2008 was a good election for Iowa Democrats, but we still lost several very close statehouse races. In House district 37 (map here), Republican Renee Schulte defeated first-term incumbent Art Staed by 13 votes (0.07 percent).

This week Cedar Rapids attorney Mark Seidl announced his plans to run in this district and laid out his priorities:

“Although no one would have wished for any of them, the natural, fiscal, and economic disasters that have struck us in recent years present unique opportunities for rethinking each level of our government,” Seidl said.  “In going forward, we must concentrate on reconstituting and enhancing our advantages-recreating two cities which are an essential part of Iowa’s character, conserving our tremendous natural resources in agriculture and renewable energy production, and preparing the next generation of Iowans to be leaders and innovators in the future.”

This district is winnable in light of Schulte’s tiny margin of victory and a slight Democratic voter registration advantage. Nevertheless, Seidl will need to pound the pavement to win back this seat. Schulte is a hard worker who was out door-knocking last Friday, 11 months before the election when the temperature was in the 20s. Also, Schulte may benefit from an “enthusiasm gap” if Democratic voters are demoralized and Republicans energized next November.

Schulte bucked the majority of her party by voting for a bill that allowed authorities to impose a local option sales tax in disaster areas. Linn County voters approved the 1-cent tax in March, and the proposal received a majority of votes in Cedar Rapids as a whole. I don’t know whether it carried the Cedar Rapids precincts that are in House district 37.

Like other House Republicans, Schulte voted against the I-JOBS state bonding initiative, which allocated $45 million to Linn County for disaster relief (here is how that money was allocated).

I suspect that in this district, much will depend on how voters perceive the effectiveness of the state’s response to the 2008 floods.

UPDATE: Schulte is already organizing volunteers to help with voter contacts. We will need all hands on deck in this district.

This week Governor Culver signed into law a bill that establishes a statewide 1-cent sales tax for school infrastructure. That tax will replace the local-option sales tax for school infrastructure, which has been adopted in all 99 counties.

The problem with the local-option sales tax has been that school districts in counties with a large retail base get much more funding per student than school districts in counties without many local retail options. Why should students in Warren County have to learn in crumbling schools because there are more shopping options in Polk and Dallas counties?

A few years back there was an uproar in Des Moines when it emerged that the school district didn’t have enough money to fix up all the schools. Partly that was due to poor budgeting, but the explosion of big-box retail in Dallas County played a role as well, because fewer local-option sales tax dollars were staying in Polk County.

Des Moines’ alternative weekly Cityview doesn’t like the new law. They may be right that the motivation for passing it was to make sure voters wouldn’t be able to ditch the extra penny sales tax. The old law forced counties to get voters to renew the local-option sales tax every ten years, and many people think Polk County voters would have rejected any proposal to renew the local-option tax approved in 1999.

The new statewide sales tax won’t expire until 2029.

Cityview is also troubled by the move away from “local control,” but here I am 100 percent with IowaVoter:

This crazy local-option sales tax was created in a previous Republican-run legislature.  It siphons money from counties with little retail trade to counties with larger trade, such as Polk county.  It sounds like something rural Republicans should have opposed, but they always go for regressive taxes.  The local control aspect took the burden off them, too.

Thank Democrats for partly fixing this folly.  The tax is still regressive but now it will give rural areas a fair shake.  Republicans lost control of the legislature for a reason.  Democrats should not shrink from the burden of correcting old errors, even if Republicans drag their feet.

Cityview doesn’t seem to get how the current system operates and is bothered that the new law

expects taxpayers in Des Moines, for example, to bail out crumbling schools in Sioux City or Davenport or some other place where we have no say in how our money is being spent. It isn’t that Iowans shouldn’t bond together to help one another, but it should be left to local taxpayers to vote on how their money is spent as a way to keep school districts in line – not a group of bureaucrats.

But of course, the current system gives people in the majority of Iowa’s counties little more than the illusion of local control. Whether or not they approve a local-option sales tax in their own county, they still end up pumping money into school districts located in other counties–and neither they nor their local school boards have any say in how that money is spent.

Students should not be punished for living in a county without many retail options.