Sorensen talks issues over coffee in Greenfield

Rep. Ray “Bubba” Sorensen was able to have an open conversation with a small group of constituents during a come-and-go legislative coffee Saturday, Feb. 15 at Olive Branch in Greenfield.

The legislative session gaveled in Monday, Jan. 13. Sorensen, a Republican from Greenfield, said in the last month, it has gotten up and running and is busy as usual.

Normally held in a forum setting, Sorensen said he wanted to switch the format of a few of his coffees this year.

“I definitely wanted to change up the forum format. The rest of the coffees will be a forum format, but I wanted to offer this where it’s just come and go,” Sorensen said. “People don’t always like to stand up in a crowd in a forum atmosphere to address questions because they don’t like to speak up in public. I wanted to offer a little less formal way of doing that.”

The first part of each session is focused on setting state supplemental aid (SSA), which is the state cost per pupil percent of growth for the next school year. The Iowa House passed a bill last Thursday which sets a 2.25% per-pupil funding increase alongside other funding changes for Iowa’s public K-12 schools, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. These changes include transportation equity payments and adding a one-time boost of $22.6 million for per-pupil costs.

The move sends the legislation back to the Senate, which proposed a 2% rate.

Iowa law calls for SSA to be set within 30 days after the session has began. That deadline passed Thursday.

“Education funding is dominating the topics, so that’s what I am hearing about, but there are thousands of bills dropping, so you can go in a million directions,” Sorensen said. “As we set SSA, that has implications with property taxes.”

Property taxes don’t get addressed until the end of session with ways and means and appropriations.

“I’m a little uncomfortable with how we’re having to do this because SSA has to be set within 30 days (we’re already a day or two passed that) and we’re still not in agreement with the Senate and the Governor. I don’t like how long that is taking, but we’re also going to have some very big property tax discussions,” Sorensen said. “People are mad their property taxes are high and the counties are griping because they don’t want us to do anything because their budgets are already pretty thin.”