The gavel drops to begin this year’s legislative session on this Monday, January 12th. We have a full breakdown of the changes in leadership to start off our discussion, as well as the incentives for the legislators to wrap up the session on time this year. Governor Reynolds and republican House Majority Leader Bobby Kaufmann quarreled over the governor’s veto of the eminent domain bill last year, so we’ll see if that battle carries over into this year’s negotiations.

Iowa Down Ballot is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Our eminent domain preview segues into likely the biggest issue of this year’s session, property tax reform. Republicans have promised property tax changes for a couple years now, and it seems it will be difficult again this year to get a bill done and passed.

Thanks to everyone for the welcome back and welcome to our new subscribers. We’ll see ya next Saturday!

AI generated transcript below:

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Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast.

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I am Dave Price,

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joined by our regulars,

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Kathie Obradovich of the Iowa Capitol Dispatch and Laura Bellin of Bleeding

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Heartland.

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Hello, ladies.

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Happy Friday.

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Happy Friday.

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Good to see you.

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Good to see you both.

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All right, we look ahead to next Monday, which starts the Iowa legislative session for 2026.

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And then all kinds of speeches.

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You have the condition of the state address by Governor Reynolds on Tuesday.

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We have condition of the judiciary, condition of the guard.

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So a lot of speeches for week one.

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Not a heck of a lot necessarily gets done, as we know, but it does perhaps lay out

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some themes of the week.

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Kathie,

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we want to get into some of the topics that we pretty much know will be big ones

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this session.

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But before we get into issues,

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what is the thing that kind of piques your curiosity about 2026 as far as the

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legislative session goes?

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Well, we all want to know as reporters how long it’s going to be.

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And they always hate that question, right?

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That is,

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you know,

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the old saw,

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and well,

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actually,

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it is literally supposed to be 10 days shorter than the first year of the two-year

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General Assembly.

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And,

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you know,

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it ends 10 days early so that lawmakers can get out on the campaign trail as an

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election year.

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However,

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we have learned that it being an election year does not always mean that they will

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get done even on time,

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let alone early.

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And they’ve got some really big issues on their plate,

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which will go through issues that they are not going into session with.

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you know, hand-holding and singing kumbaya about.

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So I do, and you add to that a tough, what I think is going to be a very tough budget year.

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And so you’ve got all of those things working against them.

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So I’m not currently making any vacation plans for even the second week of May yet.

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I think that we’re

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We’re in for maybe a long haul here,

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trying to get enough of these issues resolved so that lawmakers feel like they can

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go out onto the campaign trail with some accomplishments.

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And of course, we should point out that after 100 days, they lose their per diem.

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So there is a financial incentive to wrap things up on time,

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if you will,

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and a financial disincentive.

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Especially if you’re not a Des Moines metro legislator and you have to pay for a

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place to stay and all of that kind of stuff.

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I mean, that does tend to maybe up the pressure a little bit.

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Well,

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and even bigger financial disincentive is that they can’t raise money during the

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legislative session.

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You know, they can’t accept donations.

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Yeah.

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Any of them that have primary races are going to want and need to get out of

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session and be able to collect donations.

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Yeah, that’s why I think they are going to be done before May.

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I’m just going to be bold and predict that even though the budget’s going to be

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hard and I don’t think they...

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I think it’ll be harder to get to a property tax agreement than they imagine it will be.

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But so many of the Republican incumbents have primary challengers.

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I think that they are not going to let it stretch into mid-May.

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But what I’m most watching is whether relationships between the Senate Republicans

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and the House Republicans improve at all under new leadership in the

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They just the lingering resentments over eminent domain and other issues make it

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hard for them to cooperate.

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I would take that and add the governor into that to make a trifecta of

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relationships for exactly the reason you point out about eminent domain.

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And she’s a lame duck, which last year she only announced in April.

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So the last month or so of the session,

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she was a lame duck,

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but she didn’t go into last year’s session as a lame duck.

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We all thought she was running again.

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So let’s talk about the leadership dynamic, because both chambers have a new leader in the mix.

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Bobby Kaufman in the House and Senator Clemish as the majority leader in the Senate.

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Kathie, what do you make about the leadership changes?

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Maybe to piggyback off what Laura said about the kind of bad blood that we saw last

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year with eminent domain debate.

