary preschool for four-year-olds, won’t add up to enough in savings. Significant cuts to higher education may be on the way, and the Board of Regents could become the scapegoat.

LATE UPDATE: University of Iowa President Sally Mason and P. Barry Butler, the university’s interim executive vice president and provost, published a guest column in the December 28 Des Moines Register defending “career development assignments.” Excerpts are after the jump.

The Iowa Senate Democratic caucus on November 14 re-elected Mike Gronstal as majority leader and Jack Kibbie as Senate president. Five senators will serve as assistant majority leaders: Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City, Bill Dotzler of Waterloo, Wally Horn of Cedar Rapids, Amanda Ragan of Mason City, and Steve Sodders of State Center. Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson got Iowa Republicans excited on Saturday by tweeting that Horn would challenge Gronstal, but according to this Des Moines Register report by Jennifer Jacobs, “No one mounted a challenge for either leadership role, several senators said.”

More Iowa Senate news is after the jump.

My children are too young to remember a bad election for Democrats. My older son was just a toddler when returns from Ohio and Florida crushed Mommy’s hope based on the 2004 exit polls. He helped me deliver yard signs in 2006 and was pleased to know that Chet Culver did become governor. Two years ago, he understood that his parents were voting for Barack Obama and was starting to clue in that other people were making a different choice.

This year he and his younger brother started showing interest in the election during the spring. Normally, I don’t encourage my kids to be pessimistic about the future, but my older son (like many seven-year-olds) hates losing at anything, so I felt I needed to prepare him for the likely outcome.  

Governor Chet Culver and Republican Terry Branstad debate for the third and last time today at noon in the Iowa Public Television studios. You can watch live at the Des Moines Register website, IPTV.org or on Mediacom Channel 119. Tonight Iowa Public TV will rebroadcast the debate statewide at 8 pm.

After the jump I’ll cover recent news from the gubernatorial campaign and the main points Culver and Branstad are likely to emphasize today.  

Iowa marked an anniversary on September 1: three years since all accredited schools in the state had to start implementing the Iowa Safe Schools law. I wasn’t able to attend the event celebrating this milestone, but I looked up more information on Senate File 61, “an act relating to the establishment of state and school antiharassment and antibullying policies.” The Iowa legislature passed this law in March 2007, thanks to the leadership of State Representative Roger Wendt and State Senator Mike Connolly. Governor Chet Culver signed it right away, but it didn’t take effect until September 1.

The law defined “harassment” and “bullying” as “any electronic, written, verbal, or physical act or conduct toward a student which is based on any actual or perceived trait or characteristic of the student and which creates an objectively hostile school environment […].” The law further defined “trait or characteristic of the student” as any of the following 17 categories: “age, color, creed, national origin, race, religion, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical attributes, physical or mental ability or disability, ancestry, political party preference, political belief, socioeconomic status, or familial status.”

That’s quite an inclusive list, but you won’t be surprised to learn that when this bill was under consideration, activists on the religious right opposed what they characterized as special rights for the LGBT community. I read through the bill history for Senate File 61 and downloaded the Iowa House and Senate journals for the days the bill was debated on the floor. Republicans offered one weakening amendment after another, most of which were rejected or withdrawn. But in the end, six Iowa Senate Republicans joined all 30 Democrats in the upper chamber to pass the bill. Nine Iowa House Republicans joined 53 Democrats in the lower chamber to pass the bill.

Although their votes weren’t needed to pass Senate File 61, the Republicans who sought to reduce bullying and harassment in Iowa schools should be commended. They went against their caucus leaders on that vote. Many represented suburban districts where tolerance for the LGBT community is more widespread.

Sadly, to my knowledge none of the Republican legislators who voted for this bill in 2007 attended the September 1 celebration, nor did any current Republican elected official or candidate. (Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.) According to a source who was there, the crowd included First Lady Mari Culver and many other Iowa Democrats, but only one well-known Republican: former Lieutenant Governor Joy Corning. Her pro-equality stance has been known to send Republicans into conniption fits.

State Senator Brad Zaun’s vote for the bullying bill briefly became an issue in this year’s GOP primary in the third Congressional district. Although he offered a couple of weakening amendments and voted for many others during the Iowa Senate floor debate, Zaun ultimately recognized the importance of this bill. Kids should not be bullied in school. Too bad that’s not a politically correct position for the Republican base.

Speaking of schools, the U.S. Department of Education formally approved $96.5 million for Iowa school districts last week. The funding came from the fiscal aid package Congress approved last month. Governor Chet Culver hailed the decision:

“This will allow our schools to recover almost completely from the difficult budget cuts created by the economic downturn. It will mean more teachers staying on the job and fewer students per classroom. I encourage school districts to use these funds immediately to offset previous budget cuts, as that is the intent of the Education Jobs Act.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad opposed the bill that allocated extra federal funds to state education and Medicaid budgets. If he and Congressional Republicans had gotten their way, many Iowa teachers would not have their jobs back. In my children’s school district, elementary school students would have less time for art, music and physical education.

This is an open thread. What’s up with you this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers?  

Iowa school districts are able to hire back more teachers as the academic year begins, thanks to the fiscal aid Congress approved earlier this month. That’s the bill Terry Branstad avoided talking about for weeks, before finally admitting that he opposed extra federal money to support state education and Medicaid budgets. Republican governors who aren’t in campaign mode understand how foolish it would be to turn down funding for schools and health care. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, whom Branstad seems to admire, is in full-blown Republican hypocrite mode. Daniels echoed the GOP talking points against the stimulus package this summer, but now that it’s law he’s asking for the education and Medicaid money.

I see why Branstad avoided advertising his opposition to the “one-time money”; the extra federal funding has real-world benefits for tens of thousands of Iowa children. In Des Moines public elementary schools, it means time for art, music and physical education will be restored to previous levels, with 13 jobs saved. We were thrilled to learn that the beloved music teacher at my children’s school will be back. He had expected to be assigned elsewhere in the district because of the cuts announced in the spring.

In the third Congressional district race, Leonard Boswell’s campaign highlighted Republican Brad Zaun’s votes against education funding in the Iowa Senate, as well as his promise to try to shut down the federal Department of Education if elected. In contrast, Boswell

has more than doubled the maximum Pell Grant award for Iowa students attending college, and has made the largest investment in federal student aid since the first GI bill was passed. He has continued to support early childhood education programs like Early Head Start and child care services provided through Community Block Development Grants. Boswell has advocated for smaller class sizes in our public schools and voted to save education jobs threatened due to state budget shortfalls.

You can read the Boswell campaign press release at the end of this post. Zaun’s campaign responded by accusing Boswell of “taking decisions away from our local school boards, and having Washington, DC dictate to us.” In case Zaun hadn’t noticed, local school districts are determining which jobs to restore using the additional federal funds. They’re not all making the same decisions. I doubt that the staff at my son’s school feel Washington has “dictated” anything to them. They are just relieved that more funding came through for the current academic year. Why should young kids get short-changed on art, music and p.e. just because they were in grade school during a recession?

Zaun also noted, “Being married to a teacher, I understand what’s going on very well. Despite increased spending, we are witnessing constantly declining performance. We have a problem that Washington, DC can not and will not solve.” That doesn’t explain why he voted against so much state funding for education.  

Speaking of teachers, I was so touched when my older son’s teacher called me on Friday afternoon. After eight months without a sniffle, he got sick this week and had to miss the first two days of school. She was planning to come in to work over the weekend, so she invited us to drop by the classroom on Saturday. She showed him what he missed on Thursday and Friday, and he was able to paint a picture she’ll laminate and hang on his locker.

This is an open thread. What’s up with you this weekend?

P.S. Todd Dorman is not a hobo. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

The Sierra Club published its fourth annual “Cool Schools” report, which seeks to identify the greenest college campuses in the country. Researchers sent detailed questionnaires about sustainability programs to 900 colleges and universities, of which 162 responded. None of Iowa’s state universities returned the Sierra Club’s survey, and only two of the state’s private colleges participated. The full rankings show Grinnell in 104th place and Wartburg College in Waverly at the bottom in 162nd place. Keep in mind, though, that about 82 percent of schools contacted didn’t return the survey. Wartburg finished last among colleges with administrators who care enough about sustainability to respond to a national environmental organization.

