Statewide Iowa — Legislators returned to the state capitol Tuesday to put the finishing touches on state spending plans for the budgeting year that begins July 1st.
Republicans who hold majorities in the House and Senate have agreed to provide Iowa’s 15 area community colleges with six-and-a-half million dollars more for the next academic year. Republican Senator Chris Cournoyer of LeClaire says the three state universities will get a five-and-a-half million dollar boost.
And Cournoyer says that’s not a trivial amount. Democrats like Representative Cindy Winckler of Davenport say tuition at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa will have to go up, as state support of the universities today is less than it was in 2009.
Senator Herman Quirmbach, a Democrat from Ames, says the state universities are being starved.
Representative David Kerr, a Republican from Morning Sun, says he fought with Senators to get as much as he could for scholarships for students planning to be teachers or mental health professionals, but wasn’t able to get as much as he had hoped in his final year as a legislator.
As reported on Monday, the governor’s plan to provide state scholarships to students in private k-through-12 schools has been tabled.
