How Iowa Should Offset the Gas Tax Increase

Last week the Iowa Senate and Iowa House passed, and Governor Branstad signed into law, a 10 cent increase in Iowa’s per gallon fuel tax. While for several reasons I voted against this action, the bill passed and is now law. Our focus moving forward should be on reducing your…

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Education Debate Heats Up…Quoting Joe Biden

One of the biggest issues every session is how much additional funding to allocate for Iowa’s K-12 schools. The debate centers on what percentage to increase education funding known as Supplemental State Aid. This year House Republicans have proposed increasing K-12 spending by 1.25% for 2016 and 2.45% for 2017.…

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Session Picks Up in Week 3

As we complete our third week of the session, the procedural process in the Senate begins to have an impact on what issues we ultimately will get to vote on.  For this reason, I’d like to take the time to review how this process works. The first two weeks of…

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Split Legislature Look for Common Ground

It was an exciting week at the Capitol to start off the 2015 Legislative session. This year’s session is scheduled to last 110 days, which puts our scheduled ending date on May 1st this year. The first week of session is always a pretty active week as we get reacquainted…

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