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Does that does that maybe help things get off to a clean slate?

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Not necessarily.

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I mean,

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Bobby Kaufman,

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before he was elected majority leader,

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I think boldly declared that nothing with the governor’s name on it was going to

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get through the House if he had anything to say about it.

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And now he has a lot to say about it.

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Now, you know, maybe he was just blowing off steam and, you know, that’s entirely possible.

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It seems unlikely that...

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None of the governor’s initiatives will make it through the House and certainly not.

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I mean, there’s there’s bound to be.

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She always will come up with some bipartisan,

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for example,

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proposals,

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you know,

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so I kind of doubt that that will happen.

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But.

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We also haven’t necessarily seen any public displays of unity at this point.

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The Iowa Capitol Press Association had a legislative forum this week and couldn’t

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get the Republicans to come to the table.

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And I think that the House would have if the Senate had agreed.

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So I think they’re still not in unison.

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Yeah.

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Bobby Kaufman makes a lot of bold statements and doesn’t always follow through on them.

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So he’s not going to hold up absolutely everything.

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But the governor,

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I think the fact that the governor created this nuclear energy task force last week

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indicates that she knows that her energy bill,

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which nuclear energy was a big part of her energy bill that she introduced last

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year.

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And I think she senses that’s not going anywhere.

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She’s just going to try to do bits of it on her own by executive order.

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And it wasn’t the nuclear part of that that was really controversial.

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I think it was electrical.

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But I mean, it was but it was all it all got tangled up in the same problem.

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Yeah.

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And I should mention,

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by the way,

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that bills that were introduced last year,

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by and large,

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are still alive this year.

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You know,

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they some of them get re-referred to committee and some may have to start,

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you know,

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anew.

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But, you know, a lot of the issues that we talked about last year as being

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you know, dead bills, whatever.

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Most of those still have some life left in them.

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It doesn’t mean that they’re likely to move because,

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you know,

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a lot of them,

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if they didn’t have the support last year,

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they’re not going to have it this year.

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But it does mean that some of those bills don’t have to start from scratch,

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including the governor’s energy bill.

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Always a reminder to me that I always recommend to staff that we do not waste a lot

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of time on what’s dead because things come back from the dead.

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as we have seen different times, whether it’s that year or the next year.

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Laura,

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now you mentioned about Bobby Kaufman making bold predictions and what have you,

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but I would have loved to be a fly on the wall.

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I have no idea if this has even happened yet,

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but a one-on-one conversation,

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whether it would be on the phone or sitting down face to face between the governor

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and

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and Leader Kaufman.

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I don’t know if such a thing has happened,

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but the things...

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I don’t know what you two thought,

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but he was so outspoken about her and against her after her veto last year of the

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eminent domain bill that...

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I think I was really surprised how much he said publicly.

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Like,

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I get it,

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you know,

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if you’re really ticked off behind the scenes and you blow off before,

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maybe in caucus or in front of the staff or whatever,

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but to be willing to say that to various media outlets and not just one time,

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not just one time where you were super hot and let it fly and then you sort of back

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off.

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Like, he stayed super hot about it.

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And so that’s why I’m so fascinated by the dynamics about how will those two

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coexist in light of a lot of things,

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but in light of her being lame duck,

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too.

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You know, a little bit as a leader.

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I mean, when you have one party control, there’s always going to be tension within the party.

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So you have that tension between the House and Senate.

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You have that tension between the House, Senate and governor.

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You know, sometimes tension between one house and another.

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So,

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you know,

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just because we have one party control here doesn’t mean that they’re all going to

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agree.

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And you’ve got these you’ve got these personality conflicts.

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You’ve got all of these things.

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And

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And sometimes these inner party squabbles and these inner party,

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sometimes they,

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you know,

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solidify into feuds.

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Those can be even harder to negotiate away than,

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you know,

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if you had to deal with,

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you know,

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if the Senate,

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you know,

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and the House were controlled by different parties.

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Sometimes that’s just a matter of splitting the difference on numbers, that kind of thing.

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So I think that some of these inter-party squabbles are harder to negotiate than if

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we had divided government.

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I’m glad you brought up House and Senate because I don’t know how many years this

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has been now,

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but do you remember when they had the legislative avails?

