ON THE BALLOT: Iowa House District 78

Jarad Klein

Party: Republican

Home: Keota

Family: Married to Rachel with five children.

Occupation: Farmer

Political Experience: State Representative, Public Safety Committee Chair, former Assistant Majority Leader.

Why are you running for office?

First, I want to say that serving as a voice for Southeast Iowa at the Statehouse in Des Moines is a tremendous honor.

I am running to continue the work I have started; there are too many unresolved issues that need addressed.

In addition to building upon the foundation we have set, I have always been a person who wants to help people. I enjoy the ability to take someone's problem and work with others to solve it.

Being able to go back to that person and let them know that you helped them in some way is incredibly rewarding to me, and I want to continue solving problems for the people of Keokuk and Washington counties.

What are your priorities if elected?

Public Safety: As chair of the Public Safety Committee, I will continue my work to provide safe communities for our friends and families. We have created a cyber security division within DPS, with added funding to fight human trafficking and online criminal activity.

We have added measures for hotels and motels to train employees on identifying possible criminal activity. We will be looking at further criminal offences for violent looting and rioting. Peaceful protests can be a good thing, but violence cannot be tolerated. We will not 'defund the police.” We will continue to support our law enforcement community.

Workforce: We have to ensure that businesses can find workers with the skills they need. This will help grow family incomes and Iowa's economy.

Agriculture: As a farmer myself, I want to make sure that we aren't overburdening our farmers with excessive regulations and higher taxes.

Responsible budgeting and lower taxes: I believe that the state budget should function the same way as a family or small business. Spend less than you take in, make strategic investments and save for a rainy day. I will always work to maintain fiscal discipline and cut taxes for middle class families and small businesses.

What do you see as the top issues facing the state in the next legislative session?

Workforce has been and continues to be the biggest challenge facing our employers.

Before COVID, businesses had thousands of jobs open but were not able to find workers with the skillsets necessary to fill them.

I will make sure the state is making smart investments in career training programs at our community colleges.

I also want to look at other issues that impact our workforce like child care, broadband and housing. We have been working on these topics for the last few years.

Just this session, the House was working on a wide-ranging, bipartisan plan that would reduce child care costs for middle class families, increase access to providers, incentivize employers to offer and expand child care to their employees and address the 'cliff effect” by easing Iowans off of government child care assistance programs.

We've also expanded incentive programs to spur development of affordable housing and high-speed internet in rural areas.

We should continue to do this to help existing businesses grow while also attracting new companies to Iowa to create new jobs.

Keeping rural schools open and thriving is another challenge.

Many schools in rural Iowa face challenges that are much different than those in Des Moines or Cedar Rapids.

We often have declining enrollments and higher than average transportation costs.

We need to continue to target much-needed dollars to rural schools and provide additional funding flexibility.

We are investing in K-12 education at record levels, including a newly created $26 million fund to reduce transportation costs for rural schools, a huge benefit for districts here in North Iowa.

I'll also continue to advocate for funding flexibility so that school districts can better spend their resources in a way that works best for their students, parents, teachers, and staff.

Health care in rural Iowa is another issue that needs to be a priority – not just your traditional health care services, but also emergency medical services.

We should continue to invest in our small-town hospitals so people can access care in their communities.

Over the last few years, we have provided rural hospitals with additional funding so that they can remain operational and in good financial condition.

We also need to designate EMS as an essential service so that local governments have the resources and certainty to make long-term investments in EMS infrastructure (which I voted to do last session). This would help local communities fund life-saving emergency medical services for their citizens.

Do you think the state government has responded well to the COVID-19 pandemic, and if not, how should it have responded differently?

This has been an unprecedented situation that we haven't seen in most of our lifetimes.

Oftentimes, things were changing faster than we were able to understand them. To that end, I believe the state's response has been a balanced approach.

Gov. Reynolds has handled COVID-19 well and taken a data-driven approach to the decisions she has made.

This is something we're going to live with for a while and need to be aware of.

What can the state Legislature do in 2021 about stopping the spread of the pandemic while also being mindful of the effects on the economy?

Moving forward, we should continue to protect vulnerable populations who are more at-risk to COVID, make sure people can go back to work and school safely and responsibly and ensure that our constitutional liberties are not violated.

When we are back in session, we will work with the Department of Public Health to identify what needs they have as far as tools or resources.

We should also work with health experts to see what sort of steps the Legislature needs to take.