School funding, emergency medical services, workforce recruitment, abortion, the Invest in Iowa Act, and mental health services were some of the topics discussed Saturday at Washington’s legislative briefing. The briefing held by the Washington Chamber of Commerce had Senators Kevin Kinney and Rich Taylor and Representatives Jarad Klein and Joe Mitchell in attendance. Each legislator presented an update on their work in Des Moines and then answered questions from constituents.

Regarding the Invest in Iowa Act presented by Governor Kim Reynolds and how it funds mental health services and environmental efforts, Klein said, “But I will tell you I have some serious concerns about the legislation as it is currently written. The idea is to shift some of the tax burden to the state level when it comes to mental health, but at the same time the devil is kind of in the details on that. I’m not going to vote for something that sees an overall reduction in mental health funding, which is what it’s kind of looking like. But we’re going to work through that. We’ll see where we come down. That is a huge piece of legislation. Talking a one-penny increase, ⅜ for natural resource trust fund, the rest of it to mental health, far from done but that is getting a lot of discussion.”

After hearing from multiple people in the audience requesting more funding for schools, Taylor said, “I appreciate where you’re coming from with the 3%, 3.5%. I know that’s where you need to be, if I were the genie with the magic wand I’d make it 5%, get caught up with inflation for the past few years and then tie it to inflation from then on. And then we wouldn’t have as serious problems as what we’re facing it now. We do spend a lot on education, we should spend more. We spend an awful lot on tax credits, we should spend less. But it seems like we’re not willing to look at these tax credits we’re giving out to the big corporations. Some of them are warranted, some of them aren’t.” The House is looking at 2.5% allowable growth for state supplemental aid and the Senate is at 2.1%.

The next legislative briefing of the session in Washington is scheduled for March 21st.