Editorials: Talking small ball

Gov. Kim Reynolds took a small-bore approach to her Condition of the State address this week. The top issue identified by statehouse Republicans is property tax reform, which she barely noted. Its absence is interesting because it suggests that the GOP really doesn’t know what to do about ballooning property taxes. It happened under Reynolds’s watch.

Her main education proposal was to offer more personalized help for children struggling with math, short on the details, and banning student cellphone use.

The governor did not mention getting rid of the state income tax. It is one of her stated aspirations. Given revenue shortfalls from the new 3.8% flat tax and the necessity to dip into cash reserves in order for schools to get 2% allowable growth, we could understand if legislators might want to take a breath and see what happens. Maybe next year.

Reynolds is letting House Speaker Pat Grassley do most of the talking on taxes. It’s curious.

The governor has done enough damage to schools the past few years to take a breather. She is leaving that to the new Higher Education Committee that wants to do a proctology exam on colleges and universities.

The most noteworthy portion of the Reynolds’s address dealt with health care access, and Iowa’s startling cancer rates that lead the nation. She outlined a residency program at 14 Iowa hospitals to help recruit more physicians — residents often stay put for their practice. She also spoke of the need to generate more nurses and health care assistants. Reynolds suggested making Medicaid more flexible. These are urgent needs in rural Iowa.

Reynolds set aside $1 million for the Iowa Cancer Registry and the Department of Health and Human Services to study why Iowa leads the nation in cancer. It’s not enough. But it is a start at determining what’s wrong.

“Iowans don’t need more speculation. They need answers,” Reynolds said.

We couldn’t agree more.

Then she went on to urge more nuclear power, which makes us nervous. She trash-talked Illinois a bit. (If Iowa is so great, why did our daughters move to Chicago?) She wants more work for welfare. And she wants to cut unemployment taxes. Again, what about property taxes?

That is left to another discussion behind closed doors.

At least we’re talking out loud about cancer in Iowa. Please note: Although Iowa’s official drink is Busch Lite because the water might not be safe, beer alone does not cause breast cancer.

Quiet conversations

Precious few business leaders speak up for the least among us, in our midst. That would be immigrants, these days. A lonely voice was heard in a Des Moines Register article this week about how mass deportation will impact Iowa businesses. Larry Zimpleman, the retired CEO of Principal Financial Group, stood out for his comments.

“To be honest, I’m a little frustrated by that,” Zimpleman told The Register, about the silence from the corner office. “I’m still in touch with some of those business leaders... and what I hear is that they suggest that they are having conversations with legislative leaders about this issue, and they're making their views known, but they're consciously trying to keep kind of a low public profile around it and I don't know if that just kind of reflects the time we live in or what.”

They believe the threat will just go away if they have quiet conversations.

The story also noted that Storm Lake is majority “minority,” with about a third of the city population being Anglo. Mayor Mike Porsch told The Register that he wishes there were an easier way to document the undocumented. “It takes years and a lot of money,” Porsch said. “They’re just coming here for a better way of life.”

Let’s suppose that he speaks for the major employers, since they do not speak much for themselves.

Sen. Joni Ernst said Storm Lake has no cause for concern. She said Trump is only after the criminals. If you were truly serious about deporting the undocumented, as Trump promised he was, presumably you would start in a place with low-hanging fruit. Someplace like Storm Lake or Denison. Trump is not saying. Neither is Homeland Security Secretary nominee Kristi Noem of South Dakota. The Obama and Biden administrations were especially vigorous about deporting criminal aliens. The difference is that Trump promised to deport all undocumented immigrants, and that is a serious threat to Storm Lake’s and Iowa’s and South Dakota’s economies. It could put food into hyper-inflation. That is what business leaders do not want to talk about out loud. They voted for tax cuts and BS, not necessarily deporting the gardener or the invisible person milking the cow.