Washington County District 1 Supervisor Jack Seward, Jr. (R) is speaking out against a state senate tax plan that would take mental health and disability funding out of local property taxes for a state funded system.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee has advanced Senate File 619, which has seen lobbied support from organizations including the Iowa School Counselors Association and Iowa Association of Area Agencies on Aging, and opposition from groups including the Iowa League of Cities and Iowa State Association of Counties. Seward is the vice chair of the Southeast Iowa Link (SEIL) Mental Health and Disabilities Governing Board, and he has been following this bill for several months, “I understand that the big trigger word in the Senate is property tax relief. There are a lot of people that, that’s all they care about, the property tax relief. And when they see them say, ‘Well mental health and disability services which in Washington County amounted to about $900,000, that’s a big reduction in your property tax.’ The unintended consequence of that, you take that line item for that amount of money, off of property taxes, that’s all wonderful, well and good in theory. But in actual practice we still have that much spending that has to come from somewhere.”

Seward says he’s reached out to area legislators seeking information on the proposed state funding mechanism but has seen little response. He says that the region began working on a per capita funding of $47.28 seven years ago, and currently they are at $42.60. If Senate File 619 would become law the rate would go down to $37, “We are not going to be able to sustain what we have right now. Jail diversion programs are likely going to go away, the drop-in centers are likely going to go away. We’re going to have cut resources available if this takes effect.”

Seward would be in favor of a mix of local and state funds to sustain services, such as raising the state sales tax by one cent, but overall he is a proponent of local buy-in for the SEIL region, which addresses needs that aren’t quite the same for metropolitan areas. The House Ways and Means Committee has advanced their own tax plan that doesn’t address mental health funding.