State Senator Jesse Green, Legislative Review, March 06, 2026

Today our guest on the program, State Senator Jesse Green joining us and thanks Senator for taking some time to stop and visit. Hey thanks for having me. We had a good rain, we'll go for that. Spring is here. Is it? Yeah well, it will be in a couple weeks.

I don't want to push it here, that groundhog, you never know what he might do to us. Anyway, we've seen a lot of other things too but yeah definitely with the dry conditions across the state it's been nice to see some precipitation starting to come in.

Don't know if I wanted to have strong thunderstorms this early though but yeah we'll take what we've got. That's the other side of it, yeah everybody's ready to move on from there. Well the legislative session continues to move forward, it's been very busy.

You've had a lot of activity going on, you've been out on the floor a bunch. I get a chance to see some of the different things that are coming up each day and I know that your name shows up there. Well you've got a lot, several of you have your names out there.

We've got a lot of bills that are moving along. Yeah so we're trying to get our senate files out as quickly as possible. Once the first funnel week is over the goal is to get your senate files over to the house quickly as possible so they can consider them.

If it doesn't have a companion bill then the time clock is ticking and here in a couple weeks those senate files will be dead if they don't pass the house committee.

So we've been working hard on that and so a couple bills that came out of the senate that I ran personally was in regards to concurrent enrollment.

And so we just got done with the day supplemental aid conversation and once that got over with I was able to think about and work with local superintendents on other ideas that they wanted done and concurrent enrollment is one of those issues that they all agreed needed to be changed.

What you're seeing is the uptick of high school students that are taking concurrent enrollment classes that either are not ready for it or maybe they don't take them seriously and then if they fail the class and the school is on the hook for those expenses.

So all my bills did is give the superintendent the power to control the mode of how a student takes classes.

Maybe they're not a good online student and the superintendent knows it so he takes it in person or let's say the superintendent is paying a teacher in person to teach and it's only half full then he's paying a concurrent enrollment class to be taken online for a student.

Well then he's double paying for that class and that's fiscally irresponsible.

So hopefully we get those across the finish line and those bills came directly from our superintendents and then I'm sure on the debate list you saw some other bills in regards to civics education and some of those.

I was going to say that for those that listeners that don't quite understand the concurrent one is those that are taking a, in most cases for us, the community college courses.

Yeah and of course here in Boone with the community college in town you see probably more of a higher percentage of students that take concurrent enrollment because of that dynamic and relationship with Des Moines area community college.

So and again this is basically to give those superintendents a little more control. Most of the students that are going they don't have a problem with performing well.

No but you're seeing an increase of students that maybe are not taking it as seriously as they should and so one of the bills was to allow schools to charge the student or family for the tuition if they feel it's necessary. Well we'll see how that one plays out.

You did do some on civics again that's when and we know that schools already talked about that.

They've actually done some trial civics tests already to see how well their students are prepared so but that's something else that is coming along but you had a couple other things tied to it.

Yeah so last year was the civics test where every student in order to get diploma needs at least pass the U.S. immigration test that immigrants need to take. This year's initiative was to one broaden the requirements.

There is a little bit of difference in opinion between the house and the senate of how much we should broaden those requirements.

But at the very least seventh and eighth grade I think needs to have some broader requirements and hopefully someday here within a couple years have another assessment for seventh and eighth grade civics.

But the one I did get across over to the house this past week was a civics seal program recognizing students that go over and beyond average when it comes to civics participation in their testing and so there's about 16 states I think that have a program like that and I think that's appropriate for here in Iowa.

So just give them some recognition they perform extremely well.

Yeah yeah just a little reward there and another one that's specific to our senate district is a reorganization incentive so since the 1995 I believe was first year we instituted this we provide an incentives for schools to hold grade share and explore efficiencies if they look to work with other schools and then let's say they decide to reorganize that we provide some property tax relief for that transition and in 2024 those that expired it needs to be renewed every 10 years and every since then I've been I've been working towards let's renew that because Guthrie Center and Adair Casey schools are in the middle of reorganizing they want those incentives.

It would cost the state about two and a half three million dollars there's about six schools that would would qualify or utilize those and for one of those schools being in my district I think it's important that we need to do that and get some get some money back into our district because they're expecting it.