The Sierra Club considered ten criteria:

Although energy supply carried the most significance, nine other categories were considered in measuring a school’s commitment to sustainability: efficiency, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, administration, financial investments, and a catchall section titled “other initiatives.”

Making energy supply the most important factor put Iowa colleges at a disadvantage, because so much of the electricity generated in this state comes from coal. Perhaps Grinnell, Wartburg, or other Iowa colleges could incorporate more wind, solar or biomass power. I noticed that the number one school on Sierra’s list, Vermont’s Green Mountain College, has a facility to generate power using “biogas” (methane derived from cow manure).

Wartburg’s best score came in the “efficiency” category. I downloaded the college’s completed questionnaire from this page and was impressed to read that 99 percent of campus lighting fixtures are energy-efficient, while 75 percent of campus appliances are energy-star rated. Wartburg has room to improve in all the categories, but especially in “purchasing” and “investment,” where the college scored zero points.

In contrast, Grinnell scored a perfect 10 for investment; according to the completed questionnaire, “the college’s investment policy includes a social responsibility provision that encompasses environmental/sustainability factors.” The college also did very well in the waste management, administration, food and transportation categories. Grinnell received its lowest score for purchasing policies.

Grinnell and Wartburg administrators deserve credit for taking sustainability seriously on campus. I hope that next year, more Iowa colleges let the Sierra Club evaluate their green practices. That means you, Luther College (Wartburg’s rival in everything, including conservation). I wonder how the University of Iowa would measure up against Big Ten rivals Michigan (number 46 on the Sierra Club rankings), Illinois (number 66), Penn State (number 80) and Northwestern (number 115). Could Iowa State beat Big 12 schools Missouri (number 118) or Kansas (number 127)? Maybe the Center for Energy and Environmental Education in Cedar Falls could help the University of Northern Iowa score highest among Iowa’s regents universities.  

When Congress passed $26 billion in fiscal aid to the states, including $96.5 million in education funding and $128 million in Medicaid assistance for Iowa, Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad avoided commenting on the issue. Scott Keyes of Think Progress was in Iowa recently and got Branstad to speak on the record about the issue. Click the link for the audio and the full transcript. Excerpt:

[Think Progress]: They just passed that big state aid bill out in Washington. I was curious how you felt about that.

BRANSTAD: I have real concerns because there’s strings attached to that. And it’s one-time money, so it doesn’t solve the problem, it just puts it off a year. And it increases the federal debt. I don’t think they should have done it. I’m not sure, we’ve got to see what the strings are and whether or not we should even accept it or not.

Branstad added that he was against the 2009 stimulus bill and wasn’t sure whether he would accept or reject stimulus funding for Iowa.

Perhaps Branstad has never heard of economic cycles. Congress approved the stimulus bill when the U.S. was in the middle of the worst recession since World War II, and state revenues were dropping at the sharpest rate seen in 60 years. Although the recession is technically over, and state revenues are increasing in Iowa, shortfalls are still projected in key social services.

Branstad says federal assistance “doesn’t solve the problem, it just puts it off a year.” But if the economy continues to improve, state budgets will be under less strain in the 2012 fiscal year. Branstad would rather give up an additional $96.5 million for Iowa schools during the current fiscal year, which would cost approximately 1,800 teachers’ jobs. He would rather do without an extra $128 million for Medicaid, and I doubt he’ll offer an alternative budget showing how he would meet the need for those services. Branstad can’t explain how he would have balanced the current-year budget without stimulus funds, just like he can’t explain how he would pay for his new spending promises.

Branstad is wrong about the $26 billion fiscal aid bill adding to the federal deficit, by the way. The Congressional Budget Office confirmed that the bill’s costs are fully offset by closing tax loopholes and various spending cuts.

Yesterday the House of Representatives approved and President Barack Obama signed a $26.1 billion package to support state education and Medicaid budgets in the current fiscal year. The bill passed the House by a 247 to 161 vote. Iowa’s House delegation split on party lines, as with the 2009 federal stimulus bill and previous legislation designed to support public sector jobs in the states. Iowa will receive about $96.5 million of the $10 billion in education funding, enough to save an estimated 1,800 teachers’ jobs.

The bill also contains $16.1 billion in Federal Medical Assistance Percentage or FMAP funding, including about $128 million to support Iowa’s Medicaid budget in the 2011 fiscal year. Last week I read conflicting reports about how much Medicaid assistance Iowa would receive, but staffers for Representatives Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack confirmed yesterday that $128 million is the correct figure. That’s a bit more than Iowa legislators were counting on for FMAP funding in the 2011 budget. Extra federal spending on Medicaid also “has an economic benefit for the state of Iowa far greater than the federal government’s initial investment,” according to Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson.

For the last several days, I have been searching for some comment on this legislation from Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad. I’ve found nothing in news clips, and his campaign has not issued a press release on the federal fiscal aid since the Senate approved the bill on August 4.

Branstad rails against “one-time sources” of funding to support the state budget, but he has nothing to say about $96.5 million for Iowa schools and $128 million for Iowans dependent on Medicaid services.

Branstad is happy to run false advertising about the number of teachers’ jobs supposedly lost in Iowa, but he has nothing to say when federal action saves a significant number of teachers’ jobs. The issue is a bit awkward for Branstad, because Republicans Tom Latham and Steve King voted against the fiscal aid bill in the House, just as Republican Chuck Grassley voted no in the Senate.

Perhaps Branstad lacks the courage to go beyond vague campaign rhetoric about excessive government spending. It’s easy to talk abstractly about “one-time” funding, but risky to slam government support for education and Medicaid. CNN’s latest nationwide poll, which was in the field from August 6 through August 10, asked respondents, “Do you favor or oppose a bill in which the federal government would provide 26 billion dollars to state governments to pay for Medicaid benefits and the salaries of public school teachers or other government workers?” 60 percent of respondents favored such a bill, while only 38 percent opposed it.

Speaking of conspicuous silence from Branstad, when will he tell us how he plans to keep his contradictory promises to cut state spending by 15 percent while having the state pay a larger share of mental health and school funding?

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Good news: the U.S. Senate overcame an attempt to filibuster a bill containing $26.1 billion in fiscal aid to state governments today. About $10 billion will support state education budgets in order to save teaching jobs. The other $16.1 billion will support state Medicaid budgets according to the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage or FMAP formula, which was originally part of the 2009 stimulus package. The Senate’s final vote on this bill is set for August 5, and it will easily gain more than the 50 votes needed for passage. Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to call the House of Representatives back from August recess in order to approve this bill next week.

Iowa’s Senator Tom Harkin was a co-sponsor of this bill. Senator Chuck Grassley joined Republicans who tried to block it from getting an up-or-down floor vote. I haven’t seen a statement from his office explaining why. The bill does not add to the deficit, because expenses are offset by revenue-raising measures:

Senate Democrats said the $26 billion bill would be paid in part by revenue raising changes in tax law. Senate Democrats said the modifications would curtail abuses of the U.S. foreign tax credit system. The bill would also end the Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit and would return in 2014 food stamp benefits to levels set before last year’s federal stimulus plan.

I’m not happy about cutting future food stamp benefits, but there may be opportunities to restore that funding in other bills. This federal fiscal aid is urgently needed to prevent teacher layoffs in the school year that’s about to begin.  

Republican gubernatorial nominee Terry Branstad has been touring Iowa this summer with a contradictory campaign message. On the one hand, he blasts education cuts that have eliminated some teaching positions (he exaggerates the number of teacher layoffs, but that’s a topic for another post). On the other hand, Branstad criticizes the use of “one-time money” from the federal government to support the state budget. He promises to veto any budget that would spend more than 99 percent of projected state revenues. Branstad has never explained what he would have cut to make up for the federal stimulus money, but other questions are on my mind today, namely:

1. Does Branstad think Grassley did the right thing in trying to stop this fiscal aid package from reaching Iowa and other states?

2. Iowa’s budget for fiscal year 2011 assumes about $120 million in additional Medicaid funding under the FMAP program. If elected governor, would Branstad try to return that money to the federal government?

3. Would Branstad reject federal education funding that is targeted for saving teachers’ jobs in the upcoming academic year?

