Klein answers questions on casino tax, preschool

    Jarad Klein fielded all the tough questions from the audience at the legislative briefing Saturday morning. Klein, a Republican representative in the Iowa House, is normally one-half of the local legislative tag team who speak at the briefings, but his Republican colleague in the Senate, Sandra Greiner, could not attend the event.

    Klein spoke about Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) and its plan to close 39 offices in the next year, including the branch in Washington. He attended a committee meeting last week on contractor fees and IWD came up at that meeting.

    Contractors pay $50 to the state through work force development to show they?re in compliance with insurance regulations. Klein said that fund is projected to be $1 million, which is more than it costs to execute the program. He asked an employee of IWD what that department does with the extra money. She said the money goes to the department?s general fund. Klein asked if some of that money could go toward sustaining current practices. Klein said he did not receive a good answer to his question, and promised the crowd Saturday that he would continue to press IWD for an answer.

    Tim Coffey asked Klein about his thoughts on commercial property tax reform. Klein said he?d like to see a reduction in all taxes. The Iowa House passed a 20 percent reduction in income tax for all tax brackets last week. Klein said writing income tax legislation is easy compared to property tax reform, which is more complicated. He told Coffey that he expects to see property tax reform this year.

    Klein said he opposed Gov. Branstad?s plan to increase the casino tax from 22 to 36 percent.

    ?I differ on a few things with the governor, and this is one of them,? said Klein.

    Klein said he understands there was initially an agreement that the taxes would go to 36 percent, but added that such a tax hike would be devastating.

    ?That would be about $660,000 less to our foundation board,? said Klein. ?That?s less money to our fire departments, our libraries and our roads.?

    Klein was asked if he supported a measure to pay newspapers a flat rate of $25 to print legal notices. He said he is opposed to it.

    ?I know a lot of urban legislators would like to see that happen,? he said. ?But for those of us in rural Iowa, our newspapers are on the front lines in our fight for transparency.?

    Tasha Beghtol asked Klein what he thought of the governor?s recent proposal to reform preschool. Branstad has proposed setting aside $3,000 per student in the form of vouchers that could be applied at either a public or private preschool. The money would fund 10 hours of preschool per week. Families would pay fees depending on their income, ranging from as little as $3 per month to a family of four earning $67,000 that would pay $133 per month. Families that earn more than that wouldn?t qualify for state aid.

    Beghtol asked Klein, ?Do you consider it good policy to establish in Des Moines the amount each family should pay across the board in every area in Iowa? And if so, do you foresee any problems with that particular system if it?s going to utilize both public and private preschools??

    Klein responded, ?To answer the first question, I think it?s dangerous when legislators in Des Moines put a price tag that is meant to apply to the whole state. Again, we talk a lot about urban versus rural. This is another issue where there is a major cost discrepancy between the areas. We need to allow more to be decided at the local level and not from Des Moines.?

For more, see our Feb. 21 print edition.