Des Moines, Iowa — The Iowa legislature made a few final decisions on a more than eight billion dollar state budget plan and voted to prohibit cities, counties and schools from having mask mandates, then adjourned the 2021 session shortly before midnight Wednesday evening.
Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver of Ankeny says the legislature’s biggest achievement is the GOP tax plan that passed earlier this week, cutting taxes by an estimated one billion dollars over eight years.
Governor Kim Reynolds is emphasizing the part of the plan that ends a county property tax levy and shifts responsibility for the mental health system to the state.
Whitver says the plan also gets rid of the inheritance tax and ensures income tax cuts go into effect in 2023.
Democrats like House Minority Leader Todd Prichard of Charles City say the session was a disappointment because Republicans had plenty of options, but failed to provide state assistance to Iowans suffering because of the pandemic.
House Speaker Pat Grassley of New Hartford, the top Republican in the House, says rather than a focus on dollars and cents, the G-O-P focused on pandemic policies Iowans were seeking.
Requiring schools to offer five-days-a-week, in-the-classroom instruction was among the first votes Republican lawmakers took this year. Senate Democratic Leader Zach Wahls of Coralville says Republicans focused on divisive issues like election law changes and abortion policy.
The legislative session lasted 129 days. Intense negotiations among Republicans over the tax plan lasted for over a month, but Grassley says it wasn’t because of a philosophical rift between House and Senate Republicans.
Grassley says in the end, the governor provided key assurances about how the state would run mental health system, so House Republicans dropped their opposition to having the state take on another social program. Spending on the state prison system was among the legislature’s major budget decisions after two Anamosa prison employees were killed in March by two inmates attempting to escape. Whitver and Senate Republicans initially proposed a four million dollar increase in the budget for prisons, but then agreed to the 20 million dollars House Republicans proposed.
Several high-profile bills failed to pass the legislature this year, including the governor’s proposed Iowa renewable fuels standard. Reynolds says she’ll ask representatives of gasoline retailers and the biofuels industry to negotiate over the summer and fall and find a compromise that boosts the use of ethanol and biodiesel.
