It makes us nervous when legislators commit themselves to historic property tax reform. If they knew what they were doing, the taxes on our humble offices would not be shooting through the tin roof. Things could be barely worse until one party without opposition decides to improve our tax regime. It most often works out to the benefit of the donor class. It could be a mess for the rest.
Republicans are floating a proposal that would cap property tax revenue collection growth at 2% annually and eliminate assessment rollbacks designed to limit valuation inflation. The plan also would have the state assume about $400 million for education costs currently paid by property taxes by shifting tax credits, which makes us anxious. We don’t believe it will add up.
The state already is shrinking revenues because of relentless income tax cuts over the Branstad and Reynolds administrations. Reynolds said she wants to eliminate the income tax. The state will have to dip into cash reserves this year and next to balance the budget. Lord knows what we do the third year out.
We suspect that when the tax credit shuffle comes up short, the legislature will increase the sales tax to cover its school payments. Reynolds could adopt a fractional sales tax increase approved by voters in a constitutional amendment that could replace at least $400 million already devoted to natural resources and agriculture. Voters meant that the sales tax would be in addition to what was being spent when the amendment was approved several years ago. Voter intent is not in the amendment language. Reynolds previously expressed support for raising the sales tax to replace income taxes.
Sales taxes are regressive. The poor pay more of their income in consumption than the wealthy do.
There are other revenue sources, but a sales tax increase is quick and easy because working people have no vested interest or voice. It can be sold as an investment in clean water when it is actually a shell game.
We have been governed by Republicans while property taxes have gone out of control. Republicans control the statehouse which controls the schoolhouse, they control the courthouse, and have been pretty much in charge of city hall for years. The result has been poorer service (closed nursing homes, pathetic streets and roads, lousy mental health and child care access). Meanwhile, property taxes have exploded.
Forgive us if we are skeptical of how they intend to fund education going forward or what they will do to Medicaid funding. In order to cut income and property taxes services must be curtailed.
Legislators say they will proceed with due deliberation to hear it out. That really means they aren’t sure of what they are doing, which is what got us into this property tax dilemma in the first place.
There is a real solution.
We recall a time when Republicans were fiscally conservative. They should elect conservatives who don’t blow money on mindless litigation, like the Buena Vista County Board of Supervisors and Storm Lake City Council are. Real conservatives would not let the Storm Lake Marina, owned and operated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, fall into disrepair and decay. Real conservatives celebrate diverse competition, not shielding the agri-industrial oligopoly from its public costs. We should elect real conservatives. We don’t know many anymore. H.R. Gross is long dead, and Berkley Bedell was tighter with a dollar than most Iowa legislators today. Officers in small towns and counties are pulling down six-figure incomes while the rest of us toil for half that or worse.
Second, we did not have a 76% increase in our property tax bill when we had divided government. When Democrats controlled at least one lever of government — the House, the Senate or the governor’s office — and Republicans controlled the other levers, we had a more sustainable government. Checks were built in. Now, we have a one-party government that cannot control itself. That is a big reason we do not trust any property tax “reform” rammed through by one party alone, and that is what is happening.
The full effects of this bill will be felt after the 2026 gubernatorial election.
None of the impacts will fall on the Republican donor class. The costs will be levied on the working class as they have been. If we could restore political balance and impose some common sense, our property taxes would be lower without passing a law that could make things worse.
There’s a stiff wind blowing out of Know-Nothing Land that makes siting renewable energy projects harder: That the flutter and flicker of wind turbines can make you crazy (they don’t, but social media actually can drive you crazy), that wind farms kill geese (then why is our Lake Trail so often covered in goose droppings?) or that solar arrays are not compatible with agriculture (livestock have no problem grazing around them).
So it is useful that the non-partisan Center for Rural Affairs asked community leaders in Howard County, Iowa (Cresco) how wind energy is working out for them. Turbines sprouted in 2008. Today, 150 turbines crank out $2.7 million in tax revenue to the county, or 15% of total revenues. Since 2010, a special fund set aside for revenues from wind energy has provided $24 million to replace deficient bridges ahead of schedule and improve other local infrastructure. The local Farm Bureau president said farmers appreciate the royalties.
Over half Iowa’s electricity comes from renewable sources. This is a good business to be in: low operating costs with almost endless demand as data centers come in search of water and cheap electricity. It’s the future, and we are in a perfect position to profit from it thanks to bipartisan foresight more than three decades ago when state law demanded that renewables be part of utility portfolios. When the utilities figured out how profitable renewables could be, they dropped their opposition to the law. Buena Vista and surrounding counties have benefited longer and with many more turbines than Howard County. It is of great benefit to small rural school districts like Ridge View and Pocahontas. It is even better that solar arrays are being planned around Fonda. The more the merrier.
(Consider that even with wind energy property tax payments, our property taxes are still out of control, and Ridge View is having a terrible time with transportation costs. Think how bad it could be were it not for those wind turbines along Buffalo Ridge.)
Fresh off an infection in Sac County, another case of bird flu cropped up in a Buena Vista County pullet house. Some 400,000 hens were destroyed. That makes nearly 6 million birds lost in Buena Vista County since 2022. The cases just keep coming, including 70 human infections nationwide.
Government authorities continue to preach biosecurity and that’s about it. Every poultry producer in Iowa is acutely aware of the need for biosecurity. We still get dead birds. Back in 2015 it wasn’t hitting the backyard flocks so much. Now it is. It spreads to the confinements. To the unprotected workers. It doesn’t go away. At least, it hasn’t.
We have become inured to the idea of destroying millions of birds every week. It has become a cost of doing business, millions of dead birds and indemnity payments to producers.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations this week suggested that we should start vaccinating livestock. We have had the vaccines in hand for 10 years but have been held up because of fears of losing export markets for chicken meat. A recommendation from the FAO would be a kiss of death with the Trump Administration, which is decommissioning anything meant to monitor and prevent pandemics. Just this week, the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy was shut down.
Meantime, Savage Cat Food was recalled over fear of bird flu contamination. A deadlier avian flu virus not seen since 2017 broke out in a Mississippi operation with 47,000 broilers. This strain of the flu has a 40% mortality rate in humans, according to Reuters.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a $1 billion response plan, half of which will be used to buy foreign eggs to control price increases, and the other half on boosting biosecurity. She is opening the door to the notion of vaccination.
Clearly, biosecurity isn’t cutting it. We need more serious medical interventions to stop the needless destruction of birds, to protect the human and pet food supply, and to protect the health of livestock workers. We cannot treat this as a management issue. It is a public heath threat that dictates a more serious response from the government and industry. We cannot continue to indemnify against such staggering losses, and we certainly cannot afford another Covid-like human pandemic.
We have heard nothing in the three weeks since Rollins announced her bird flu action plan, except for more reports of massive poultry losses and higher prices in the grocery store. President Trump could take control with a responsible bird flu program if producers pressed him to do so.
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