Uncertainty surrounding a newly created $60-million tax-relief fund and few safeguards on how the state taxpayer dollars will be used opens up the potential for misuse, state lawmakers say.

House Ways & Means Chair Tom Sands (R-Wapello) told IowaPolitics.com last month that among 100 Iowa House members, 50 Iowa Senate members and the governor, there are probably 151 different ideas on how to use the $60 million that will go into the Taxpayers Trust Fund this year.

Lawmakers are struggling with how to transform Iowa’s 99-county system for providing mental-health services into a more uniform, statewide network. The underfunded system presently leaves thousands waiting for services.

“Those are the people probably suffering the most right now,” said Margaret Stout, who for 25 years was executive director of Iowa’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a not-for-profit that provides mental-health education, advocacy, and support.

Iowa’s adult-mental-health system provided services to 52,059 people last fiscal year, according to the Iowa State Association of Counties. Underfunding leaves thousands more without needed services. The system has an anticipated $51.4-million shortfall in Fiscal Year 2013, according to the state’s Legislative Services Agency.

The chair of one of Iowa’s powerful tax-writing committees said March 19 that allowing certain local projects to keep their own sales-tax revenue – rather than sending the money to the state – is a slippery slope.

“I think it’s a very dangerous road to go down,” Iowa House Ways & Means Chair Tom Sands (R-Wapello), told IowaPolitics.com. “The state started down that road just a little bit with the racetrack, and now, here are two other proposals that are coming off of that. So the next question is: Where will this end?”

In 2005, lawmakers and the governor first used this economic-development tool to bring NASCAR to Iowa. Then-Governor Tom Vilsack signed a law that paved the way for construction of the Iowa Speedway in Newton by allowing the racetrack to keep $12.5 million of its own future sales-tax revenue.

An Iowa policy group warned then that the Newton project would encourage other cities to seek similar subsidies from state funds. The group, it appears, was right.

The Iowa Supreme Court on March 16 said Iowa Governor Terry Branstad’s item-veto of a bill intended to keep Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) field offices open was unconstitutional.

“Simply stated, the legislature appropriated funds to IWD with strings attached, and our constitution does not permit the governor to cut the strings and spend the money differently,” said the opinion authored by Justice Thomas Waterman, who was appointed by Branstad in February 2011.

However, it does not appear that the ruling would lead to the re-opening of the 36 field offices, which helped unemployed Iowans find jobs, write résumés, and prepare for interviews.

Prospects for bills that would ban red-light cameras and increase Iowa’s gas tax are dimming as state lawmakers work to pare down their workload in the final month of session.

March 16 is the Iowa legislature’s second “funnel” deadline, when bills must clear one chamber and a committee of the opposite chamber to remain alive. The 2012 legislative session is scheduled to end April 17.

Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha) said March 8 that a bill that would ban red-light and speed cameras in Iowa as of July 1 does not have the 51 votes to pass the Iowa House. Seven Iowa cities use the cameras to issue traffic tickets of up to $200 for speeding or running red lights. “My understanding is it’s short of the votes,” Paulsen said.