April 25, 2000

Brent Siegrist
Speaker of the House
State Capitol Building
L O C A L

Dear Speaker Siegrist:

I hereby transmit House File 2502, an Act relating to fee-supported services provided by a county including the payment of county law enforcement salaries and expenses and providing applicability dates.

I am unable to approve House File 2502, and hereby transmit it to you in accordance with Article III, Section 16, of the Constitution of the State of Iowa.

House File 2502 provides that a county shall use general funds to pay for salary costs and expenses incurred in the performance of law enforcement responsibilities. This bill was introduced to specifically address the issue of uniform patrol expenditures. In recent years, some counties have moved away from covering all uniform patrol expenditures through the county general fund and have started to apportion costs associated with patrol in unincorporated areas to the county rural services fund. This bill would prohibit that apportionment from occurring.

For FY00, twelve counties have funded uniform patrol services for unincorporated areas from the rural services fund. There currently is litigation pending against two of those counties on the issue of whether those services can be funded through the rural services fund. It would be premature to make code changes before these cases have been resolved by the courts.

I am also concerned about the potential double taxation this bill would impose on some taxpayers. City residents could be paying for law enforcement through both the city budget and the county budget, thus paying twice for these services.

For the above reasons, I hereby respectfully disapprove House File 2502.

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Vilsack
Governor

TJV:jmc

cc: Secretary of the Senate
   Secretary of State

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Last update: WED Apr 26 2000
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