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on thursdays and it used to be so easy for us as reporters when both the leaders of

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both chambers would be there republicans together democrats together and you know

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it was fodder for a bunch of stories that we were working on at the time same way

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when terry branstadt was governor he used to do his weekly monday morning things

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It was so great to sit in there and it sort of set up the news for the week and you

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could get multiple stories out of it and he’d answer questions about whatever.

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But that House and Senate Republican split, which is probably now been more than a decade.

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Right.

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And it’s probably.

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Well,

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it’s certainly I don’t know if it’s been more than a decade,

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but I can’t remember whether they were still doing those joint avails under Bill

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Dix.

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But I think.

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under Jack Whitver.

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I don’t remember those.

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No, definitely not with him.

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No.

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And so, and Mike Clemish was elected for the first time in 2020.

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So he was never around for the before times or whatever you want to call them,

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whatever the normal functioning of the Iowa Senate,

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when they had

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when they had the reporters in the press bench,

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when they had joint budget subcommittees,

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when they had weekly press avails.

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That was all outside his range of experience.

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So I don’t see him going back to that.

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I just wanted to say that I pulled up just one of the Radio Iowa stories,

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the first story after Reynolds’ veto of that pipeline bill.

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And this is what Bobby Kaufman said on the record.

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Kim Reynolds has failed the state of Iowa.

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Kim Reynolds has soiled her legacy and her legacy is now spitting in the face of

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landowners and being Bruce Rastetter’s errand girl.

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So it was very disrespectful in addition to being hot.

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But I felt I felt like even at the time,

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what is what was the phrase you use blowing off steam,

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Kathie?

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To me, that was kind of how it felt even before he was the majority leader.

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Yeah, yes.

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Yeah, coming back from that will be interesting.

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All right,

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so let’s talk about eminent domain,

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because Mike Clemish told me that they are working on something,

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and so...

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I don’t know how they thread the needle on this,

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but if they are able to,

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you’re a pipeline company,

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you have your plan approved,

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but you run into some landowners who do not want to give you access voluntarily.

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So maybe you can sort of widen it a little bit,

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alter your path a little bit,

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and then the hope is that maybe the next landowner will go for it.

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so you change the path a little bit and that it works and i think i think mike

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busolo senator busolo’s um sort of his uh alternative plan last year contained some

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of that but is it really possible to thread the needle when you have a chunk of the

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caucus and maybe in both both sides but a chunk of the caucus really wants to find

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some way to kill this deal to be completely

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I find it really hard to believe that Boussolo’s plan has more support than it did

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when it essentially failed on the floor last year.

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This is not a plan to curb eminent domain.

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This is a plan that gives Summit Carbon Solutions

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essentially some wiggle room to possibly find some more voluntary easements,

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but it doesn’t stop them if their path is blocked by,

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even if they try to go outside the permit,

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if their path is blocked,

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it still doesn’t stop them from being able to go and force unwilling landowners to

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provide easements through eminent domain.

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It doesn’t get at the principle

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which essentially where the House came down last year in saying that this is not a

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public project for which eminent domain should be assured.

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So,

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I mean,

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I think that they’re I think that they’re still both the chambers are still really

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far apart.

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And you also,

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you know,

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again,

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you have quite a few Senate Republicans who have taken this,

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you know,

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basically taken the House’s position on this issue.

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I don’t think that that has legs.

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If Klemish can even get that through the Senate, I see it as dead on arrival in the House.

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By the way,

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the Property Rights Landowners Coalition,

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whatever you want to call it,

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Sierra Club,

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they’re planning a huge,

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their first big rally event at the Capitol is going to be next Tuesday,

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the 13th.

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Of course, the session opens Monday.

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So last year they were there, I think, pretty much every Tuesday.

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So

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They are not letting up.

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I haven’t heard anybody from that community say they like the Mike Clemish idea.

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But,

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okay,

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so let’s say they can’t get this through,

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unless there’s an alternative that I’m not aware of.

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Maybe there is an alternative.

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But does this derail?

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Because it was my understanding they want to try to get this settled early in the

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session so that then they can move on to the other things.

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So what happens if they don’t, if they can’t get this through?

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There’s still action going on in the courts.

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So right now,

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regardless of what the legislature does with eminent domain,

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under the conditions of the permit that Summit Carbon Solutions has,

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they can’t start construction without approval in the Dakotas.

