ON THE BALLOT: Iowa House District 84

Joe Mitchell

Party: Republican

Home: Mt. Pleasant

Occupation: Senior Account Manager MD Orthopaedics

Political Experience: I currently serve as the state representative of District 84 and have completed two legislative sessions. Before becoming your state representative, I had experience working both in the Iowa House of Representatives as a page for a year and the state Senate as a clerk for two years. Additionally, I had experience working in Gov. Reynolds' office and Sen. Joni Ernst's office in D.C.

Why are you running for office?

I am running for public office because I care about the needs of folks in rural Iowa and the difficult challenges we are experiencing right here in Henry, Washington, Jefferson and Lee county.

I believe for far too long, rural Iowa has been left behind and too many resources have been devoted to our more urban areas like Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

Investment from our state needs to be focused in our struggling communities that are having trouble retaining and attracting younger people.

We can reverse this trend or at least slow it down by investing in broadband, child care assistance and our public schools.

Developing an environment that is friendly toward small business in Iowa is also a key to making sure Iowa is competitive with other surrounding states.

What are your priorities if elected?

My priorities if I am elected will be to make sure that we continue to have a balanced budget as a state and continue to be disciplined when managing your taxpayer dollars.

I will continue to be committed toward rural public education and working toward equability for transportation costs, which are far more in rural areas.

Finally, I will be committed to making this state more small business friendly and competitive with surrounding states.

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

Next session I believe our number one challenge will be meeting our budget targets and adequately funding our Education, Health and Human Service (HHS), Judiciary and other budgets.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, side effects will include less revenue coming into our state.

Sales tax revenue and income tax revenue will both be down, which will make a major impact in our budget.

Luckily because of fiscal responsibility from the Legislature and the governor these past two years, our reserve funds are full, and we are prepared for budget shortfalls.

Other issues we must continue to address will be lack of broadband in our rural areas, which is a significant challenge for small businesses who wish to expand or move to our communities and a major challenge for our children doing online learning.

Child care also will be something that we must continue to address as more communities try to find a solution to this never-ending problem with lots of roadblocks and red tape.

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

I think the state government has done the best it possibly could considering the circumstances.

This entire pandemic was completely unprecedented, and our state leaders had some hard decisions to make.

Going into the future, I think this will have made us stronger, and we will be more prepared going forward.

However, if we could do it over again, I don't think small businesses should have been closed down for as long as they were. It was unfair to some extent that larger department stores could be open but not main street stores.

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?

We have to continue to protect our most vulnerable members of society. That includes people with underlining health conditions and people over 70.

However, our health facilities, including our hospitals, can't operate without tax dollars from the citizens.

That means we need people working and making money to be able to pay into our tax system so we can continue operating our essential services need to combat this pandemic.