Senator Salmon visits Charles City

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

State Sen. Sandy Salmon (R-District 29) visited Charles City on Saturday, Jan. 25, for a town hall forum at the Floyd County Museum.

Starting her third year in the Iowa Senate, Salmon is the vice-chair of the veteran’s affairs committee, serves on the education committee, health and human services, state government committee, and now the appropriations committee.

“I get to work with a lot of numbers,” said Salmon.

With the new session just getting underway, Salmon ran down the highlights of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ agenda for the year, beginning with the budget.

“The 3.8% flat tax rate has taken effect for income tax,” said Salmon. “That’s kind of caused a little dip in the revenue, so to meet the budget and the priorities we’re going to be dipping into the surplus that we have.”

Salmon explained that tapping into the state’s surplus to make up for reductions in revenue has been part of the governor’s long-term plan to lower state income taxes, anticipating that the lower tax rate will eventually boost the economy enough to make up the difference.

“In the few years it will take to get to that place, we’ve accumulated a surplus in order to meet the budget demands,” she said.

For this year’s session, the Legislature will be focusing on property taxes.

“What it will consist of, I don’t know,” said Salmon. “It’s a little bit early to tell.”

Spending priorities for the year will continue to be for education, health care, and public safety, with Salmon noting a 2% increase in education spending and a $223 million increase in Medicaid to make up for a reduction in federal matching funds.

The state will also be paying back $40 million to the Economic Emergency Fund, which was heavily utilized in southern and northwest Iowa after last year’s natural disasters.

“It turns out that 2024 was big for tornados in the state of Iowa,” said Salmon. “There were 125 tornados that touched down in 2024. I think that’s quite a bit.”

Other priorities for the year will be establishing a task force to investigate new developments in nuclear energy, regulation on pharmacy managers, work requirements for Medicaid, a moratorium on gambling facilities, loan repayment programs for health care providers willing to work in Iowa for five years, prenatal development education for grade 7-12 students, and some form of cellphone policy for schools.

“She’s trying to balance that by allowing schools to implement their own particular policy, but she does want some kind of restriction on cellphone use during instruction time,” said Salmon.

Salmon also said that the Legislature wants to pass conscience protections for health care providers to ensure that they are able to carry out their jobs in accordance with their faith and prohibitions on health care providers from discriminating against people based on vaccination status of non-FDA approved vaccines.

Hands-free cellphone driving bills, ID verification for online pornography, election integrity, and a reduction in the governor’s emergency powers are also among the issues being looked at in Des Moines.

Opening up the floor to questions, Mayor Dean Andrews had strong opinions to share about the state Legislature’s intent to reduce property taxes, pointing out that it is cities and counties that will see their revenue decline as a result.

“Nobody likes to pay taxes,” said Andrews. “But everybody likes it when their loved one has a heart attack and the ambulance shows up. They like it when there’s eight inches of snow and somebody plows their streets. Cutting property taxes makes it so we can’t do those things.”

Andrews explained that the strain that property tax cuts put on city budgets ultimately result in a reduction of public services and amenities, which in turn negatively affects growth for communities.

“If we want people to come to Iowa to live here, we’ve got to have the amenities and things that they want,” said Andrews. “If we’re going to go barebones, we’re not going to have people that want to move to Iowa, even if the taxes are less.”

“I understand,” said Salmon. “So noted.”

Andrews expressed his approval of increases in Medicaid funding, as inadequate Medicaid reimbursement is said to be tied to the expense of AMR’s ambulance service, which has resulted in the city, county, and Floyd County Medical Center subsidizing AMR to keep the ambulance service in the area.

“We pay them $400,000 a year subsidy to provide ambulance service,” said Andrews. “Putting more money into Medicaid to have better compensation I think would be great.”

Andrews also expressed frustration with the 60% threshold needed to pass bond measures.

“60% is a landslide,” said Andrews. “51% is the majority so why should the majority not win?”

Salmon explained that the 60% threshold is there to ensure a strong base of majority support for a measure to pass.

“51% is pretty broad-based,” said Andrews. “It’s a problem being in the majority and having it lose.”

“So noted,” said Salmon.

On the school side of public entities, Charles City Schools Superintendent Brian Burnight asked Salmon to support a proposal in the Legislature to increase flexibility for the use of school management funds.

“I really wanted to say that’s a nice idea,” said Burnight.

Burnight also appreciated the proposed 2% increase in education funding, but suggested that more would allow the district to keep up with cost-of-living increases.

“Closer to 2.7 would really be a lot better,” said Burnight. “It would be a lot closer to what CPI (the Consumer Price Index) is coming in at. In Charles City our teachers really haven’t had a raise, with insurance changes last year, we haven’t had a raise in three years.”

Burnight noted that a 2.7% increase would also allow many districts in the state to avoid raising property taxes to continue operations.

Property taxes were also brought up by Erwin Johnson, an area farm owner who expressed support for property tax relief as the nature of property taxes and assessments means he may see his expenses go up even in years where his revenue goes down.

Johnson also spoke about his concerns about eminent domain, as his farm in particular has been approached about easements for power transmission lines, wind energy, and the CO2 pipeline.

“It’s almost like our property is a utility now,” said Johnson, who asked Salmon to support efforts that would prevent eminent domain from being used to facilitate such projects. “I’d like to ask you to support that effort to not deny us the opportunity to control the use of our own property.”

Salmon said she has introduced a bill on eminent domain, largely mirroring a similar bill that previously passed the House of Representatives.

“What it does is it requires a 90% voluntary signup in order to use the power of eminent domain for hazardous liquid pipelines,” said Salmon. “It also requires all the soil that gets disturbed to be all put back in place and any crop loss or yield loss would be reimbursed on a permanent basis.”

The impact that a CO2 pipeline would have on local aquifers was also brought up, with Salmon noting that her conversations with a DNR representative on that subject did not result in conclusive information.

“He said he didn’t know,” said Salmon. “That doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy.”