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And South Dakota, of course, came out and banned eminent domain for carbon pipeline projects.

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So

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they are stalled regardless of what the legislature does here,

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unless they can get the utilities board to alter the permit and allow them to have

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essentially to try to forge an alternative path,

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probably through Nebraska to get to where they want to sequester this carbon.

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And Nebraska, of course, is the path of least resistance because they have really no laws

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related to carbon pipelines.

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So I think what they wanna do now is get their route essentially going the other

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way and get through Nebraska to a hub where they can sequester the carbon and then

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continue to work on how to hook up more ethanol plants here along the way.

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So that’s going to be playing out in the courts.

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You’ve got a court ruling on the books right now that essentially allows this.

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It paused the lawsuit.

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until the utilities board has a chance to consider this proposed change to the permit.

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But that ruling now has been appealed as well.

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So we basically got court battles going on,

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you know,

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simultaneously that are going to continue to delay this,

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you know,

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and essentially it will give the lawmakers time to think it over at least.

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One of the great things as a reader of the Iowa Capital Dispatch is that,

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and especially talking to you,

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Kathie,

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is because you can always provide the broader view,

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which has been so good when it comes to this summit pipeline because of your

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network.

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And South Dakota in particular has had numerous stories about the challenges in

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that area that Summit has faced through this whole process after the legislature

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banned the use of eminent domain.

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Yeah, South Dakota Searchlight and North Dakota Monitor.

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So if you,

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you know,

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anybody wants to look at those,

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those are sister newsrooms to Iowa Capitol Dispatch,

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and they do a really great job of covering these issues.

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So thanks for mentioning that.

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And South Dakota Searchlight reported on,

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I think,

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more than a dozen Republican legislators lost their primaries,

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largely over this eminent domain issue.

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And that allowed the legislature to pass the ban that the governor later signed into law.

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And like I said,

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I mean,

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there are several Republican legislators facing challenges right now in Iowa.

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I just don’t know...

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I understand why Mike Clemish wants to get this off the table early,

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but I just don’t think it’s going to be possible to find something that satisfies

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all sides.

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uh all right i’m also curious about another biggie and that would be this property

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tax reform and uh when i was talking to senator klemich about this i’m like all

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right so the sounds like the plan is that senate’s going to have one senate

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republicans senate republicans will have one house republicans will have one the

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governor says she’s going to be engaged this time after not really being engaged

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last year

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So you’re going to have three different plans.

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How’s that going to work?

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And he said, yep, that’s the way we’re going to do this.

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So that way each entity can come up with its own plan.

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We’ll be able to look at all three of these and then figure out what we can take

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from each one,

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put something together and get something through.

(00:19:27):

I’ll be fat.

(00:19:28):

It’s so complicated and so complex,

(00:19:30):

which is why we’ve largely had the same system for 40 years or whatever it’s been.

(00:19:35):

That’s such a big one to try to take on, but they’ve...

(00:19:38):

It’s like the Republicans,

(00:19:40):

instead of the majority party,

(00:19:41):

it seems like they almost have to do something here,

(00:19:44):

right?

(00:19:44):

Because they’re not going to do tax cuts.

(00:19:47):

So after telling people,

(00:19:49):

especially one of the chambers on the Senate side last year,

(00:19:52):

that they were going to do something where the House is maybe a little more

(00:19:55):

reserved about,

(00:19:56):

we’ll see.

(00:19:57):

This time around, it seems like they pretty much have to come through with something, right?

(00:20:02):

Seems like it.

(00:20:02):

I mean, they certainly promised.

(00:20:05):

And

(00:20:06):

made it pretty clear that they want to get something done.

(00:20:10):

But you’re right.

(00:20:11):

This is very, very, very difficult.

(00:20:13):

For one thing,

(00:20:15):

we’re not just talking about tinkering with some aspect of the enormously

(00:20:19):

complicated property tax system that nobody understands anyway.

(00:20:24):

And,

(00:20:24):

you know,

(00:20:25):

if they get it done,

(00:20:26):

you know,

(00:20:27):

the average person is going to look at their property tax bill and not really see

(00:20:31):

any impact.

(00:20:32):

It just, you know, it’s something that can go out and tell voters that they did.

