Legislators brief the public Saturday

    Education, biofuels and budget cuts were among the topics discussed at the state legislative briefing in the Washington County Courthouse Saturday morning. State Senator Becky Schmitz and State Representative Larry Marek, both Democrats, answered questions from an audience of roughly 30 people, each of whom was given an opportunity to ask a question of the legislators.

    Marek spoke about how the state was in financial difficulties because of a loss in revenue, although he said the economic situation in Iowa is not as bad as other states. 

    ?In our state, we?re at 6.7 percent unemployment whereas the national average is 10.2 percent. With people not working, they?re not out spending money and that?s why we have a shortfall.?

    Both legislators addressed the topic of education in their opening remarks. Marek said that education is such a large part of the budget that it had to receive some of the across-the-board cuts the governor made. 

    ?I?m all for education. I have seven grandkids in the Washington school. I want them to get the best possible education,? said Marek. ?K-12 schooling takes 43 percent of our budget. Upper education takes 14 percent. Education accounts for $3 billion out of a $5.2 billion budget. If we were to skip education in our cuts, where do you pick up the money??

    Schmitz said the Senate will consider an education bill passed by the House on Friday that would require school districts to spend their cash reserves before requesting property tax increases.

    ?The bill would create a school budget review committee so that any school that is thinking of asking for more property taxes would have to go through that committee,? said Schmitz. ?We went that route because there are differences between school districts in terms of the amount of money they have to have in cash reserves. I anticipate the Senate will pass that on Tuesday, and then it will go to the governor very quickly after that.?

    Schmitz remarked that eliminating a budget shortfall is harder for a state government that can?t make money out of thin air.

    ?We?d love to be able to print money like the federal government, but we have to make the tough decision to balance our budget,? said Schmitz. ?It?s a real challenge because education is such a big part of the budget. We didn?t want to see the cuts automatically shifted over to property taxpayers.? 

    Marek talked about the importance of ethanol and other organically based fuels.

    ?We raise enough corn to use it as food, fuel and exports. In spite of all the adverse conditions we had last year, we had the best corn crop on record. So there?s plenty of corn out there. We?re not going to be robbing anyone?s food supply.?

    Marek also spoke about the possibility of mandating the use of ethanol at the state level.

    ?It?s better to do things with incentives if you can, but we?re at the point here where a mandate should be under consideration,? said Marek. ?Illinois has 11 percent biofuels. Minnesota has a mandate. There?s some place in Canada that is going to have a mandate, so if Canada can handle a mandate, as cold as they are up there, it could work here, too. Even diesel can have 5 percent biofuels and it?s not required to have a label, so a lot of the fuels we?re getting out here already have 5 percent.?

    County Supervisor Wes Rich attended the legislative briefing and spoke about a proposal to transfer road use tax funds from the county to fund the highway patrol. He said Washington County would be short $250,000 every year to pay for gravel on county roads if such a transfer took place. 

    Marek said in response, ?I?m not one who thinks the money should be transferred out of that fund. I know the counties need it. I have other groups that are very opposed to that transfer as well. I hope they can come up with the money somewhere else.?

For the full article, see our Jan. 18 print edition