House Journal: Page 42: Tuesday, January 9, 1996

 productive in the land. These colleges will play a key role as
we restructure our workforce development programs.
We must stay on the course for economic development. Our
continuous improvement strategy to attract good-paying jobs is
working. Last year, we made progress by eliminating the property
tax on machinery and equipment. We cannot afford to stop there.
This session, we must reform our regulatory system to keep Iowa
on a course for growth and opportunity for the next 150 years.
We should also take new steps to improve our overall
competitiveness, helping both families and small businesses grow.
Iowans work hard all their lives to leave a family farm,
business, or other assets to their children. But for too many
Iowans, that dream is eroded by a state inheritance tax. We
should eliminate the inheritance tax among family members to
protect family farms and businesses and to keep more of our
citizens here in their retirement years.
We can help small business by giving them the same benefits our
tax structure offers to larger corporations. And, all Iowans
would be helped by fully indexing the state income tax rates.
We also need to reform our property tax system. The current
system is hopelessly complicated and archaic. There are 8,000
different jurisdictions that can levy property taxes and there
are numerous credits, many of which aren't fully funded. Over
the last 13 years, we have spent $900 million in property tax
relief, yet few Iowans have seen their property taxes go down.
We need to make it fairer, simpler, and less of a burden. It is
time to start fundamentally changing it with a top-to-bottom
review as we prepare for comprehensive reform next year.
To help control both spending and taxes, we should adopt the
Taxpayers Rights Amendment to the Iowa Constitution. The growth
of government should be limited to the rate of inflation and
increases in population unless it is approved by a vote of the
people.
As a state, we have learned some difficult lessons. In the past,
we became complacent and lost our competitive edge. We will not
let that happen again.
We also have a responsibility to see to it that all Iowa
communities have the opportunity to share in our economic
success. The New Jobs and Income Program, adopted just two years
ago, has generated $1.6 billion in capital investment and
created hundreds of quality jobs. We should make this tool
available to smaller projects in rural communities.
And let us never forget our economic backbone - agriculture. We
need to take full advantage of new opportunities which lie in
the area of value-added agriculture. The list of products made
from our agricultural commodities grows longer each year.
Ethanol processing now employs 12,000 Iowans and is responsible
for 11 percent of net farm income. The Asian market is hungry
for our food products, and we are preparing to intensify our
promotion of Iowa Quality Meats.
We must improve our farm cooperative laws and allow farmers to
have greater ownership and involvement in the value-added
processing industry. As we help our livestock producers meet new
challenges, we must also recognize the need to protect our rural
quality of life.
Education and economic development. That's what brought us
success and will make it last.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: House Journal (76th General Assembly: Session 2)

© 1996 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

Comments? hjourn@legis.iowa.gov.

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