Yeah I kind of looked at that one this as well and it did show a little bit of the history that when it first started and it's not a massive amount but it's for those districts that are would like to use that as a tool and I think over the years it's probably been you had like five in the first first 10 years or something like that or in the first five years and then maybe five or six at again the the second segment that they showed but yeah I saw it was on there.

Yeah and so so one uh imagine a scenario where sometimes when you're reorganizing it's because one school is in a very terrible fiscal situation and so uh for the the school that's in a healthier fiscal situation sometimes kind of hard for them to justify well why should we accept their debts or burdens and stuff like this well this this helps alleviate that concern.

So we're working on that still live everything.

Yep it's still live but there is concern about the price tag but honestly when if we're sitting or negotiating between para educators and and reorganizations incentives and stuff I think there's a compromise that could be made here to maybe maybe pull back a little bit on the para educator because that's one time funding every year that we renew it was never meant to be an ongoing thing so we'll see how negotiations go.

Okay what else you got happening Well in regards to schools issues cybersecurity is a thing that that keeps coming up to me larger school districts are paying for their own such a cybersecurity.

You're seeing an increase in threats and attacks on schools it costs anywhere from three to five million dollars to rectify those situations when security has been breached and data has been taken.

So to me to establish a cybersecurity program would help out small rural schools that maybe don't have the funds as the larger schools have so that's another school issue I'm working on.

Another one is the charter school bill it's to there's some stuff that needed to be cleaned up for example teacher salary supplement funds if a student goes to a school those funds stay with the school that they left and to me that doesn't make any sense that was meant to support every public school student and all charter schools are public schools all charter school teachers are public school educators so I think those funds belong there.

Also some charter school students cannot participate in public sports or let's say they don't have a basketball program or whatever I want them to be able to participate in sports and so that's another thing that the bill does.

Probably the largest education issue that came up this week was the bachelor degree program that the house passed over that was a big initiative of Taylor Collins who's been a real strong leader on reforms in higher education and I think he's done his homework as to how to alleviate the concerns of the private colleges and other the regions for example and so there's the only community colleges that be able to participate in providing bachelor degree programs would be those that are at least 50 miles away or further from another school is providing those programs and so I think it's very common sense I think there's only four community colleges that would qualify for this and one of them would be Iowa Central so I'm going to take a little deeper look at this and see.

I didn't see Iowa Central but I saw Iowa Lakes. I know well that's the pilot program he was talking about or is that well are we talking about the same piece of legislation here?