(00:20:36):

Um,

(00:20:36):

you know,

(00:20:37):

what they started talking about last year was really,

(00:20:39):

you know,

(00:20:40):

sort of fundamentally changing the way the property tax system works and trying to

(00:20:45):

simplify it.

(00:20:45):

Although I, you know, I question whether that is going to be the result, um,

(00:20:52):

property tax cuts are the easiest for lawmakers to do because it doesn’t affect

(00:21:00):

their revenue that they have to spend.

(00:21:01):

It affects the revenue of local governments.

(00:21:04):

And local governments have been pretty organized and I think pretty much,

(00:21:11):

not entirely in unity,

(00:21:13):

but pretty much on the same page when it comes to cautioning about taking away

(00:21:20):

too much revenue that their constituents, people who elected them, want in their communities.

(00:21:26):

They want money for schools.

(00:21:29):

They want money to fix the potholes.

(00:21:33):

They want money for local law enforcement.

(00:21:36):

And that one in particular is a sensitive one for Republicans.

(00:21:42):

And you’ve

(00:21:43):

lot of lawmakers who came out of local government, right?

(00:21:48):

They’ve got friends back in their community.

(00:21:50):

They rely on those people to help campaign for them.

(00:21:53):

And they’re not,

(00:21:55):

you know,

(00:21:55):

I think most of them are not going to be in favor of,

(00:22:00):

you know,

(00:22:00):

cutting off local government revenue at the knees.

(00:22:03):

So that all adds up to a lot of complication.

(00:22:06):

And you add to that the fact that the state does not have a lot of money to backfill.

(00:22:11):

That’s what I was going to say.

(00:22:13):

Yeah.

(00:22:13):

A lot of the major property tax reforms that have been done really over the past

(00:22:17):

couple of decades,

(00:22:18):

the state has come in and backfilled,

(00:22:20):

at least temporarily,

(00:22:21):

some of the loss that local governments are feeling.

(00:22:24):

And I just don’t think they have the money to do that in this instance.

(00:22:31):

Yeah,

(00:22:32):

I mean,

(00:22:33):

one of the draft bills from last year,

(00:22:34):

I think,

(00:22:35):

would have involved the state providing $400 million to school districts,

(00:22:40):

so that would allow school districts to levy less in property taxes.

(00:22:44):

I mean, it’s so complicated.

(00:22:46):

I don’t claim to understand the whole system, but I understand a few things.

(00:22:50):

One of them is that, as Kathie just said, there’s no money.

(00:22:52):

money okay there’s no big pot of money for the state to come in and cushion the

(00:22:56):

blow for local governments and school districts and there’s also going to be no

(00:23:01):

money you know that we don’t know what they’re going to do for school funding but

(00:23:05):

there’s something complicated it’s called the budget guarantee but if school

(00:23:09):

districts are because of declining enrollment or not sufficient state support if

(00:23:14):

their budgets are below a certain level

(00:23:16):

They can levy property taxes to make up the difference.

(00:23:19):

So,

(00:23:20):

you know,

(00:23:20):

you don’t want to you could have a situation where the legislators in Des Moines

(00:23:24):

claim that they did something great on property taxes.

(00:23:27):

And then 150 school districts have to go out and raise property taxes anyway

(00:23:32):

because of the budget guarantee.

(00:23:33):

But I was just going to mention to bring it back to the electoral realm.

(00:23:37):

Carter Nordman,

(00:23:38):

who is the new Iowa House Ways and Means Chair,

(00:23:41):

replacing Bobby Kaufman,

(00:23:42):

who’s now the majority leader,

(00:23:44):

he is one of those Republicans who has a primary challenger.

(00:23:46):

So no, they cannot go home empty-handed.

(00:23:49):

They’re going to have to do something.

(00:23:50):

I am kind of now tending toward the belief that they will do something that’s maybe

(00:23:56):

less fundamental,

(00:23:57):

transformational,

(00:23:59):

and then they’ll claim that they did some big property tax reform

(00:24:04):

But in fact, it won’t be that big.

(00:24:05):

It’ll just be something that they can claim that they address the problem.

(00:24:09):

Because I just don’t know how they can do a big overhaul this year.

(00:24:13):

Carter’s challenger is Steve King’s nephew, right?

