opinion

Iowa Republicans shouldn't stop sweating over water quality

Iowa lawmakers have finally decided to pour $282 million over a dozen years into water quality, but the politics of this issue won’t ebb away as quickly as some politicians on the ballot this fall may hope.

The Iowa House’s quick decision to drop its objections and conform to the bill approved last year by the Senate was hailed as a victory for Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Reynolds badly needed a significant legislative win in an election year that will be bookended by severe budget cuts and a partisan tax debate. Some GOP lawmakers also needed to have something to show their districts’ voters, particularly suburban women for whom water quality has become a top-tier issue.

But the final legislation, which awaits Reynolds’ expected signature, drew fire from environmental groups. The Iowa Environmental Council called it an “irresponsible use of taxpayer funds that gives no assurance of actually cleaning up our lakes and streams.”

Some agricultural groups were also disappointed. “It’s nibbling around the edges of what’s truly needed,” Kirk Leeds, CEO of the Iowa Soybean Association, said in a news release. “While some additional funding continues to point us in the right direction, it doesn’t get us too much further down the road in achieving the kind of results we all know are attainable and necessary.”

Republican leaders, including Reynolds, have vowed to keep working on water quality legislation. Indeed, Senate floor manager Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, says he expects to move bills yet this year to expand access to water quality funds to industries and certain water treatment facilities.

More: After years-long debate, water quality legislation is headed to the governor

The big question is whether this legislative fix will satisfy Iowa voters. Just a year ago, the Register’s Iowa Poll showed a majority of Iowans were willing to pay more in sales taxes to pay for improved water quality.

A coalition that supports raising the sales tax for the trust fund released its own poll this year. It found 69 percent of Iowans are in favor of a sales tax increase for water quality. That included 83 percent of suburban Iowa voters; 73 percent of female voters; 71 percent of voters aged 65 or older, and 75 percent of voters aged 18-34.

Those numbers should scare House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow silly. He won his 2016 race by just 3.2 percentage points over a female opponent, Jennifer Konfrst, who is running again in 2018. Election results in other states, including the Alabama Senate race, suggest more women are motivated to vote.

A three-eighths cent sales tax increase would generate more than $110 million a year for water quality. The Iowa Nutrient Reduction Plan estimated it will require $4 billion to $6 billion to fully address. Advocates for the trust, which include Republicans as well as Democrats, argue the sales tax is the only way to make real progress using a sustainable source of money. It’s a generational solution to this long-term problem.

Editorial: On water quality, Gov. Reynolds should keep asking

That argument could gain urgency as voters start learning more about the effects of the $50-plus million in spending cuts lawmakers are considering for the current budget year. More than $19 million comes from state universities and the Iowa Board of Regents, making a tuition increase a certainty for students and their families.

The water quality legislation siphons money from the general fund by diverting money from an existing tax on metered drinking water. For the next 12 years, which is the life of this bill, that money won’t be available for schools, health care, or any other priority. A future legislature could decide that’s not acceptable, and take the money back. That couldn’t happen with the natural resources trust, which is constitutionally protected.

If lawmakers raised the sales tax slightly more than 3/8 cents, they could also create a sustainable source of money to address mental health. Nearly two-thirds of Iowans disapprove of how lawmakers were handling that issue, according to a Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll taken in December.

House Minority Leader Mark Smith, D-Marshalltown, argued this year against any sales tax increase, saying it’s a regressive tax that disproportionately affects the poor. Lawmakers could mitigate that concern through the upcoming debate on income taxes. Some legislators are already looking for ways to capture more sales tax revenue from internet sales.

Democrats can be expected, however, to join some House Republicans in making the case that the final water quality bill lacks accountability. That case already includes two years of budget cuts because of unexpected revenue shortfalls, a trouble-plagued Medicaid managed care system, Senate Republicans’ $1.75 million sexual harassment settlement and the recent misappropriation of money from the Iowa Communications Network.

Republican Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, accused his own GOP leadership of caving to political interests rather than holding out for more robust legislation that included a monitoring program.

“I don’t know about all of you, but I did not come down here to check a box. And just because water quality, the words water quality are in the title of a bill does not make me proud to vote for it so that I can put it on a postcard when I go campaign,” Baltimore said on the House floor last week.

Critics of the water quality legislation will have a hard time explaining their concerns on a postcard, however. That’s why voters who care about this issue need to make their argument to lawmakers now, while the Legislature is still in session.

There is still time to improve Iowa's chances of having clean water, but it won't happen if we let candidates gush that they've fixed the problem.