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: A statement from Senator Harkin’s office says this bill would provide “at least $128 million in additional Medicaid funding” to Iowa in the current fiscal year. Harkin also said,

“This vote came down to one thing: priorities.  Today, a majority of Senators proved that our priority is helping those who are the backbone of this country, America’s teachers and our families, to weather the continuing effects of the great recession.  And we provide this funding without adding one dime to the deficit.

“This is a crisis of the first order.  Not since the Great Depression have our public schools faced the prospect of such massive layoffs.  With this fund, we will preserve tens of thousands of education jobs that states can use for retaining or hiring employees at the pre-K and K-12 levels.

“Also with the funding, we provide critical assistance to states, whose budgets are already stretched to the limit, to protect Medicaid.  This six month extension of federally-matched funding will allow states to continue health benefits for some of the nation’s most needy.”

SECOND UPDATE: Jennifer Jacobs reported somewhat different numbers for the Des Moines Register:

A federal spending plan that advanced in Congress Wednesday would route $83.1 million in extra money to help Iowa pay for children’s services and payments to hospitals and nursing homes.

But the Iowa Legislature banked on getting an $116 million in extra federal Medicaid money in the first six months of next year.

That means the state budget will be short $32.9 million – or short $116 million if the bill fails to pass Congress altogether, according to the non-partisan Legislative Services Agency. Medicaid is the government health insurance plan for the poor. […]

The measure would give states $16 billion to help cover their Medicaid budgets, and $10 billion to extend programs enacted in last year’s stimulus law to help preserve the jobs of teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees.

Iowa would get about $96.5 million in the jobs piece, which would protect about 1,500 jobs, said U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat.

Keep in mind that Iowa’s budget for fiscal year 2011 has an ending balance of $182.6 million, providing a cushion in case some expected revenue doesn’t materialize. Also, state revenues for the first month of the current fiscal year exceeded projections. Falling short $32.9 million in federal Medicaid assistance isn’t ideal, but it is manageable and far better than falling $116 million short, as would happen if Grassley and other Republicans got their way.

THIRD UPDATE: The Senate gave final approval to this bill on August 5 by a 61-39 vote. Grassley voted no along with most of the Republican caucus.

How low will Terry Branstad go in his efforts to score political points on the immigration issue? Before the primary election, he exaggerated how much undocumented immigrants cost the state budget and said he wouldn’t offer their children in-state college tuition. Earlier this month, he called for new enforcement that would copy Arizona’s “show your papers” approach but (magic pony style) wouldn’t leave Iowa taxpayers footing the bill for immigrants jailed.

Now Branstad is grandstanding against the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows children of undocumented immigrants to attend public schools. Speaking on Jan Mickelson’s conservative talk radio show on July 27, the Republican nominee for governor said, “I believe that we need to see that [ruling] overturned.”

Branstad is taking a fairly extreme position here. The Plyler v. Doe decision, which struck down a Texas statute denying public education to children of undocumented immigrants, has been settled law for nearly 30 years. (Not that I’d put it past the current activist right-wing Supreme Court majority to overturn longstanding precedent.)

I haven’t seen any Branstad campaign press release declaring that he wants to take public education away from illegal immigrants, so maybe he was cynically throwing a bone to Mickelson’s listening audience. Governor Chet Culver’s campaign manager Donn Stanley pointed out that during the 16 years Branstad was governor after Plyler v Doe took effect, “He never had the state Department of Education oppose that ruling.”

But what an indictment of Branstad’s “family values” if he was speaking sincerely on Mickelson’s show. He would tell children no, we’re not going to educate you, because your parents did something bad. Stanley told the Des Moines Register, “It also just seems that having these kids in school instead of on the street would be better for society […] Speaking generally, punishing children for what their parents do illegally is not a value the governor has.”

Branstad should answer two follow-up questions. First, if elected governor, would he try to pass a law denying education benefits to children of undocumented immigrants? Such a law would be challenged in court, perhaps creating an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the issue.

Second, would Branstad take any other steps to restrict education opportunities for immigrant children? Republican attorney general candidate Brenna Findley recently told Mickelson that while Plyler v Doe applies to Iowa, she favored trying to “work with the Department of Education” to find ways our state could address this issue. Branstad talks up Findley everywhere he campaigns; would he work with her toward this end? Incidentally, even Findley didn’t go so far as to say that Plyler v Doe was wrongly decided and should be overturned.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention this part of the Des Moines Register article:

“Gov. Branstad believes that people who are here illegally should not receive taxpayer-funded benefits because it drains our budget and is an added expense to taxpayers,” Branstad campaign spokesman Tim Albrecht said. “We’re talking about those children here illegally. We’re not talking about those born here.”

I haven’t seen any statistics on the estimated number of children in Iowa who were brought to this country illegally, as opposed to native-born Iowa children of undocumented immigrants. Even if Branstad got his wish and the Supreme Court revised its thinking on this issue, it would be difficult to implement the kind of distinction Albrecht is talking about. Theoretically, you could have school district denying enrollment to older siblings while educating younger siblings who were born in Iowa.  

When Terry Branstad formally announced his candidacy in January, cutting the size of state government by “at least 15 percent” over five years was one of his central campaign promises. He needed to establish credibility with the Republican Party’s conservative wing after his record of growing the state budget by far more than the rate of inflation during 16 years in office.

Branstad repeated his intention to cut state government by 15 percent in his early television commercials and on the campaign trail all winter and spring. He never provided a road map for keeping that promise, however. The budget cuts Branstad has specifically proposed so far (ending the preschool program, family planning funding, and reducing administrative costs at Area Education Agencies) would not reduce state budget obligations by 3-4 percent in the first year, which would be needed to work toward a 15 percent reduction over five years.

Since the June 8 Republican primary, Branstad has continued to hammer Governor Chet Culver on fiscal issues (using false claims), but to my knowledge he’s avoided mentioning that promise to shrink government by 15 percent over five years. Nor have we seen any details about how Branstad would balance the budget while spending no more than 99 percent of projected state revenues.

While campaigning in Marshalltown this week, Branstad made an extraordinary pledge:

Branstad said that if elected governor again, he would look at moving some of the services that have been pushed onto the local governments, particularly mental health and school funding, and making those more state funded. Along with that, he would put on a caveat that mandates those levies be abolished, which he said would provide instant property tax reductions for all classes of property across the board.

He said he did something very similar when he was governor before, but critics have since tried to distort his record on those issues.

“That was property tax relief and they called it spending,” he said.

Branstad is borrowing one of Bob Vander Plaats’ key economic ideas here: helping counties provide property tax relief by having the state assume responsibility for mental health and some educational services. As a campaign tactic, it makes sense, because Vander Plaats nearly matched Branstad’s vote total in Marshall County and carried several nearby counties (click here to download the GOP primary results by county).

But think about this for a minute. Branstad now proposes to have the state take over some big new funding obligations. How would he pay for that? He supports at least $80 million in corporate tax cuts and appears to reject using federal funds or reserve money to help balance the budget.

Maybe Branstad hopes that Iowans will forget his earlier campaign promises. But it’s past time for Branstad to show how he would make the numbers add up. The final budget for fiscal year 2011 is now in effect. Let’s see a rough budget document for fiscal year 2012, which doesn’t dip into reserve funds, cuts general fund spending by 3-4 percent, and has the state take on more responsibility for funding mental health and education services.

Speaking of state budgets, did anyone else notice the Branstad campaign’s silence last week regarding Iowa’s improving fiscal condition? The Legislative Services Agency and the Department of Management both reported better than expected revenues and a larger surplus than anticipated at the close of FY 2010. The Branstad campaign said absolutely nothing. We know his staff keeps track of such reports, because a few days earlier they jumped all over a draft Legislative Services Agency document on school districts and property taxes.

Branstad has a habit of ignoring inconvenient facts. We’re still waiting for him to say something, anything, about numerous documents showing he and senior staffers did Republican campaign work on the public’s dime.

Now that State Senator Kim Reynolds is officially the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, it’s time for her political views to receive more scrutiny. On the day Terry Branstad announced he had picked Reynolds, she said this:

We have a projected state budget gap of nearly $1 billion dollars.  And we have seen a dramatic slide in student test scores and teacher layoffs in school districts across the state. We can do better.  We must do better.  And, as Terry Branstad’s running mate, I will dedicate my every waking minute to sharing with Iowans his ambitious goals for our future.

