Condition of the State: Code Blue

For the ninth time, Gov. Kim Reynolds told us last week the condition of the state is strong.

Except we have the worst economy of the 50 states, and personal income growth was 48th last year, and Gov. Reynolds is consistently the least popular governor in the USA.

Property taxes are atrocious. Our bill shot up over 70% to $6,000 for our humble metal shed along Railroad Street. You can barely afford the water if you live in Storm Lake.

The Boone School Board silenced the orchestra and cut several teachng jobs that same week. A medical clinic in Ottumwa went belly up on meager reimbursement. The state has a billion-dollar deficit.

Strong is not the condition we describe. Reynolds is leading us into Code Blue.

She says she is going to do something grand on property taxes. Details are sketchy. Fifty million dollars to prevent cancer when we don’t know what is causing it? Why not? A new health delivery system based on lower government reimbursement. Been there, done that with nursing homes closing left and right.

Do not buy what she is selling.

Reynolds is not running for re-election. She will not have to live with the consequences when the hospital in Sac City shuts down under her “hub-and-spoke” health care delivery system. Someplace else is the hub, and Sac City is the spoke from which you drive an hour at age 85 to get basic health care. Remember the Newell Good Sam nursing home? How about the Albert City nursing home? Barely. Thanks, Kim Reynolds.

Whatever she suggests, run away from it. Bad news is bound to follow. She will be gone when the blowback hits.

Reynolds wants to limit property taxes by cutting local services, including education. When schools get pinched in Boone, Republicans feel it. Trump Country gets restless when the Ottumwa clinic is gone. This is the Kim Reynolds legacy.

The rest of the players may politely disregard her agenda. Speaker Pat Grassley has a House to keep. Randy Feenstra, or whoever the GOP nominates for governor, will drag the yoke of a contracting economy through the campaign. While Reynolds spoke, Democrat Rob Sand counted another $9.5 million in fresh campaign contributions. He has over $13 million to spend.

House and Senate Republicans would do well to disregard her ideas about property taxes. They’re ballooning because of her push to slash income taxes, and because Republicans larded valuation breaks on favored property classes like apartment complexes. Homeowners got sacked with the burden. Legislators have to do something. It would help if local officials didn’t burn tax money like drunken socialists — Storm Lake being example A, suing Buena Vista County over tax increment financing schemes that neither side can understand, much less manage.

Our condition is a hot mess, truth be told.

Sand sounds more fiscally conservative. He wants to undo the Medicaid “reform” that undid the nursing homes in Newell and Albert City because it wastes hundreds of millions of dollars. Insurance companies get richer. Senior citizens and their caretakers are left to fend for themselves.

It’s going to get worse. Rural hospitals are supposed to get a shot of cash up front in return for permanently lower Medicaid reimbursements. Reynolds would blow nearly $300 million of this federal money on permanently depriving rural areas of health care access. She talks about placing doctors in rural practice. Talk, talk, talk but how about delivering a baby in Fort Madison? Keep on talking. You could heat the Capitol with it.

Republicans should run real conservatives for office, not the big spenders we have in our courthouse. True conservatives would revolt over shipping our soil base down the river. They would scoff at the need to spend yet more state money on a so-called free speech center at the University of Iowa. They would say that we should fix our roads. Hwy. 7 is awful. So is Hwy. 10. Driving Storm Lake is unhealthy for your suspension.

The patient is not well. We need an alternative therapy.

Don’t spend more than you take in. Don’t cut income taxes while giving vouchers to private school families. Quit driving out obstetricians if you want to keep young families. Make people feel welcome, and the state will grow. Quit harassing Latinos and gays. Clean up the water by taxing fertilizer application, not by taxing households. Pretty obvious if you employ Iowa Common Sense.

Fortunately, Iowa is so naturally wealthy we can revive the moribund, pick up our mat and start fresh. We can restore rural communities if we quit consciously trying to disembowel them by defunding schools and health care while promoting more consolidation.

We have to quit listening to Gov. Reynolds. She has only accelerated our dive into the dumps, aided and abetted by a Republican legislature. What a relief that this was her final address after dragging us relentlessly backwards. Her speech was long and painful, reflecting her tenure. We can start recovery now.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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