Even someone who last took a biology class 30 years ago can tell you once something’s dead, it can’t be killed a second time.
I am sorry to break the news, but the Iowa Environmental Protection and Outdoor Recreation is dead, as a doornail. It’s been sitting empty nearly 15 years after voters created it. And empty it will remain.
I hate to be so cynical. But it’s true.
Republicans who run the Statehouse won’t raise the sales tax and fill the trust fund. Democrats, when they still had some power, didn’t push to fill the fund, either. It’s popular with Iowans, except state leaders.
So I shrugged the other day when some Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment deleting the trust fund from the Constitution where 63% of Iowa voters put it in 2010. It would be replaced by a property tax relief fund.
The Iowa Farm Bureau, which opposed the trust fund in 2010, loves the new idea. The large insurance company with a farming club hearts property tax cuts and loathes any expansion of outdoor recreation. Iowa land should be farmed, river to river.
Seventeen Senate Republicans cosponsored the bill, which you’ll note is not the 26 needed to pass it. House Republicans showed no enthusiasm whatsoever.
That’s good news. I think the trust fund should remain in the Constitution as a monument to broken promises and misplaced priorities. It will be a nice compliment to our deteriorating parks and our dirty water.
Over the years, I’ve become more wary of using regressive sales taxes largely collected in urban centers to pay for pollution created by rural landowners.
But I’ve become more supportive of the outdoor recreation portion of the fund. This state needs better parks, wildlife habitat and more opportunities to escape to the great outdoors. The COVID pandemic spawned record use of state parks as Iowans found safety and enjoyment in wide-open spaces.
But all we’ve seen in the last 15 years are a few convoluted plans to fill the fund while also cutting other taxes.
Gov. Kim Reynolds used her 2020 Condition of the State speech to unveil her “Invest in Iowa Act.”
A portion of a sales tax increase would have filled the trust fund with the rest used to reduce income taxes. Instead of providing $171 million annually in new funding, $88 million would have replaced existing funding.
The water quality bucks would have gone to the same old strictly voluntary programs. Outdoor recreation spending would have been commanded by the Iowa Economic Development Authority. And it would have funded a limited, prescribed list of recreational purposes.
So, it was a bad bill. And before it got any worse, the pandemic hit and Reynolds shelved the plan for good. A clean bill to raise the sales tax and spend the money as the original trust fund architects intended is unlikely.
Like so many of our conservation and environmental wishes, we’ll just have to sit on an eroded stream bank near a giant hog confinement and wait — for nothing.
But with this Legislature crushing people’s civil rights, ruining universities and protecting Bayer from glyphosate cancer lawsuits, I doubt anyone will notice.
www.thegazette.com
I am sorry to break the news, but the Iowa Environmental Protection and Outdoor Recreation is dead, as a doornail. It’s been sitting empty nearly 15 years after voters created it. And empty it will remain.
I hate to be so cynical. But it’s true.
Republicans who run the Statehouse won’t raise the sales tax and fill the trust fund. Democrats, when they still had some power, didn’t push to fill the fund, either. It’s popular with Iowans, except state leaders.
So I shrugged the other day when some Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment deleting the trust fund from the Constitution where 63% of Iowa voters put it in 2010. It would be replaced by a property tax relief fund.
The Iowa Farm Bureau, which opposed the trust fund in 2010, loves the new idea. The large insurance company with a farming club hearts property tax cuts and loathes any expansion of outdoor recreation. Iowa land should be farmed, river to river.
Seventeen Senate Republicans cosponsored the bill, which you’ll note is not the 26 needed to pass it. House Republicans showed no enthusiasm whatsoever.
That’s good news. I think the trust fund should remain in the Constitution as a monument to broken promises and misplaced priorities. It will be a nice compliment to our deteriorating parks and our dirty water.
Over the years, I’ve become more wary of using regressive sales taxes largely collected in urban centers to pay for pollution created by rural landowners.
But I’ve become more supportive of the outdoor recreation portion of the fund. This state needs better parks, wildlife habitat and more opportunities to escape to the great outdoors. The COVID pandemic spawned record use of state parks as Iowans found safety and enjoyment in wide-open spaces.
But all we’ve seen in the last 15 years are a few convoluted plans to fill the fund while also cutting other taxes.
Gov. Kim Reynolds used her 2020 Condition of the State speech to unveil her “Invest in Iowa Act.”
A portion of a sales tax increase would have filled the trust fund with the rest used to reduce income taxes. Instead of providing $171 million annually in new funding, $88 million would have replaced existing funding.
The water quality bucks would have gone to the same old strictly voluntary programs. Outdoor recreation spending would have been commanded by the Iowa Economic Development Authority. And it would have funded a limited, prescribed list of recreational purposes.
So, it was a bad bill. And before it got any worse, the pandemic hit and Reynolds shelved the plan for good. A clean bill to raise the sales tax and spend the money as the original trust fund architects intended is unlikely.
Like so many of our conservation and environmental wishes, we’ll just have to sit on an eroded stream bank near a giant hog confinement and wait — for nothing.
But with this Legislature crushing people’s civil rights, ruining universities and protecting Bayer from glyphosate cancer lawsuits, I doubt anyone will notice.
Opinion: Iowa environmental trust fund remains dead
The Iowa Senate State Government Subcommittee discusses a resolution Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, that would replace the current Natural Resource …
www.thegazette.com
