Bond package concludes 2009 session

The best thing about the 2009 Legislative session?

The adjournment, according to the state senator and state representative serving Spencer and the Iowa Great Lakes.

"The winners are the Iowa taxpayers because we're now out of session," said Assistant Republican Leader David Johnson. "We can't do any more damage than we already did."

That damage, the senator from Ocheyedan says, includes the highest appropriation of state spending in the 136-year history of the state. The general fund spending came in at $6.3 billion, according to his numbers.

He and state Rep. Mike May point to a "$890 million" bonding package passed in the session's closing hours. The House adjourned at about 5 a.m. Sunday. The final gavel fell in the Senate about an hour later.

Associated Press writer Mike Glover puts the bonding package at closer to $830 million: The package includes bonding of $650 million, but lawmakers had already given the Board of Regents authority to issue $115 million in bonds, most of it for work at the University of Iowa.

That makes total borrowing of $765 million, and the overall package grew past $800 million because it transfers $65 million in state funding from elsewhere in the budget, according to Glover.

May said bond repayment will take $50 million out of the state budget annually.

"We're building a huge deficit for 2011 and 2012 -- one that cannot be filled with the revenue we have and without drastic cuts," the Spirit Lake Republican said. "We put it off for a year. We built a bigger budget and we put off paying the piper, but we will have to do that next year."

Gov. Chet Culver and majority Democrats declared victory at the session's conclusion.

"The 2009 legislative session will be remembered as one where Iowans met challenges head-on, and won," the governor said. "This was a year when we took control of our own destiny with big ideas and bold leadership to benefit all of Iowa."

He called his I-JOBS initiative -- a $715 million portion of the bonding plan for flood recovery and state infrastructure repairs -- a highlight of the 2009 session. He said the program will help communities take important steps in mitigating floods, investing in Iowa's public infrastructure, and creating jobs.

The governor also painted a starkly contrasting portrait of the state's fiscal position in his statement after the session.

"Even in the midst of this national economic recession, we continued to practice good, sound, disciplined fiscal management," Culver said. "We not only passed a balanced budget -- without raising taxes -- but also kept $450 million in our cash reserves, one of the highest levels in our state's history."

Johnson said lawmakers will be be faced with a $900 million gap between revenues and spending when they return next January work on the fiscal year 2011 budget.

"We are on a collision course for either massive program cuts or massive tax increases," Johnson said.

Culver and the local lawmakers agreed on improvements to Iowa's sex offender monitoring laws. The governor called it a tougher, smarter way of dealing with the issue. Johnson called it "probably the best piece of bipartisan legislation that came out of the session."

"There are significant changes in the sex offender law and they were changes that needed to be done," Johnson said.

The measure establishes a 1-2-3 tier system and overhauls a state law banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of places children gather. It would instead prohibit offenders from being in those facilities without prior approval.

Under the new law, only the worst offenders, in tier 3, would still be subject to the 2,000-foot living restrictions. They also would also be subject to the Iowa Sex Offender Registry requirements for life. The registry status for lesser offenders would be allowed to expire in 10 or 20 years, depending on the nature of their offense.

"It was something strongly supported by (Clay County) Sheriff (Randy) Krukow and it was unanimously approved in the Senate and overwhelmingly approved in the House," Johnson said.

The senator also was encouraged that voters will consider a change in the constitution to establish a fund for soil conservation, water quality, fish and wildlife habitat and parks and trails in 2010.

Many Democrats wanted to overhaul the state's income tax system, but plans to eliminate federal deductibility on state income tax forms drew a large and vocal crowd to the capitol during the session. May said the measure was cloaked as tax reform, but he characterized it as a huge tax increase for Iowans within three years.

"You could have found folks in every tax bracket that would have paid more taxes as a result of losing federal deductibility," he said.

Majority Democrats unsuccessfully floated a series of labor-backed measures as well. Some of the efforts would have required workers to pay union fees if they benefit from union negotiations. Other measures would give unions a greater advantage in collective bargaining and change a workers' compensation law considered the third-best for employers in the nation, according to Johnson.

"The last few days in session, the halls of the rotunda were just filled with union representatives, talking to individual senators and representatives trying to push their agenda," the senator said.

A prevailing wage law would have established an artificial wage, which could have added 10 to 15 percent to the cost of public projects, according to May.

"There were several pieces of legislation out there that were very much anti-business, anti-growth," he said.

Republicans stopped those measures, but encountered roadblocks of their own on the issue of same-sex marriages.

On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court Iowa unanimously upheld a lower-court ruling, which rejected a state law restricting marriage to a union between a man and woman. Conservative lawmakers couldn't gather enough support for a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment. The amendment would have allowed the voters of Iowa to determine the issue of same-sex marriage

"I've certainly had more e-mail on the court's decision than I've had on any other issue the entire time I've been in the Iowa Legislature and folks are angry," May said. "They are angry that seven people can determine the future look of Iowa. They are angry that seven people can determine the definition of marriage. They don't believe seven people should be able to redefine marriage. They're very angry, I think, that the majority party would not let any discussion of this issue take place on the Iowa House floor. They simply thwarted our attempts to bring this to the floor for discussion."

May said the citizens of Iowa have only two options to address the Iowa Supreme Court decision:

"One of them is, they can vote in 2010, to have a constitutional convention," he said. "That's on the ballot every decade, so it will be on the ballot next year. The folks would get to vote on one. Then the Legislature would have to put together delegates to go to that. We could rewrite our constitution, again, to define marriage more clearly.

The other option, May said, is to "change some of the people who wouldn't allow this discussion to take place on the Iowa House floor."

Democrats hold a 56-44 majority in the House and a 32-18 edge in the Senate. Only six Republicans are up for re-election in the Iowa Senate, compared to 16 Democrats in 2010. All 100 House members will be on the 2010 ballot.

"And people across the state are angry with their government -- no matter what party you come from," Johnson said. "It will be a very interesting election in 2010."