opinion

Republican lawmakers' power play punishes Iowa college students

Republicans in the Iowa House completed a power play against Iowa State University and the University of Iowa this week, cutting their budgets an extra $2.8 million for the current fiscal year in a fit of pique.

That adds up to $11 million for state universities out of the $35.5 million that lawmakers are requiring state agencies to cut in the remaining 15 weeks of the budget year. The total hit to Regents institutions combined with last year tops $20 million.

The extra budget cut allowed the House to compromise with the Senate on the total defunding package. But Rep. Pat Grassley, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, made it clear the ax fell on Iowa State and Iowa because he wanted to punish them.

Their terrible transgression? Not collecting sales tax at university book stores. The Gazette broke the story last week.

“And I look at that as a perfect example of the Legislature having expectations of the Regents, them not cooperating with every other Main Street business when it comes to collecting things that aren’t education related,” Grassley said.

He said he believes the two schools sold about $70 million in merchandise without collecting sales tax. “Now, some of that is probably educational. But that decision that they made without the authority of the Legislature was a reduction in revenue coming into the state,” he said.

Some of it was "probably educational"? At a university book store where students spend thousands each year on textbooks and equipment for their classes? Yes, they also buy sweatshirts and gifts that probably should be taxed. But if they didn’t buy those things on campus, they would order them online and probably not pay sales tax anyway.

This isn’t about money. It’s about Republican lawmakers’ contempt for the Board of Regents and state universities that they consider bastions for overpaid liberals. They can’t control the Regents, except through confirmation votes. So they use state appropriations as punishment.

More: Three issues Iowa lawmakers can't afford to screw up in 2018

Yes, I’m an Iowa State graduate and a university donor and I teach one journalism class a year as a lecturer. But that’s not why I care about this. Any effect on my pocketbook will be negligible. I don’t teach for the money; I do it to give back and share my experience with the next generation.

The problem is that the punishment will fall mainly on students. Remember them? These are the people who will have to pay higher tuition and perhaps take on more debt because Iowa’s elected officials can’t seem to manage the budget. They may not be able to get into the classes they need because faculty jobs are left vacant.

These are the young, skilled workers this state needs to fill tens of thousands of jobs that will be vacated by retiring baby boomers. Iowa needs to persuade college graduates to stay in Iowa and encourage out-of-state students to make their homes here. The future of the state depends on it.

But why would a graduating senior want to stay in a state where the Legislature balances the budgets on their backs and scapegoats them over petty arguments? The U.S. News ranking of Iowa as the No. 1 state in the nation is old news to students and parents who are trying to scrape up dollars they did not expect to have to spend on tuition.

One of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ top priorities for this legislative session was the expansion of skilled-worker training programs. Lawmakers this week celebrated the unanimous passage of the Future Ready Iowa bill in the Senate; the House passed it 98-0 last week. It’s both a political victory for the Republican governor and a sound, bipartisan strategy aimed at the state’s most pressing barrier to economic growth.

There was no money in House File 2458; lawmakers said there will be $3 million for next year and $18 million for the following year in separate legislation. Meanwhile, however, lawmakers cut $500,000 from community colleges — the primary educators for skilled-trade jobs — for the current budget year.

The Republican majority wants to make room in the budget for a juicy corporate tax cut on top of the individual income-tax reductions that Reynolds proposed. But instead of protecting and encouraging the future workers that Iowa companies will need to expand and grow, they throw tantrums that will result in increased student debt and likely a faster exodus of young grads.

Obradovich: Iowa's fixer-upper tax code remains behind closed doors

Rep. Chris Hall, D-Sioux City, had this to say during the budget debate about how the Republican majority is doing its job: “They have been governing from an ideology of power in which they are making cuts without necessarily thinking about the consequences that they will have.”

That sums it up pretty well.