Editorials: Wishing for better

We can hope for 2026. Be realistic, but good risings could be just over that horizon. Wish might be a better word than hope. We wish for your health and prosperity, for peace and friendship among neighbors, and for a productive civic conversation that fosters progress. It is not too much to ask.

We wish that Storm Lake and Buena Vista County could settle their differences, square up their accounts and step out of court. The city and county are enmeshed in a lawsuit over tax revenues meant for the city that the county mistakenly sent someplace else. The county’s refuses to do anything about it, and the city’s lawsuit is failing the taxpayers. The only parties profiting are the Des Moines lawyers and the bureaucrats. The taxpayers are covering their irresponsible court battle. We should not have to put up with this sort of hubris. The public might get an accounting if this goes to trial, and the incompetence could be fully explored. That would be good for the civic soul. It would be better if we saved the money and settled this thing. The county owes the city some money. Hire an accountant and figure it out. This mess is an embarrassment to the idea of transparent and accountable government. It should not go on beyond 2026 but it probably will, along with the fees.

These sorts of imbroglios are one reason that property taxes are shooting up. Public officials are loose with our money. Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican legislative leaders promise to do something about property taxes this year. They were too scared and confused last session. They are talking about a freeze. So far, Reynolds has not publicly discussed the details. She has hinted that local government services (that includes schools) must be curtailed. Several years of income tax cuts are shifting the burden to property taxes while accumulating a state budget deficit of more than $1 billion. We could wish that the legislature would reel back some of its profligate spending (for example, vouchers for K-12 private schools) and correct its overreach on income tax reduction for the wealthy and corporations. That would be unrealistic. Reynolds might finally try to make her move on increasing the state sales tax by one-eighth of a cent for natural resources, approved by voters in a constitutional amendment 15 years ago. She has talked about doing it for years but the idea went nowhere. This is an election year with few good revenue options. She could sell it as a natural resources improvement when it is a replacement of lost income tax revenue.

This should be the year that we do something to improve and protect Iowa water quality. We talk about it a lot but do nothing while the Raccoon River runs toxic.

Iowa also leads the nation in cancer, alongside Kentucky. This should be the year we figure out why. The governor put $1 million toward it last year, a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration stripped research funding that impacts the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. The fact that we do not know why Iowa is the only state with a rising cancer rate, or why Northwest Iowa is such a hotspot for breast and prostate cancer, speaks volumes about who controls our government — it’s not the poor people suffering with tumors, it’s the corporate donors. We wish Iowa would get serious this year about cancer. That requires a certain sort of honesty that can’t be purchased, which is a quaint notion in Trump Times.

Down deep, Iowans are generally an honest and pragmatic lot. That’s why we think the November midterm elections will swing us back to some better sense. Republicans are on course to nominate Randy Feenstra, our negligent congressman, for governor. It is Democrat Rob Sand’s dream opponent. A billion-dollar deficit bothers most of us. We would like to think it will be the undoing of this irresponsible state budgeting that cuts taxes for the sake of cutting taxes while increasing spending.

History and current polling suggest that the 2026 election will flip the US House to blue and perhaps even the Senate. Midterm elections are not kind to the party in power, and voters have been in a foul mood for several cycles expecting change. It should spell the end of Trump’s unrestricted power grab and put a check on his authoritarian instincts. Iowa will be better served with a congressional delegation split between the parties. Chuck Grassley might stay in the Senate until the glacier returns, so it is in our better interest to hedge our bets and elect a Democrat to the Senate. Having two Republican senators has not helped Iowa, considering our state economy is among the worst.

We should be better off after the midterm elections if we can regain some political balance. Local officials might finally realize that suing each other is not productive, and to come clean with the public. Elections can help with that, too. If you have ambitions, county officials haul down some good pay. Change can occur. We can hope, or at least wish.

Our buried treasure

Higher education has been under attack in Iowa, as we have detailed over the past couple years and weeks. No institution is more important to Storm Lake than Buena Vista University. It is an economic engine in the region, producing teachers and accountants and health sciences professionals. It also is an invaluable cultural center for the arts to athletics. It deserves our unbridled support.

Our state universities attract brilliant students and staff from around the world. We read just last week about Katie Colling, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the University of Iowa’s cancer biology program, won a big award for her research into uterine cancer. This builds our institutions. Colling comes to us from Missouri. We pray that she stays.

Likewise, a young man named John Vincent Atanasoff arrived in Ames to pursue a masters degree in mathematics. He joined the Iowa State faculty after earning his doctorate at Wisconsin. In Ames, he invented the digital computer. Somehow we lost him and lost out on being Silicon Prairie. The big one who got away …

Then there is Dr. Lisa Schulte Moore, a Wisconsin native who is the first from her family to graduate from college, who as a faculty member at Iowa State has done ground-saving research on how planting prairie strips preserves and enhances soil. She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Award for her research, which is of incalculable value as we discuss approaches to cleaning up our surface water. This directly benefits farmers and city dwellers alike. We benefit from her genius.

Grinnell College produced Robert Noyce, who gave us the computer chip and launched Intel. Noyce’s endowment of his alma mater attracts brilliant students in his tradition to small-town Iowa. Many of them stick. Grinnell is a target of legislators who hate scholarship. So is Drake, which produces lawyers and pharmacists across the state’s small towns. Retired Judge John Duffy went to Buena Vista and Drake.

Colleges are the perfect industry. Decent pay. Cheap entertainment on Saturdays. No pollution except for toilet paper occasionally in the trees. Students roll in to Iowa City from Chicago and pay full freight to be Hawkeyes. The hospital is first-rate for cardiac care and pediatric cancer. Iowa State has among the best agronomists in the world. We should rejoice that international students want to pay us for education.

Few states have the network of private and public colleges that Iowa does. It is a major sales point. Too bad it is such a popular sport to kick them around. It causes real damage. You end up losing the next Atanasoff and the things they create. 2026 should be the year we call off the hounds and recommit to rebuilding the stature of Iowa colleges and universities. They are our crown jewels but we treat them with contempt.