(00:24:17):

So somebody told me that, but I have not independently confirmed that.

(00:24:20):

But if you’re saying it, then I think that’s consistent.

(00:24:22):

That’s what I heard, but I haven’t either.

(00:24:24):

And now it’s out there.

(00:24:25):

So I hope I’m right.

(00:24:26):

I hope that’s not wrong.

(00:24:29):

Two things.

(00:24:30):

Mike Clemish was the former mayor of Spillville.

(00:24:34):

for quite a while, a town of 800, I think it is.

(00:24:37):

And he talked about that he knows he can’t screw over the small towns.

(00:24:42):

I don’t pretend,

(00:24:43):

Laura,

(00:24:44):

you made your confessional that you don’t pretend to be an expert on property

(00:24:48):

taxes.

(00:24:48):

Kathie, you did too.

(00:24:49):

I don’t know who is, and I surely am not, because I can’t understand.

(00:24:52):

Backfill and rollbacks and all of this stuff, it’s so freaking complicated.

(00:24:57):

I don’t pretend to know this.

(00:24:59):

I have wondered if...

(00:25:01):

And I don’t know enough about this,

(00:25:02):

but will the solution be because the governor has talked about this idea of shared

(00:25:07):

services.

(00:25:09):

So will they end up doing something that changes rules,

(00:25:13):

regulations,

(00:25:14):

whatever that in theory could reduce costs for the locals so they can pull together

(00:25:21):

in certain areas.

(00:25:23):

And then in that way.

(00:25:25):

It provides some relief,

(00:25:27):

so it lessens the expenses on on the locals,

(00:25:30):

because I don’t have already tried to limit it in certain ways,

(00:25:34):

and as you both have mentioned there’s no big pot of money that they have available

(00:25:38):

to expand backfills and some of them didn’t like the backfills anyway.

(00:25:42):

So is this,

(00:25:43):

should we think more and focus more on the concept of sharing services for some of

(00:25:47):

these smaller communities in whatever form that is?

(00:25:51):

I mean, we’ve seen it with schools, like with superintendents and stuff.

(00:25:54):

Like, is that the way to go?

(00:25:55):

I mean,

(00:25:56):

I think that there are a lot of counties that are sharing services,

(00:26:01):

you know,

(00:26:01):

in one form or another.

(00:26:03):

Most of them do it through 28E agreements,

(00:26:06):

which may have,

(00:26:07):

you know,

(00:26:07):

there may be some tinkering that could be done to make those easier to do.

(00:26:13):

But short of forcing counties to share services at some level,

(00:26:20):

I don’t really see how you get enormous tax savings.

(00:26:25):

And you look at,

(00:26:26):

for example,

(00:26:27):

Polk County,

(00:26:28):

Dallas County,

(00:26:29):

some of these counties,

(00:26:31):

and some of them also are geographically really large.

(00:26:37):

It may not make

(00:26:38):

really good economic sense to share certain services.

(00:26:42):

So I do think some of it’s happening already,

(00:26:49):

and it’s not probably going to be a statewide solution.

(00:26:53):

well they i mean i i’ll be curious to see what’s in the governor’s bill but based

(00:26:57):

on some of the things she’s proposed in the past i wouldn’t be surprised to see

(00:27:01):

let’s say we’ve seen different ideas floated about let’s say freezing property

(00:27:06):

taxes for seniors who are on fixed incomes which i do understand the logic of that

(00:27:11):

but then we’re in a state with an aging population especially some of these smaller

(00:27:16):

cities or counties have an aging population

(00:27:18):

I mean,

(00:27:19):

how are they going to continue to provide any services at all if such a large part

(00:27:25):

of their constituency’s property tax is frozen?

(00:27:28):

So anyway,

(00:27:29):

I think they may just end up doing something smaller and trying to make it sound

(00:27:35):

like a bigger deal than it is.

(00:27:36):

And I should mention,

(00:27:38):

Kathie,

(00:27:39):

I think you brought this up,

(00:27:41):

but maybe property tax homeowners won’t really see this.

(00:27:45):

That is one thing that House Democrats did in their proposal,

(00:27:49):

that they would provide a $1,000 rebate to homeowners that would go essentially

(00:27:56):

right away.

(00:27:56):

So that would be some kind of immediate relief.

