As momentum builds for a measure to increase Iowa's gas tax to pay for the state's roads and bridges, a taxpayer-advocate group is one of the lone voices opposing the plan.

Lindsay McQuarry, policy director for Iowans for Tax Relief - a Muscatine-based not-for-profit that supports reduced state-government spending and lower taxes - said her group won't be alone for long.

"It is an uphill battle, but it's something that Iowans are going to be outraged by once this picks up steam," McQuarry said. "I don't think this is something that has the support that the special-interest groups would like to lead people to believe."

A proposal before the legislature would have the Iowa Department of Transportation find $50 million in savings for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The plan would then increase the gas tax by 8 cents a gallon over the next two years, starting in 2013. It would also increase registration fees for new vehicles from 5 percent to 6 percent of the purchase price. The increase would generate about $180 million a year when fully implemented, lawmakers said.

Iowa business leaders on January 17 urged lawmakers to be bold and reduce commercial property taxes so the state can be more competitive, while local-government officials warned the loss of revenue would increase tax rates for homeowners.

"This problem we all acknowledge exists," said longtime Des Moines developer and property manager Jim Conlin, founder and CEO of Conlin Properties - which manages 7,000 residential units and 250,000 square feet of commercial, retail, and industrial space.

"I respect and appreciate your wrestling with it, but we've been wrestling with it for 35 years. It's time to make a decision," Conlin said. "I think we need a bold approach to create jobs, to move the state forward."

Iowa's commercial property taxes are among the highest in the nation. Conlin said the high taxes affect about 80 percent of the population, including people who rent and those who work inside commercial buildings.

Meaningful education reform is always fraught with political peril. By definition, it challenges the status quo. There are also disparate vested interests - from teacher unions to parents to school administrators, districts, and boards. Depending on the approach, reform can be onerous on schools, teachers, or taxpayers (or all three). And, of course, children and their futures are at stake, and by extension so is the long-term health of the state itself.

So education reform is inherently difficult. Consensus education-reform is even more challenging, but that hasn't stopped the administration of Iowa Governor Terry Branstad from trying. Even with Democrats controlling the state Senate, the Republican governor is trying to get his 26-element education-reform package through the legislature this year.

The final proposal was unveiled January 6, and the draft legislation followed on January 11. It has three thrusts: "great teachers and leaders," "high expectations and fair measures," and "innovation." In broad terms, the proposal aims to: improve the quality of classroom teachers (increasing selectivity, allowing nontraditional pathways into the teaching profession, and giving school districts more flexibility in personnel decisions); evaluate student progress more consistently and add new requirements - such as third-grade reading proficiency and end-of-course exams for high-school students; and remove barriers to new educational approaches. (See sidebar.)

Jason E. Glass, the director of the Iowa Department of Education, told the River Cities' Reader last week that some education-reform efforts add too many requirements without the funding to meet them. Others increase funding without accountability. "With this proposal, we're trying to get to the right balance of pressures and supports," he said.

As a businessman, David Greenspon owns four buildings in the Des Moines metro area and says he pays more than $387,000 a year in property taxes.

"They're expensive," said Greenspon, president of Competitive Edge Inc. in Urbandale, which manufactures promotional products. "When you pay a lot of tax, somebody else is paying it. It's going to cost my customers; it's going to cost me profits that I could put into hiring people."

Greenspon said he loves Iowa and has been in business here for 29 years. But he said the high taxes discourage businesses from locating in Iowa when they can find lower taxes elsewhere.

Employees are also affected. Greenspon said he's had a "relatively tight control on wages" for the past three years and hasn't been able to give the kind of pay raises, profit-sharing, and 401(k) contributions that he would have liked.

"I've got 150-plus employees," he said. "If you take a quarter-million dollars and give it back to me, I would distribute a big chunk of that in bonus checks. They'd have more money to spend, and their lives would be better."

Governor Terry Branstad and the Iowa legislature on January 9 renewed efforts to overhaul the state's property-tax system. If they can do it, it will be the first time in more than 30 years that property taxes have been reformed in the Hawkeye State.

It was an Iowa-caucus night that came down to the wire, with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum running neck-and-neck for first place in the first official contest leading up to the Republican presidential nomination.

At 1:36 a.m. Wednesday, the Republican Party of Iowa declared Romney the winner by just eight votes over Santorum, the dark-horse candidate who ran his campaign on a shoestring budget. With all of the state's 1,774 precincts reporting, Romney received 30,015 votes to Santorum's 30,007; both men received 25 percent of the vote.

Texas U.S. Representative Ron Paul finished third with 21 percent of the vote, followed by former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (13 percent), Texas Governor Rick Perry (10 percent), and Minnesota U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (5 percent).

Since 1972, no candidate who has finished worse than third in Iowa has gone on to win a major-party presidential nomination. Bachmann dropped out of the race on Wednesday after her sixth-place finish.

In a move intended to bring evangelical voters behind a single candidate, Iowa social-conservative leaders on December 20 endorsed former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

"I believe he is ready for a January 3 surprise," Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the Family Leader - which opposes gay marriage and abortion - said of Santorum. "Hopefully, this gives him a stamp of credibility that some people are waiting for."

Governor Terry Branstad and Iowa lawmakers will have $6.25 billion in state revenue to work with for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget, and state law allows them to spend up to 99 percent of that amount.

That's $251.3 million, or 4.2 percent, more than what's available in the current fiscal year, but only a slight uptick from previous projections.

"Very little has changed in the national or the Iowa economy" since October, said Holly Lyons, director of the fiscal services division of the Legislative Services Agency - the nonpartisan support arm of the legislature.

Iowa business groups, undeterred by the lack of success this year in getting state lawmakers to lower property taxes, will make the issue a top priority once again in the 2012 legislative session.

The Iowa Chamber Alliance, a nonpartisan coalition representing 16 chambers of commerce and economic-development groups statewide, on November 30 released its 2012 legislative priorities. Property-tax relief topped the list.

"The table is set for a substantive dialogue," said John Stineman, executive director of the Iowa Chamber Alliance. "All the right people are talking, and they're talking about the right things. We just have to make sure that at the end of the day, they can reach an agreement."

In the nation, Iowa has the second-highest urban commercial property taxes and rural commercial property taxes, according to the National Taxpayers Conference. Its 50-state property-tax study is often cited by Governor Terry Branstad.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was the only presidential candidate to receive straight "A"s in a report card on agricultural issues released November 30 by the Iowa Corn Growers Association.

While other GOP presidential candidates have called for phasing out federal energy tax credits, including those for ethanol, Gingrich has voiced his support for the corn-based fuel additive.

A law aimed at slashing the number of supervisors overseeing the work of Iowa state employees has never been fully implemented.

Lawmakers learned November 16 that Senate File 2088, the government reorganization bill signed into law in 2010, has languished because of a lack of feedback.

The law was designed to save the state money by finding efficiencies in government. It called for a "span of control," with a goal of one supervisor for every 15 workers.

But Jeff Panknen, chief operating officer for the Iowa Department of Administrative Services' Human Resources Enterprise, on November 16 told a panel of lawmakers that the Iowa Department of Management never gave feedback on a draft policy to implement the law in April 2010, so nothing was formalized.

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