I think we are because Iowa Central just texted me this morning saying they want it so yeah okay yeah I know that Southwest Creston was one but I said they had council bluffs or like Westin I'm going wait a minute there's schools there so maybe last minute they had a negotiation to change the language of the bill but that's bills evolve but they are talking about putting out a pilot kind of program to just let's see let's offer three and see what happens and go from there yeah so we'll see I know I understood the argument about well we don't really have a desert but then you start going well let's apply how many miles people have to travel for it so yeah all right so good we're getting there slow and sure those some of the other things where there's some other bills that were of interest that you uh you saw coming through that I mean these are specifically a lot of ones you worked because you you sit up your while you had that education part of it so yeah uh well so uh on the floor we pass out a bill in regards to open enrollment you're seeing a higher level of truancy issues with kids that are maybe struggling in school and then their families opt to put them online in a different district well then uh a lot of times superintendents can see through that and see that they're just trying to avoid education altogether so we kind of button that up in the senate this past week but in regards to education issues that kind of sums up uh the 30 000 foot view of what's been on my mind I was going to say a lot of these things that are going through people don't realize a bit you're seeing uh uh you know 42 to five kind of votes or you're seeing you know a 48 no yeah kind of things there's a lot of things like that are going through right now just uh moving along and a lot of it is just cleaning cleaning up a lot of language and stuff yeah a lot of people don't realize that 90 of bills are bipartisan you only hear about the controversial ones and so it's it's uh right now it's a lot of non-con bills probably the most uh at least that i've worked on um there's some language that i i cleaned up in regards to binary triggers and and firearms so like in in iowa there was some ambiguity in code whether or not you could uh sell binary triggers uh in the state of iowa and so i was able to get that language cleaned up uh so that was down party lines for the most part a bill like that um but but yeah so then another education is 90 of bills are education related as well uh one thing that i was really happy that we passed out was an elective program for junior firefighters and so you hear across the state a lack of uh volunteers volunteer firefighters so here would be a way to teach kids and plant that seed that maybe this would be a path for them in the future good just get that started too i know those are some of the challenges they're trying to recruit them or at least locally you know we've had a couple uh new internships out of the uh hedge program so that that's uh it's nice when they have that opportunity for but we know that yeah volunteer fire departments uh do struggle to maintain uh let's i do know of course you're on ways and means and one of the things we talked about early on was that you were watching closely on the budget because uh what's what's happening revenue estimating conference put out their numbers in december that the governor has to use for her budget legislature tends to wait till the march numbers come out which will be next week and uh so far uh seems to be in the ballpark i think i can't i don't it doesn't appear there's going to be any big changes or big swings but i know those are things you're looking at yeah sure uh so as chair of education budget sub-approps uh i don't get a target until this last rec number uh so then i'll be able to start negotiating my budget but uh it looks to be uh we anticipate that it's going to be pretty similar to the december number and if that's the case you're going to see um uh some you know my budget kind of aligned with the governors in in a lot of ways but um there there'll be some differences between me and her i i would like to put more of an emphasis just like i talked about in reorganization incentives and uh teacher loan forgiveness programs uh you know she she might give a little more to the regents and then uh what i would like but for the most part we're going to align quite a bit on those issues but in regards to taxes uh of course uh that's the other side of the equation and when we're talking about property tax reform um i am happy that it seems to be a broad consensus that we're not going to be shifting uh property tax burden onto the general fund and of course when we're in this environment with the rec and our economy and stuff like that it's pretty hard to justify that unless you're talking about some sort of tax increase but um that is the one big difference in the senate bill with the the taxes is we do have some revenue triggers not to necessarily shift it onto the state budget but uh for example local option sales tax option for counties and cities to utilize to help with their budgets but that would be voted on by them and then also there is a gas tax provision within uh the senate's property tax bill but we all know that secondary roads is a high expense for rural iowa and so to me that that's a way to alleviate uh some of that pressure that rural iowa faces that urban districts do not yeah and that was well the last time that we did the uh gas tax increase at 10 cent that was one of the one of the big issues that came up was uh how do we force or push most of that into rural iowa as compared to having most of the votes coming out of the out of the urban distance yeah i mean just similar today as back then uh bridges are a big topic and and uh it takes money to fix that and we have great infrastructure when it comes to transportation for our farm products but it also takes requires maintenance and so i think there's a an opportunity here to help address two issues in one keep doing that again the property tax side of it and and we knew going in was not going to be an easy was not going to be easy and it's one of those where we do know that there's different ideas out there uh different things people pick different parts of the things that how hard is it to take a look at an overall uh picture like what kind of impact that might have i know when they talk about well education is not going to be included in this uh in this version of this property tax bill but it might be but it you know and are we going to have limits on growth and things like that yeah so i mean you gotta you gotta identify what what the broad agreement is on certain things and and the governor and the house are aligned quite a bit on most categories the one thing that i think is unique to the governor's bill that i do agree with is she establishes a grant program to help incentivize consolidation of services and that's not mandated from us that that's for local governments to decide uh what they can long-term sustain for consolidation i mean a classic example is law enforcement where from a 30 000th of you we see that we do have a higher than average law enforcement presence in the state of iowa