She repeated those talking points in her speech to the GOP state convention on June 26. Republicans never tire of the “projected state budget gap” ruse. Reynolds is talking about projections for the budget year that begins in July 2011. Maybe she forgot that the Democratic-controlled legislature passed a balanced budget for the fiscal year beginning on July 1 despite a projected $1 billion shortfall last November. Reynolds also asserted that Governor Chet Culver has “spent too much, taxed too much, borrowed too much” and dismissed Iowa’s AAA bond rating as irrelevant: “That’s like my husband telling me, our checkbook and savings are empty, but we’ve got $15,000 we can still spend on the credit card.” Not really, Senator Reynolds: Iowa has money left in our state reserve funds (equivalent to a family’s savings account), and independent analysts affirm that our fiscal health is strong coming out of the worst recession since World War II. Many states fully depleted their rainy day accounts in response to an unprecedented drop in state revenues, but Iowa did not.

Like Branstad, Reynolds laments teacher layoffs across the state, and like Branstad, she fails to acknowledge that those education cuts would have been much deeper without the federal stimulus money Iowa has received.

Branstad’s not a numbers guy and hated tough budget meetings when he was governor. Having served four terms as Clarke County treasurer, Reynolds should feel more comfortable talking specifics on state spending. Friends have said she was able to save money as a county treasurer without cutting services. She’s campaigning with a guy who promises to veto any bill that calls for spending more than 99 percent of state revenues collected. Let’s see Reynolds produce an alternative budget for the current year that protects K-12 education without “spending too much.”

Details on the budget for fiscal year 2011 can be found here. All Reynolds needs to do is figure out how to spend no more than 99 percent of state revenues projected for the year. In other words, balance the budget without using the $328 million in federal stimulus money (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds) and the $267 million in reserve funds that Democrats included in the budget Culver signed into law.

If Reynolds is prepared to criss-cross the state bashing Democrats over teacher layoffs, she should be prepared to show us the education budget Iowans could expect under a Branstad administration.

One day after Terry Branstad won the Republican nomination for governor, his accountability problem was back on display. Speaking to the Iowa Association of Business and Industry’s annual convention in Ames yesterday, Branstad told the audience, “I want to get rid of the present incumbent because he’s driven the state into the biggest budget deficit in history.”

In the psychological field, projection is “a defense mechanism that involves taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people.” I’m not qualified to offer any professional diagnosis, but Branstad’s the guy who really did keep two sets of books to hide illegal deficits. It’s incredible to hear him keep making that false claim about Governor Chet Culver’s administration. The governor and Iowa’s legislative leaders haven’t run up any budget deficit, let alone the largest deficit ever. If Culver were running deficits, Iowa wouldn’t have a top-level credit rating or be considered one of the states “least like California” in terms of fiscal problems.

How long will Branstad keep getting away with making stuff up about Culver’s record? Your guess is as good as mine.

In other news, Branstad promised the Association of Business and Industry crowd that if elected, he wouldn’t allow key priorities of organized labor like the prevailing wage or collective bargaining bills to become law. I doubt ABI has to worry about that, since Iowa Democrats haven’t delivered on those issues during the past four years.

Culver visited a Cedar Rapids preschool yesterday and blasted Branstad’s “20th Century thinking” on preschool funding:

“This is an investment we cannot afford to not make in the future,” Culver said about the preschool initiative. He said he budgeted $90 million this year for the program and $115 million next year. […]

“While we want to continue to fund preschool … Terry Branstad wants to take that away,” Culver said. […]

The fiscal 2011 funding will assist an additional 150 school districts and school district collaborations under the statewide voluntary preschool program, he said. It is projected that during the 2010-2011 school year about 21,354 four-year-olds will be served by the preschool program in 326 school districts across the state.

Many Iowa families could not afford early education for their children without the state program. Culver is right to pound Branstad for his screwed-up priorities. Culver also criticized the Republican for wanting to go backwards on state-funded stem cell research, women’s reproductive rights and flood recovery funding for the Cedar Rapids area. Like everyone else in the Iowa GOP, Branstad has criticized the I-JOBS infrastructure bonding initiative but not explained how he would have paid for the flood reconstruction and prevention projects Iowa needs.

Branstad told Todd Dorman of the Cedar Rapids Gazette that he would not try to repeal the I-JOBS bonding, but “also compared I-JOBS to the Greek debt crisis.” Give me a break. The professional investor community drove down the interest rate of the initial I-JOBS offering because of Iowa’s solid fiscal condition and plan for repaying the bonds. In fact, I-JOBS was one of the top 10 “deals of the year” in 2009 according to Bond Buyer, the daily newspaper of public finance.

Vice President Joe Biden headlines Governor Chet Culver’s re-election rally today in Cedar Rapids. If you are watching in person or online, please share your impressions in this thread. I will update the post later with more coverage of the event. Adam Sullivan is live-tweeting for Iowa Independent.

Yesterday the governor kicked off his campaign at Hoover High School in Des Moines, followed by stops in Ames, Marshalltown and Waterloo. Kathie Obradovich felt Culver’s speech “salvaged” the otherwise low-energy event in Des Moines. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from Culver’s remarks, which his campaign released. He frames the race as a choice of going backwards “to policies that created this recession” or forward to continue the investments his administration has begun. Culver outlined some goals for the next five years, such as completing rebuilding efforts from the 2008 floods, “making quality pre-school available to every Iowa child whose parents want to take advantage of it,” pursuing stem cell research in Iowa, and “increasing the percentage of our energy production coming from alternative sources from 20% to at least 30%.” Culver chided Republicans who “just say no,” think corporate tax cuts are the answer for every problem and “continue to preach the failed doctrine of trickle down economics.”

In addition to the excerpts you’ll find below, the governor spoke up for protecting a woman’s right to make her own health-care decisions and against writing discrimination into the Iowa constitution. Later in Marshalltown, Culver noted that discrimination is “not the Iowa way […] We’ve always been at the front when it’s come to civil rights.”

Any comments about the governor’s race are welcome in this thread. Speaking of Republicans who want to take us backwards, Terry Branstad’s campaign started running a new ad today, which portrays the former governor as “the change we need now.” I’ll have more to say about Branstad’s campaign message in a different post, but for now I wonder whether he will get away with repeating his lie about Iowa running a “billion-dollar deficit.”

UPDATE: Um, what the heck? Someone get the governor a driver who won’t try to chase another driver down for a stupid reason.

John Deeth liveblogged the Biden event here. Kathie Obradovich tweeted here. Key points of Biden’s message: he’s known Chet Culver since he was seven years old and knows he has “the gumption to handle the job at this time.” Also, with Culver in charge “Iowa is better off than almost every other state in the nation … Iowa is still moving forward.” Biden praised Culver for being ahead of the curve in establishing the Power Fund in 2007:

“Government is not the answer but it can prime the pump and encourage the private sector.”

“45 out of [50] governors, Democrat and Republican, are sitting on their hands. Because of Chet’s leadership Iowa is better prepared.” […]

“What are Republicans FOR? Not a joke. Tell me one affirmative thing the Republican Party is for.”

Good question, Mr. Vice President. Biden also noted that the stimulus bill brought $3.3 billion to Iowa, and said Culver had used $4 billion in federal and state flood recovery money well. Biden said Iowa is on the upswing and has an unemployment rate well below the national average, which is “no accident, it’s because of Governor Chet Culver.”

SECOND UPDATE: Todd Dorman found Biden’s praise for Culver a bit over-the-top. Tom Beaumont’s story for the Des Moines Register is here. Kay Henderson’s liveblog for Radio Iowa is here. She’s captured more quotes from the vice president.

During Saturday’s Republican gubernatorial debate I was struck by how eager all three candidates were to pander on the immigration issue. For example, in response to a question by Iowa Public Radio journalist Jeneane Beck, all the Republicans said they would deny in-state tuition at Iowa universities to the children of illegal immigrants.

That’s easier said than done, since many children of undocumented immigrants were born in the U.S. and are consequently U.S. citizens. For that reason, former Governor Terry Branstad has backpedaled a bit since the debate. Meeting with the Des Moines Register editorial board on Tuesday morning, Branstad “said he would have to consider the constitutionality” of denying in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants who were born in this country. Later the same day, Branstad’s campaign spokesman Tim Albrecht told the Des Moines Register, “If they are born here, they are legal residents. If they are, they should be afforded every opportunity as every legal resident of the state.”

