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.

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.

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.

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.