By Beacon Staff
Republican State Sen. Tim Goodwin, Republican State Rep. David Kerr, and Democrat State Rep. Dennis Cohoon recently shared their thoughts on Gov. Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State Address.
The three spoke during the Eggs and Issues virtual forum hosted by the Greater Burlington Partnership on Saturday, Jan. 15 and tackled a number of issues such as workforce recruitment, housing, and infrastructure. Many of those topics were covered in the governor’s speech on Jan. 11, in which she laid out her 2022 agenda.
Reynolds proposed Iowans pay a 4-percent flat income tax rate with no tax on retirement income. Her speech also included a cut in taxes, cuts to the state’s unemployment system, and $1,000 retention bonuses for teachers, law enforcement, and correctional officers.
She also proposed scholarships to allow parents to pay for their students to attend private schools. Reynolds spoke about the need to increase transparency for parents concerned about the materials available to their students at school and accused some school administrators of pushing their worldview onto students. Specifically, she took issue with books that “contain vulgar and sexually explicit material.”
“These books are so explicit they’d be X-rated if they were movies,” she stated.
Goodwin said Reynold's speech was spot-on.
“Her leadership has put our state in a great position, and there is a lot of momentum going for her re-election campaign,” he said.
Kerr also thought it was a strong speech.
“I believe the governor has laid out an aggressive agenda to look at it. We haven’t got all the details on all the tax cuts she proposed. I believe there will be more coming on that. The devil is in the details. But I think we are in a great position as a state,” he said.
Cohoon had a more mixed view of the governor’s speech. While he was happy to hear about eliminating the tax on pensions, as well as additional recruitment to stem the worker shortage and health care apprenticeships, he was not pleased by the flat tax rate of 4 percent.
“The biggest problem I have with that is that it’s really going to benefit the higher income more than the lower- and middle-income people,” he said.
Cohoon also took issue with the way the governor spoke about education and teachers instructing students with X-rated materials. But there was good to be taken away from the speech too, he said.
“The good news is, the state is in good shape financially,” he said.