Branstad’s leading Republican rival, Bob Vander Plaats, talked a good game about the “rule of law” during Saturday’s debate but insists that he would deny children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition, even if they were born here. I expect Vander Plaats supporters to make a big deal out of Branstad’s “flip-flop” on the issue, even though Branstad’s new stance is correct from a legal standpoint. The Register’s Tom Beaumont reported that the third Republican running for governor, Rod Roberts, “stopped short of saying U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants should not qualify” for in-state tuition.

Meanwhile, Vander Plaats remains the only candidate in the Republican field to advocate an Arizona-style crackdown on undocumented immigrants for Iowa. I oppose Arizona’s new law on principle, because it is un-American to give the police power to put you in jail if you’re not immediately able to “show your papers.” Branstad and Roberts have declined to advocate copying Arizona for more pragmatic reasons, such as the cost of implementation. Polk County Sheriff Bill McCarthy put in his two cents on that angle yesterday:

“It’s all well and good to demagogue the issue, but there’s a reality to it,” McCarthy said during the elected official discussion segment of this morning’s Board of Supervisors workshop.

If illegal immigrants awaiting deportation were detained at the Polk County Jail at a cost of $95 per day without adequate support from the federal government, it could cost millions of dollars, McCarthy said. […]

The current jail system will not work if Iowa adopts a law similar to the one in Arizona, McCarthy said later in an interview with The Des Moines Register.

“The bottom line is that we’re dealing with human beings,” he said. “And I know they shouldn’t be here and I know they entered the country illegally. But if they’re here, they’re people and I think we have to deal with them in a humane way, particularly when there are children involved.”

The immigration issue provides a convenient crutch to Republican candidates, but the favored right-wing approach would be extremely costly, not to mention impractical. While we’re on the subject, I’d like to hear third district Congressional candidate Brad Zaun explain how he would “put [all the illegal immigrants in Iowa] on a bus and send them wherever they came from.”

Any thoughts on immigration policy are welcome in this thread. How long do you think Republican candidates will get away with massively exaggerating the amount of money Iowa could save by cutting services to undocumented immigrants?

Jim Gibbons has emerged as the Republican insiders’ choice against seven-term incumbent Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s third district. Nine members of Congress are hosting a fundraiser for Gibbons in Washington on February 24, the Gibbons campaign announced today. The hosts are Senator Chuck Grassley, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (VA-07), and Representatives Jason Chaffetz (UT-03), Dean Heller (NV-02), Jim Jordan (OH-04), Steve King (IA-05), Tom Latham (IA-04), Kevin McCarthy (CA-22), and Peter Roskam (IA-06).

I cannot recall whether Grassley or Latham endorsed a candidate in the four-way GOP primary to represent IA-05 in 2002, which King won at a district convention. I also don’t remember Grassley, Latham or King getting involved in the three-way GOP primary in IA-01 in 2006, or the three-way primary in IA-02 in 2008. If any Bleeding Heartland reader remembers endorsements by members of Congress in those races, please post a comment here or e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

CORRECTION: Not all of the co-hosts at this event are endorsing Gibbons in the Republican primary. Bleeding Heartland user mirage notes in the comments that Iowa Republicans in Congress also co-hosted an event for Dave Funk in Washington. Grassley’s spokeswoman e-mailed the following comment to me today: “Senator Grassley has not endorsed anybody in the 3rd District race. It is correct that Senator Grassley was also listed as a co-host of an event for Dave Funk.  If the other Republican candidates asked, he would do the same thing for them.”

Gibbons was recruited by key Iowa Republican donors, and has since been anointed by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

State Senator Brad Zaun, probably the strongest rival to Gibbons in the five-way Republican primary, has the backing of several Republican state legislators, including Iowa Senate Minority leader Paul McKinley. An internal poll for Zaun showed he begins the campaign with more name recognition and support in the district. However, Gibbons raised far more money in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Tea Party favorite Dave Funk recently attacked Gibbons for supposedly saying in an interview, “It[‘]s fine for me where the Constitution says that the federal government should be in charge of education.” Today Gibbons advocate Craig Robinson of The Iowa Republican blog declared Funk’s attack “sloppy and untrue.” After listening to a recording of the interview, Robinson concludes that Gibbons actually said, “Find for me where in the Constitution does it say that the federal government is in charge of education.”

Robinson transcribed part of the interview in question and posted it here. Gibbons doesn’t come across as someone who knows what he’s talking about. But that’s not surprising, given his ignorance about Congressional procedures and idiotic federal income tax holiday proposal.

What does surprise me is that according to Robinson, no one at the Gibbons campaign “set the record straight” after Funk issued his press release. Maybe it’s a strategy for Gibbons to not acknowledge his primary opponents, but I think his press shop needs to stay on top of what the other candidates are saying about him.

UPDATE: In this comment thread Funk stands by his press release about what Gibbons said, and several commenters write that they heard Gibbons’ remarks as Funk did.

LATE UPDATE: Latham assured moderate Republican Mark Rees that he will not be endorsing a candidate before the primary.

The Iowa Legislature has been moving at an unusually fast pace during the shortened 2010 session. It’s time to catch up on what’s happened at the statehouse over the past three weeks. From here on out I will try to post a legislative roundup at the end of every week.

February 12 was the first “funnel” deadline. In order to have a chance of moving forward in 2010, all legislation except for tax and appropriations bills must have cleared at least one Iowa House or Senate committee by the end of last Friday.

After the jump I’ve included links on lots of bills that have passed or are still under consideration, as well as bills I took an interest in that failed to clear the funnel. I have grouped bills by subject area. This post is not an exhaustive list; way too many bills are under consideration for me to discuss them all. I recommend this funnel day roundup by Rod Boshart for the Mason City Globe-Gazette.

Note: the Iowa legislature’s second funnel deadline is coming up on March 5. To remain alive after that point, all bills except tax and appropriations bills must have been approved by either the full House or Senate and by a committee in the opposite chamber. Many bills that cleared the first funnel week will die in the second.  

It’s been a year since President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better known as the stimulus bill) into law. I didn’t like the early concessions Obama made to Republicans in a fruitless effort to win their support for the stimulus. I was even more upset with later compromises made to appease Senate conservadems and Republican moderates. They reduced spending in several areas that had real stimulative value (school construction funds, extra money for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, aid to state governments) in order to include tax cuts that have much less stimulus “bang for the buck.” Senator Tom Harkin was right to question why 9 percent of the stimulus bill’s cost went toward fixing the alternative minimum tax, for instance.

Still, I supported passage of the stimulus bill. In late 2008 and early 2009 the U.S. economy was losing 600,000 to 700,000 jobs per month. Something had to be done. On balance, the stimulus did much more good than bad. Economists agree it has saved or created a lot of jobs:

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

Two and a half million jobs isn’t enough to compensate for the 8 million jobs lost since this recession began, but it’s a start.

Not only did the stimulus create jobs, it greatly increased spending on programs that will have collateral benefits. Incentives to make homes more energy efficient will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save consumers money that they can spend elsewhere. Money for sewer improvements will provide lasting gains in water quality (inadequate sewers and septic systems are a huge problem in Iowa). The stimulus included $8 billion for high-speed rail. It wasn’t nearly enough, of course; we could have spent ten or twenty times that amount on improving our rail networks. But that $8 billion pot drew $102 billion in grant applications from 40 states and Washington, DC. The massive demand for high-speed rail stimulus funding increases the chance that Congress will allocate more funds for rail transportation in the future.

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t believe the stimulus bill created jobs. That’s largely because unemployment remains at a historically high level of 10 percent nationwide. Also, inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings have gone down during the past year. In addition, Republicans have stayed on message about the worthlessness of the stimulus bill, even though scores of them have hailed stimulus spending in their own states and districts.

Democrats on the House Labor and Education Committee released an ad that lists various popular stimulus bill provisions, such as increasing Pell Grants and teacher pay. The ad uses the tag line, “There’s an act for that,” naming the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act at the end. I don’t think it’s effective, because the ad doesn’t include the word “stimulus.” Few people will realize that the ARRA refers to the stimulus bill.

Bleeding Heartland readers, how do you view the stimulus one year later?