and of course if you're a local official running for office that'd be political suicide to say you want to cut your law enforcement but uh that's where the state i think needs to come in and provide incentives to help foster those conversations in a healthy way but um but the the other thing that's uh similar in all three bills and i'm still grappling with this is the senior exemptions there's there's an effort in all three bills to help alleviate the pressure on senior citizens in iowa but when you're talking about broad property tax reform i think you have to talk about broadening your tax base and and so when we're talking about exemptions and stuff like that i get a little nervous on on that um we've done a lot for senior citizens in the last few years we got rid of the inheritance income tax or the and also the um the retirement income tax i mean yep and so um i uh so i i'm still there's a lot of things out there aren't there i'm still wrestling with that and and my my own personal opinion on whether or not we should be uh broadening those exemptions for senior citizens but we'll see how negotiations take place but uh the other thing that's unique to the governor's idea is the county positions uh so uh there is some talk out there about eliminating uh trustees township trustees and i have concerns about that i don't think that's been driven by the governor but uh i'm not sure who's been driving that conversation but to me that's a little bit concerning to me because rural iowa township trustees are very important when it comes to defense disputes and and taking care of uh cemeteries and stuff and so i think some people legislators in urban iowa don't understand the the the purpose of a township trustee but the governor uh she did propose in a ruffles and feathers about uh making the auditor recorder and treasurer non-elected positions um and so you get we got to remember she was a county treasurer and she's been on the road for the last year doing property tax uh roundtables and so uh before i throw the governor under the bus on whatever proposals are i i think we need to seriously consider some of those but the one position that i have personally is i do think the auditor position needs to stay in elected position because that's a check uh potential check and balance on the on the supervisors but i do see uh when it comes to the treasurer and recorder uh why are those partisan positions and and so i i see some of the merit behind that conversation somebody started that a long time ago well elective well i do those are just some of the things going on are you feeling pretty well one thing i didn't ask you notice was uh where things going with uh imminent domain yeah uh so uh the philosophy in the from the senate leadership would be to broaden the corridor we were one of three states to have a two-mile notice corridor um so if you're talking about property rights and and trying to have voluntary easements uh why would you limit yourself to a two-mile corridor so to help uh get us uh uh out of this debate and and i think that is a logical piece to this puzzle that we need to pass then it becomes uh an issue the house's theme is is no imminent domain for carbon pipelines and and so we have to respect that can we marry those two issues together and that's yet to be uh seen the one thing that i i do like to remind people is that the house did pass out a couple years ago a 90 voluntary threshold of voluntary easements before imminent domain can be used um to me that's uh a little bit common sense the farm bureau brought that up as well so it's got support there and that is uh it just establishes that carbon should be treated differently than the other utilities and have a higher standard i think there's some common sense behind that and so it doesn't eliminate eminent domain altogether but it it almost almost does and so um i think there's a compromise that can be made there well we've got that's still going to be one are you do you think you're going to be hanging around towards the end of the session with that again i i don't want to hold you when it comes to weather predictions uh i'm not very good so uh again a lot of the things that are going to get right down to some negotiation and stuff like that uh the property tax uh what's going to come out of there still pretty much up in the air i know that's why i i do i do understand why local governments are concerned um but uh when it comes to the two percent cap and i call it a soft cap because i think there's mechanisms in place to help alleviate those uh budgets but but anyway let's say it is two percent cap there's 39 counties in 115 cities that have been able to stay under that two percent uh cap and so it can be done um now maybe at the end of the day it's going to be negotiated to three percent and that number is going to change i think as negotiations go but um i do i do sympathize with that because uh uh anytime you have a cap uh if you have a pothole in your city uh some elected official is going to blame the city or the state for that and i don't want to be on the hook for every pothole is in the state of iowa but um the one thing i other thing i do sympathize and i've been trying to have this conversation is is insurance is outside of everybody's control those premiums and so whether it's school funding or or city or county funding i i think it's interesting that insurance always gets brought up well our insurance goes up 10 a year how can you cap us at two percent um revenue growth if if uh if that and so um i think that needs to be a separate conversation i i i'm thinking about trying to propose like a task force to come back with uh recommendations on how we can as a state can holistically um take care of some of that problem i think there is a problem there's lack of competition and and um it continually comes up not not only for the city's schools county as well but your homeowners we're seeing uh sizable increases as well and again i'm sorry but we have to ratios things like that that have created some real problems and someone's going to pay you know how to run someone's going to pay for it so well though i again plenty going on now gotta let you throw in a quick invite uh you get you chad expect you to be at the library on monday morning yep monday morning at uh i believe it's nine o'clock um and we're going to extend it another half hour uh so i think an hour and a half is just right uh at the other forums that i've been at as well as to the amount of questions and allows good healthy conversations so so far it's been well attended um they uh some people are concerned why why is it on a monday morning well some people like it on a monday morning and some people don't so you can't make everybody happy just like government policy that's where chamber put it um but uh but if you do want to come to one of my other forums uh please reach out i've got forums and on saturday mornings and in Guthrie county or parry there's going to be one in a couple weeks fort dodge and and so there's plenty of options and and you can always reach out to me and just call me too so state senator jesse green a guest on our program today thanks so much for joining us thanks for having me