By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)

The governor has another week to sign or veto the remaining bills passed by the 2024 Iowa legislature. She’s already approved a billion dollar tax cut and the state spending plans for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The $8.9 billion state budget is 4.2% higher than the current year’s spending level. The budget for the state’s court system includes a 5%salary increase for Iowa judges. The governor has signed bills that divert $10 million from Iowa’s Area Education Agencies to set up a new division in the Iowa Department of Education to oversee the AEAs. As many as 62 new state employees will be hired for the Division of Special Education.

The budget for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources includes a quarter of a million dollars to address accessibility issues at state parks.

The resolution of a disagreement between Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate means $5 million in state gambling taxes will be used to complete renovations of the Lucas State Office Building. The building, which opened in 1952, is east of the Iowa Capitol. The original plan House Republicans developed for spending gambling taxes did not include funding for the Lucas Building upgrades, while Senate Republicans suggested spending $10 million dollars on the building.

“We originally weren’t funding that project,” Representative Jacob Bossman, a Republican from Sioux City, said, “but are acknowledging this money is necessary to complete the DHHS merger and allow everybody to be housed under one roof.”

In 2022, lawmakers approved the governor’s plan to merge the Departments of Human Services and Public Health, but the agencies were housed in two different state office buildings. The Department of Health and Human Services is the largest agency in state government, with over 5000.

The Lucas building has six floors of office space and is named for Iowa’s first territorial governor, Robert Lucas.

By Dar Danielson (Radio Iowa)

The Board of Regents heard the first reading of proposed tuition increases for the three state schools and approved increases in room and board rates at their meeting today.

“The proposed based undergraduate resident tuition rates include a three-percent increase for the University of Iowa and for Iowa State University. The University of Northern Iowa has proposed a two percent increase for undergraduate residents,” Brad Berg from the Regents office explained the proposal. That amounts to a $270 increase at the UI and ISU, and  $168 dollars at UNI.

“This proposed annual tuition rate for next year is $9,286 at Iowa, $9,252 at Iowa State, and  $8,564 at Northern Iowa,” he says. They are also requesting a 3% increase in mandatory fees at UNI, a 2.5% increase at ISU, and 1.3% increase at the UI. The Board did not take any action on the tuition proposal. Berg says they will have the second an final reading of the proposed rates and will hear from students at their June meeting. The tuition increase comes after the Regents requested  $14.8 million more dollars in state funding and the Legislature approved a $12.3 million increase.

The Board took a final vote on the proposed increase room board rates. The rate for a double room at the University of Iowa is increasing by 4.8%, Iowa State University’s rate is going up 5.8% and there’s a 3.5% increase at the University of Northern Iowa.

By Dar Danielson (Radio Iowa)

The latest U-S Drought Monitor map of Iowa shows no red areas indicating extreme drought.

DNR Hydrologist Tim Hall says we’ve been seeing red for a long time. “The first time in almost two years that we’ve not had extreme drought somewhere in the state of Iowa,” Hall says. It is a big turnaround, but not all the color has washed out of the drought map. “We still have half the state are so impacted by drought conditions, but that area is shrinking all the time as we get these good rains,” he says.

Hall has continually said we need weekly rains every month to turn things around, and that’s the pattern we’re now in. “We’ve now had five out of the last seven months have had above normal precipitation and that’s exactly the recipe we wanted,” he says, “where you get month over month just above normal precipitation, and that’s what’s really helping us to get out of the drought,” Hall says.

He says depth of the drought is evident in the lack of any major flood issues. “Go back to this winter when we had all that snow in January that melted very quickly and we had no flooding. And we’ve now had a couple of above normal precipitation months, and yes, we got some flooding, but nothing even approaching a widespread or catastrophic flooding,” Hall Says. “So that really points to a couple of things, how dry the soil was, and the fact that the rain we have received has been fairly well spaced out.”

Half of the state’s annual rainfall usually comes in May through August, and Hall says if we are above normal in any of those months, we could go a long way toward pushing all the drought colors off the map.