Republicans have complained for years about Democrats allegedly spending too much on “big government,” but a majority of Iowans think state government is about the right size, according to the latest poll by Selzer and Co. for the Des Moines Register. The poll surveyed 805 Iowa adults between January 31 and February 3 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent. Respondents were asked, “In general, do you think the size of state government is too big, about right, or too small?” 52 percent said “about right” and only 39 percent said “too small.”

The Des Moines Register poll also indicates that Iowans would rather tap into the state’s tax reserves, raise fees and perhaps even raise taxes than impose massive service cuts or lay off hundreds of state workers.

The poll tested eleven options for balancing the budget and asked whether that option should be considered, strongly considered or taken off the table. The largest majority (76 percent) said consolidating some state government services should be considered or strongly considered. The Iowa legislature will pass a government reorganization bill this session, but the savings won’t be large enough to avoid other painful budget decisions.

The next largest majority (61 percent) supported considering taking up to $200 million from the state’s cash reserves. But even that probably wouldn’t be enough to balance the 2011 budget.

The other three options that at least half of respondents said should be considered were “increase fines, license fees and other user fees” (53 percent), expand gambling by allowing casinos to host large poker tournaments (51 percent) and raise the sales tax by 1 percent (51 percent).

The Register reported that several political observers found the sales tax numbers most surprising. I was more surprised to see the public evenly divided on raising the income tax. Some 48 percent of respondents said “lawmakers should consider raising state income taxes by a half percentage point; 50 percent said that idea should come off the table.”

The Register’s poll found much less support for “cutting services to thousands of Iowans” (just 33 percent favored considering that option, while 60 percent said it should be taken off the table). Only 42 percent favored considering laying off hundreds of state employees or consolidating school districts. Only 43 percent said legislators should consider eliminating all business tax credits. Just 45 percent said reducing the number of Iowa counties should be on the table.

My point is not that politicians should put blind faith in the wisdom of crowds. I don’t agree with every finding in this poll. I’d rather reduce the number of counties and scrap many business tax credits than raise the sales tax, and I find Iowans’ support for the film tax credit baffling.

The larger message from this poll is that Iowa Democrats should not cower in fear when Republicans bash “big government.” Offered a range of choices for balancing the state budget, most Iowans would prefer not to see services slashed. The Register’s November 2009 poll pointed to the same conclusion, finding broad support for spending increases Democrats have adopted in recent years.

Republicans will be cheered by the portion of Selzer’s latest poll that found one-third of Iowans called themselves supporters of the “tea party” movement, and a majority believe state government is spending too much money. To me that suggests the framing of the budget issue will be critical for this November’s elections. Democrats need to convince voters that they did all they could to find efficiencies in state government without cutting priority areas. If Republicans object, for instance, that the state could have saved tens of millions of dollars by ending the preschool initiative started in 2007, Democrats must point out that doing so would have cut off early childhood education for about 13,000 Iowa kids.

Yesterday the Iowa House State Government Committee voted down a Republican plan to cut state spending by $290 million in the coming year. State Representative and gubernatorial candidate Chris Rants offered the plan as an amendment to the government reorganization bill. He said his party was trying to “work in a bipartisan way” and make “tough decisions” to balance the budget for the coming year. All twelve Democrats on the House State Government Committee voted against the GOP amendment, while the nine Republicans voted for it. Later the same day, the committee approved the reorganization bill on a 20-1 vote, with only Rants opposed.

We are sure to hear more from Rants and other Republicans about how big, bad Democrats rejected their good ideas for spending cuts. A closer look reveals funny math in the Republican “plan.”

The biggest line item is “$92.3 million, end all state benefits to adult illegal immigrants.” The Iowa House Republican caucus claims this number comes from the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. The implication is that the state of Iowa hands out $92.3 million in cash to illegal immigrants.

But that’s not the case. From a report by the Legislative Services Agency on “Undocumented Immigrants’ Cost to the State” (pdf file):

The only government services that illegal immigrants are eligible for are elementary and secondary public education and emergency health care.1 Most citizens do not gain direct benefits from a majority of government spending. Instead, government programs are intended to benefit society as a whole through maintenance of a healthy economy, satisfying public health and safety concerns, providing basic infrastructure, etc. Although undocumented immigrants do not receive most direct benefits, the total benefit of State spending is assumed to accrue to undocumented immigrants at the same rate as legal residents.

The LSA divides total spending from the state general fund by the state’s total population to calculate roughly how much in “benefits” each Iowa resident receives annually. This isn’t a cash payment from the state to residents; it represents each individual’s share of benefit from the state paying for schools, roads, and so on.

Iowa House Republicans arrived at the $92.3 million figure by dividing total general fund expenditures by the number of undocumented immigrants currently estimated to be living in Iowa. They call the remainder “benefits” that illegal immigrants receive. But there’s no magic wand we can wave to make immigrants stop benefiting indirectly from what state government does. The same LSA report noted:

Undocumented immigrants qualify for few services at the State level, and those for which they do qualify are largely mandated by federal law or the Courts. Therefore, decreasing undocumented immigrant eligibility for State spending does not appear to be a viable policy option. Additionally, if the assumption that undocumented immigrants accrue benefits even without receiving direct services is considered valid, attempting to reduce direct State expenditures on undocumented immigrants would have a minimal effect.

By the way, proof of citizenship and identification are already required for Iowans participating in Medicaid and HAWK-I (the children’s health insurance program).

Scoring points against undocumented immigrants may be good for Rants politically, but that won’t help the state of Iowa save $92.3 million in the coming year. That one item represents nearly a third of the Republican-proposed spending cuts.

I’ve posted the full list of cuts after the jump. Some ideas may have merit, but most of them reflect skewed Republican priorities for state government. GOP legislators want to save $45 million by reducing access to pre-school for four-year-olds. They also want to invest less in renewable energy production and energy efficiency measures by eliminating the Power Fund and the Office of Energy Independence, which would $25 million. Many Republicans never liked the core curriculum, so it’s no surprise they’d like to save some money by delaying its implications. The Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll in November indicated that Iowans support higher spending on renewable energy research and development and are divided over whether to cut funds for expanded free pre-school.

Some of the smaller Republican-backed cuts would please conservative interests. The religious right would love to eliminate the family planning waiver. Rants has always been a good friend to tobacco companies, who would love to see the state scrap the “Just Eliminate Lies” anti-smoking campaign. There’s also $4 million saved by cutting “taxpayer-funded lobbyists,” which sounds great until you realize that would leave corporate groups unchallenged as they lobby for bills that might counter the public interest. Anyway, last year taxpayer money for lobbying totaled about $1.8 million, and a lot of that didn’t come from the state general fund. Municipalities, county agencies and associations like the League of Cities hire lobbyists too.

Anyone following the Iowa governor’s race must read Todd Dorman’s recent interview with Republican front-runner Terry Branstad. The Branstad so many Iowans remember from his four terms as governor shines through.

Branstad is at his most incoherent when speaking about gay marriage, but his answer to an open-ended question about the state budget was also revealing. The whole interview is worth your time. I discuss a few of my favorite excerpts after the jump.

Governor Chet Culver submitted his draft budget to the Iowa legislature last Wednesday, but with the State of the Union and other news of the day, I didn’t have time to write up the story.

The complete budget document can be downloaded at the governor’s official website, and you can view Culver’s press conference on the budget here.

For more links, reactions and commentaries, follow me after the jump.

Terry Branstad officially launched his gubernatorial campaign this week at the State Historical Building. I enjoyed the imagery of a politician from a past era standing in front of a mammoth skeleton.

Branstad’s promises on spending cuts and jobs created look unrealistic in light of his record as governor, though.  

This blog will always be primarily about politics, but I enjoy writing about other subjects from time to time. In fact, one of my new year’s resolutions for Bleeding Heartland is to write more about food and parenting in 2010.

After the jump I’ve compiled links to posts on those topics in 2009. Some of the diaries were political, others are personal. The link I’m most proud of combined the two: My case against Hanna Rosin’s case against breastfeeding.

Any thoughts or suggestions for future topics to cover are welcome in this thread.

Following up on my review of news from the first half of last year, I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from July through December 2009 after the jump.