(00:27:59):

I don’t know that the Republican majority would do something like that,

(00:28:03):

but if you’re trying to do some kind of

(00:28:06):

immediate help for people, clearly that’s the way to go, right?

(00:28:09):

If you’re going to, if you’re going to, but you’d have to backfill that.

(00:28:12):

And that’s hard to imagine that they’d want to do that in light of the budget situation.

(00:28:16):

Yeah, it’s hard to know where direct payments would come from.

(00:28:20):

You’ve got a, you do have a taxpayer relief fund.

(00:28:25):

that has money in it.

(00:28:28):

But, you know, most of the, I think most of that would be, you know, sort of temporary.

(00:28:34):

You wouldn’t be able to fund an ongoing program like,

(00:28:37):

you know,

(00:28:38):

a thousand bucks for every homeowner or 500 bucks for renters,

(00:28:42):

like the Democrats propose indefinitely.

(00:28:45):

So I do think that that’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a, it’s a creative idea.

(00:28:51):

And it’s one that,

(00:28:54):

definitely puts money in people’s pockets that they would actually notice.

(00:28:59):

But Democrats can propose these things without any fear of having to govern.

(00:29:07):

Like they couldn’t tell us what the cost was because it’s sort of irrelevant.

(00:29:11):

Yeah, they don’t have to balance the budget.

(00:29:12):

So they can propose these things without having to worry about how much it costs.

(00:29:16):

And if we’re gonna be 1.2,

(00:29:19):

1.3 billion short on the revenue side in this coming year,

(00:29:23):

and that is coming out of the remaining 4 billion or so left in the taxpayer relief

(00:29:28):

fund,

(00:29:29):

you can start doing the math that

(00:29:32):

That that fund isn’t going to last all that many more years at that rate.

(00:29:37):

John Muller,

(00:29:38):

who is one of my occasional guest authors at Bleeding Heartland,

(00:29:41):

who worked for the Legislative Services Agency in the 90s and was a revenue

(00:29:45):

estimator,

(00:29:45):

among other things.

(00:29:47):

And he has he wrote something after the December meeting of the Revenue Estimating

(00:29:52):

Conference,

(00:29:52):

basically that I was going to hit a wall around 2028 or 2029.

(00:29:58):

According to him.

(00:29:59):

And he does understand property taxes.

(00:30:02):

Yeah.

(00:30:03):

He’s who I go to when I have a question that I don’t understand.

(00:30:07):

And Republicans,

(00:30:08):

we should say,

(00:30:09):

are saying that they think about that time,

(00:30:12):

that’s when things are going to level out and these tax cuts are going to kind of

(00:30:16):

kick in and we’re going to see some growth because of that.

(00:30:18):

But

(00:30:20):

Those are some big numbers to try to estimate.

(00:30:22):

He’s got eight charts showing different types of data going back about 30 years

(00:30:27):

that cast doubt on some of those projections.

(00:30:31):

Maybe if all the states around Iowa weren’t also cutting taxes, we might see

(00:30:36):

you know, a competitive advantage from that.

(00:30:38):

But,

(00:30:38):

you know,

(00:30:39):

you look at,

(00:30:40):

you know,

(00:30:40):

what’s going on in Nebraska and Missouri and all of these states have cut taxes and

(00:30:45):

all of them,

(00:30:46):

believe it or not,

(00:30:47):

are facing tight budgets as a result.

(00:30:50):

And that’s bound to happen.

(00:30:52):

Kathie and Laura, good to catch up.

(00:30:54):

And we will undoubtedly see much of each other next week.

(00:30:58):

A busy week at the Iowa State Capitol building.

(00:31:02):

Thanks to all of you for joining us.

(00:31:04):

Our thanks to producer Spencer Dirks and to our music for this podcast far from

(00:31:11):

D’Artagnan Brown.

(00:31:12):

We appreciate all of you.

(00:31:14):

listening,

(00:31:14):

watching,

(00:31:15):

no matter how you consume this and those who have committed to sustain this podcast

(00:31:20):

each week.

(00:31:21):

We appreciate that as well.

(00:31:23):

Thanks to all of our colleagues at the Iowa Writers Collaborative for making this

(00:31:27):

podcast possible.

(00:31:28):

Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next week.

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