With the 2024 legislative session just days away, PRO Iowa 24* is making a few simple requests of our governor and legislators:
1.Gov Reynolds, comply with the law and save taxpayers money. In 2023 the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled you violated Iowa’s public records law, causing us citizens to fork over $174,000 in attorney’s fees to settle three lawsuits. During the time you’ve been lieutenant governor or governor, settling lawsuits has cost taxpayers more than $108 million, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Follow the rules, please!
2. Protect our elderly and dependent Iowans in nursing care facilities. Increase salaries of direct care staff and increase the number of inspectors. We don’t like being ranked 49th in the nation for the ratio of inspectors to care facilities.
3. Support rural public education and by doing so, support rural communities. Increase funding for public education. We don’t like ranking in the bottom half of states for the funding of public schools. The $107 million you allocated for non-public schools, resulting in a potential loss of $54 million in state aid for public schools, will lead to further erosion of the quality of our public schools. Remember that 62 percent of Iowans opposed the school choice law, according to the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.
4. Feed the 376,000 hungry Iowans. In 2022 you passed laws tightening rules for the SNAP program, making it harder for lower-income families to afford more nutritional food.
5. Understand that healthcare decisions between a woman and her doctor are exactly that, personal decisions that don’t involve legislators, bureaucrats or judges.
6. Understand, too, that parents should be able to determine the best healthcare for their children, even and especially when it concerns their sexual identity and mental well-being.
7. Instead of hoarding money so you can boast about a surplus, help families with the expense of childcare, which in some parts of Iowa is about $11,000 per year, per child. Working Iowans would gladly accept increases in childcare subsidies of $500 over the couple of hundred dollars in one-time tax cuts they may get under a Republican tax plan.
8. Invest state funds in cleaning up the sources of our drinking water. Enact meaningful laws to reverse the foot-dragging on the ill-named Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Re-fund the Leopold Center at Iowa State University to support demonstration projects on sustainable agriculture.
9. Finally, quit playing politics. Quit making decisions based on the source of your next campaign contribution. Make your decisions based on what’s best for all Iowans, particularly the oldest, the youngest, and the most vulnerable. Live up to the image we’ve created of Iowa as a place where all people can flourish.
Tori Riley of Jefferson, a founding member of *PRO Iowa 24, a group of concerned rural Iowans with progressive values from Greene, Guthrie, Boone, Story and Dallas counties