Hot topics on this blog during the second half of the year included the governor’s race, the special election in Iowa House district 90, candidates announcing plans to run for the state legislature next year, the growing number of Republicans ready to challenge Representative Leonard Boswell, state budget constraints, and a scandal involving the tax credit for film-making.

I expected 2009 to be a relatively quiet year in Iowa politics, but was I ever wrong.

The governor’s race heated up, state revenues melted down, key bills lived and died during the legislative session, and the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Varnum v Brien became one of this state’s major events of the decade.

After the jump I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from January through June 2009. Any comments about the year that passed are welcome in this thread.

Although I wrote a lot of posts last year, there were many important stories I didn’t manage to cover. I recommend reading Iowa Independent’s compilation of “Iowa’s most overlooked and under reported stories of 2009,” as well as that blog’s review of “stories that will continue to impact Iowa in 2010.”

Following up on the diary I posted this morning, this post compiles links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of national politics from July through December 2009. Health care reform was again the number one topic. I wish there had been a happy ending.

Just teach them how to read in kindergarten and first grade. Then they won’t be “identified” by the state as having special needs.

No, really, that’s what Iowa Senate Republican leader Paul McKinley said in a meeting on Tuesday with journalists from the Des Moines Register.

State Representative Chris Rants will “debate” former Des Moines School Board member Jonathan Narcisse on various issues during the first half of December. The Iowa Republican blog has the preliminary schedule for the debates in Bettendorf, Ankeny, Council Bluffs, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Waterloo, as well as footage from yesterday’s joint press conference by Rants and Narcisse.

Scheduling the “debates” is a clever move by Rants, who is running the best gubernatorial campaign in the GOP field so far. These events will not be good news for Governor Chet Culver.

The House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act on Thursday on a mostly party-line vote of 253 to 171 (roll call here). Iowa Democrats Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell all voted for the bill, while Republicans Tom Latham and Steve King voted against it.

Click here to download a pdf file containing the House Education and Labor Committee’s estimates on how many students in each Congressional district will be able to receive Pell Grants during the 2010/2011 academic year under this reform. The estimate is 16,355 students in Iowa’s fourth district (Latham) and 16,301 students in Iowa’s fifth district (King).

Overall, just four Democrats voted against the bill: Allen Boyd (FL-02), Paul Kanjorski (PA-11), Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (SD-AL), and Mike McMahon (NY-13). Six Republicans voted for the bill: Vern Buchanan (FL-13), Joseph Cao (LA-02), Timothy Johnson (IL-15), Tom Petri (WI-06), Todd Platts (PA-19), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18). At Congress Matters, David Waldman posted details about the amendments proposed to this bill and which ones passed yesterday.

A press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee included these bullet points about the bill:

*The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act is the largest single federal investment in higher education in American history and will also be used to pay down the national debt (H.R. 3221, #719, 9/17/09)

*The measure will make federal student lending more efficient through a variety of reforms that will save the federal government $87 billion. Of those savings, $77 billion will be invested toward making college more affordable and $10 billion will be used to pay down the national debt.

*These savings will be achieved through a number of reforms including:

*Converting federal lending to the Direct Loan Program.

*Establishing a competitive bidding process, allowing the U.S. Department of Education to select lenders based on how well they serve borrowers.

*Allowing non-profit organizations to continue servicing student loans.

*This measure will increase the amount of Pell Grants in 2010 and 2011, lower the interest rates of federally subsidized student loans, expand the Perkins Loan program, and streamline the application form for financial aid.

Senate HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin is committed to passing student loan reforms this year.

UPDATE: Like Latham and King, all the House Republicans from Kentucky voted against this bill, and I agree with RDemocrat’s assessment at the Hillbilly Report:

I think this once again properly demonstrates the hypocrisy of Kentucky Republicans and the Republican Party as a whole. They constantly lecture us on spending, but they care little about money being wasted as long as it is being wasted on corporate welfare. When presented with a chance to both save money, and help working poor children afford college, they would rather waste that $80 billion.

In his latest e-mail blast to constituents, Senator Tom Harkin touches on his priorities as the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. One point he mentioned hasn’t been on my radar screen this year:

The full agenda of the Committee will focus on reforming federal student loan programs so that we can stop subsidizing private banks and instead focus on loans that the federal government can make more cheaply.  We can save $87 billion over 10 years in that effort, and use that money to increase Pell grants for low- and middle- income college bound students, and to fund other important education initiatives.  

I had forgotten about President Barack Obama’s effort to reform the student loan system:

His plan is to do away with a system in which the Federal Government subsidizes banks and other private finance companies like Sallie Mae to lend money to students. The Administration essentially wants to cut such companies out of the game and run the system itself. Democrats claim the move will save $87 billion over 10 years, which can be used for a laundry list of education priorities, including increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grants, expanding Perkins Loans and investing in community colleges and other programs. […]

Educational institutions currently have two ways to offer federal loans to students. In the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL, pronounced “fell”) program, the government pays subsidies to banks and lenders to dole out money to borrowers and reimburses companies up to 97% of the cost of any loan that is not paid back. The second way is the direct-loan program, created in 1993 as an alternate option, in which the government cuts out the middle man, lends money directly and gets all the profits. If the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) passes both houses of Congress, the approximately 4,500 colleges and universities that are currently signed up for FFEL will have to abandon the program and start using the direct-loan option by July 1, 2010.

Directing federal money toward programs that help needy students, such as Pell Grants, makes a lot more sense than subsidizing private banks to make student loans.

Finding 60 votes in the Senate for this proposal will be challenging, however. This is one banking bailout Republicans will fight hard to protect, and according to Time magazine, at least one Democrat (Ben Nelson of Nebraska) opposes the plan too. If this bill passes, it will probably be through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate.

Health care reform is sure to take up a lot of Harkin’s time this fall, but I’m glad the HELP chairman will also focus on other bills that could change many lives for the better. Even if the health care project falls apart in the Senate, Harkin could accomplish a lot this year if he gets the student loan bill through and brokers a good compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act.

I see only one downside to Harkin becoming the HELP chairman, and that’s Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas taking over the Agriculture Committee. Jill Richardson has been on this case at La Vida Locavore. I recommend reading her posts on industry lobbyists who used to work for Lincoln, Lincoln’s strong support for corporate ag interests such as Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, and Lincoln’s positions on trade, the climate change bill, and the Clean Water Act.

I mentioned on Labor Day that I haven’t heard much lately about Senator Tom Harkin’s efforts to reach a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA is one of the top legislative priorities for organized labor and needs 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. Several Democrats who supported the bill in 2007, knowing that President Bush would veto it, either oppose the bill or have dodged the question this year.

Harkin has been the lead Senate negotiator on EFCA and is replacing the late Senator Ted Kennedy as chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Speaking to the American Rights at Work group yesterday, Harkin said he had 60 votes lined up behind a compromise this summer:

“As of July, I can tell you this openly and I know the press is all here but we had worked out a pretty good agreement. […]”

Harkin said prominent labor leaders were on board with the deal, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

“That’s when we needed 60 votes and that’s when I called to get Sen. Kennedy down because we needed him for three days. That’s when Dr. [Lawrence] Horowitz told me that he couldn’t make it,” Harkin said.

The Hill’s Kevin Bogardus reported that Harkin refused to specify the terms of the compromise deal:

“I will not say because it was closely held, it never leaked out and it still hasn’t,” Harkin said. “I took it off the front-burner and put it on the back-burner so it is still on warm, OK?”

In May Harkin suggested that the “card check” provision might be dropped from the bill in favor of other changes to labor election procedures. He did not say anything about binding arbitration, which is also an important part of the EFCA.

If Massachusetts law is changed to allow Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a temporary replacement for Kennedy, then Harkin may be able to revive this compromise and pass the EFCA this fall. Democratic leaders in the House agreed earlier this year not to bring the EFCA up for a vote until the measure had passed the Senate. Getting the bill through the House should not be difficult, even if a substantial number of Blue Dog Democrats vote no.

Senator Ted Kennedy’s death left a vacancy as chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. I had assumed that Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is looking vulnerable going into his re-election campaign, would jump at the chance to become the HELP committee chairman, but surprisingly, he prefers to remain chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Paul Kane reports for the Washington Post,

Dodd’s decision leaves the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who follows Dodd in seniority. Multiple sources in the Harkin orbit, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that he is certain to take over the HELP committee.

Harkin is currently chairman of the Agriculture Committee and would have to give up that position. He would likely be replaced at Agriculture by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who faces a difficult reelection bid in 2010. Other Democrats are more senior than her on the Agriculture Committee, but they hold more prestigious chairmanships already.

Leaving the chairman’s position at Agriculture means Harkin will have less influence over the drafting of the next farm bill. On the other hand, the HELP Committee deals with a range of extremely important issues.

I have contacted Senator Harkin’s office seeking confirmation of this report, and I’ll update this post when I hear back from his staff.

UPDATE: Harkin will replace Kennedy as HELP chairman. His statement is after the jump, along with a statement from Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan.

Turnout was low in most of Iowa’s school board elections yesterday, but not in Iowa City, where a controversy over a school closure earlier this year helped spark the highest level of voter participation since the 1995 school board races. John Deeth has details and analysis of the results. Many Iowa Democrats will recognize the name of Sarah Swisher, a superdelegate to the DNC who has been Iowa Political Director of the SEIU.

In Des Moines, Margaret Buckton was the only challenger to win one of the four seats up for grabs. As the associate executive director of public policy for the Iowa Association of School Boards, she’s got a lot of relevant experience.

Buckton’s day job is to train school board members and superintendents about how to work with state legislators and advocate for their district, how school finances and budgets work, and how to implement policies such as the new Iowa Core Curriculum, the state’s blueprint for what students should learn while in school.

The three re-elected incumbents in Des Moines were Connie Boesen, Teree Caldwell-Johnson and Patty Link, whom many of you may have seen at Democratic functions. She is married to the campaign consultant Jeff Link.

The Des Moines Register published results for many other central Iowa school districts here. Many Iowa Democrats may know newly-elected West Des Moines school board member Liz Brennan, a Montessori pre-school teacher. Her husband, Scott Brennan, was the previous chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Ankeny voters rejected a bond initiative that would have funded a new elementary school and improvements to a different school. Given the rapid population growth in Ankeny during the past decade, it’s hard to see how the school district can avoid overcrowding if they can’t build a new elementary school.

Share any thoughts about education or school board races in this thread.

Atlantic residents are rightly angry about the strip search of five girls that staff conducted after a student said $100 had gone missing.

School board elections are being held across Iowa today. Here’s why you should get out and vote.

1. Everyone should support strong educational standards in our schools and competent management of the school district’s affairs, whether or not you have kids in school or will have in the future.

2. Your vote is more likely to make a difference in a low-turnout school board election. Many of these races will be decided by a handful of votes.

You should vote even if your school board election is a snoozer, with only as many registered candidates as seats available. Extremely low turnout creates opportunities for fringe candidates to win seats on write-in campaigns.

3. Your property tax dollars are being spent in the local schools, whether or not you have kids. Homes in a good school district are often worth more than comparable homes in an area with lower-performing schools.

4. School board members vote on some issues that affect the broader economy and quality of life. For instance, property values in established neighborhoods and the ability of many kids to walk to school were harmed when school boards closed Roosevelt Elementary in Ames a few years ago and voted this year to close Roosevelt Elementary in Iowa City.

Iowa school boards will be less constrained in making decisions on school closures going forward. This summer, the Iowa Supreme Court invalidated the Barker rules on school closure procedures that the State Board of Education adopted more than 30 years ago. That ruling simultaneously rejected the lawsuit of parents challenging the Des Moines school board’s decision a few years ago to close several schools. Click here for the Iowa Supreme Court ruling (pdf file).

5. Iowans will have almost no legal recourse against future decisions by school boards, thanks to a law the Iowa legislature adopted during the 2009 session. House File 233 was a below-the-radar bill that unanimously passed both the House and Senate. It changed the rules so that citizens have only ten days (as opposed to the 12 months previously allowed) to file a lawsuit challenging a school board’s decision on disposition of property.

For all practical purposes, it is impossible to find plaintiffs, hire legal counsel, draft arguments and file a complaint in ten days. It’s disappointing that a bill limiting legal checks on a school board’s actions passed with so little public debate. Despite following the news during the legislative session closely, I would never have heard about this bill if not for a panel discussion at the 1000 Friends of Iowa annual meeting in July.

House File 233 makes it all the more important for citizens to choose their school board members wisely. Abuses of power can happen, and there’s no guarantee school boards will always comply with the law. For instance, Spirit Lake school board members “met illegally twice in 2007 and 2008” and were fined by a judge this year. Amazingly, no challengers filed to run against two of the incumbents involved.

If you’re reading this post at work, it should only take you a few minutes to vote on the way home today. Or, if you’re reading this at home, zip out to vote before or after dinner.

Your local newspaper probably has published short bios of the candidates. For those in central Iowa, these nine candidates are seeking four spots on the Des Moines school board, and here’s a list of candidates in other Des Moines-area districts. John Deeth has been covering the Iowa City school board campaign at his blog.

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out what the candidates stand for based on news reports or vague campaign mailings. If you aren’t sure how to vote, ask a friend who has attended a candidate forum or has been following the school board campaign closely. (Teachers and retired teachers can be good sources of information.) Many of my well-informed friends speak highly of Des Moines school board candidate Margaret Buckton, for instance.

Please post any comments about education or school board elections in this thread.

Unbelievable:

School officials in Atlantic forced five teenage girls to take off their clothing for a search after a classmate reported $100 missing from her purse, according to the girls’ families and two lawyers.

The classmate and a female counselor stood watch in the girls’ locker room at Atlantic High School as the five girls removed their clothing, lifted up their underwear, and in one case took off all her clothing, according to lawyers Ed Noethe of Council Bluffs and Matt Hudson of Harlan.

Strip-searching is illegal in Iowa schools.

Dan Crozier, the interim superintendent of the Atlantic school district, said the search took place Aug. 21, the third day of school, during a gym class in the last period of the day.

Crozier said faculty members denied it was a strip-search. “According to our board policy, it was an allowable search,” he said.

Two predictions:

This matter will be settled out of court if the Atlantic school district has minimally competent legal advisers.

This interim position won’t lead to a permanent job for Crozier. Telling a group of girls to take off their clothes is an allowable search now? The Register quoted from the district’s search policies:

“A more intrusive search, short of a strip-search, of the student’s person, handbags, book bags, etc. is permissible in emergency situations when the health and safety of students, employees or visitors are threatened.”

I don’t think strip searches should be permitted in high schools at all, but I understand why it might happen if a student claimed to have seen a classmate carrying a gun, bomb or knife. For these girls to be humiliated over $100 allegedly stolen is outrageous.

Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that strip-searching an Arizona middle school student suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school was unconstitutional.

UPDATE: Pam Spaulding discusses this case at Pandagon. An administrator has reportedly been placed on leave because of this incident.

Superintendent Nancy Sebring and a “facilities advisory committee” are recommending that the Des Moines school district save $2 million a year after 2011 by not extending a contract with Taylor Ohde Kitchell to manage construction projects for the district:

Currently, Taylor Ohde Kitchell has a $19.3 million contract to oversee construction projects through June 30, 2011.

“We have fewer dollars to spend, and we want as much of those to go into schools and impacting students and adults at those schools,” Sebring said.

This sensible recommendation is long overdue, and the school board should adopt it unanimously.

School board member Jonathan Narcisse is unpopular with his colleagues. But to his credit, he had been demanding a thorough review of the contract with Taylor Ohde Kitchell for years. Unfortunately, the majority of Des Moines school board members in a position to do something about this matter dismissed the concerns of those who criticized the contract, including Narcisse and Nan Stillians.

Last year attorney Nicholas Critelli investigated this matter and found that Taylor Ohde Kitchell didn’t comply with the law on competitive bidding for school projects. Critelli recommended that the Des Moines school board terminate the contract with the construction management firm and consider filing suit as well. However, the majority on the school board voted not to sue or even terminate the contract early.

As a parent of a child in the Des Moines public school system, I hate seeing big money continue to be spent on this contract, but it’s comforting to know that the current superintendent doesn’t plan to repeat her predecessor’s mistakes.

The Des Moines Register covered other recommendations from Sebring and the facilities committee here. If the school board approves the plan, Des Moines schools that weren’t renovated during the past decade with local-option sales tax money are likely to have some improvements funded by state sales tax revenue.