State Senator Jesse Green, Legislative Review, May 01, 2026

On our program today, we are going to visit with State Senator Jesse Green and talk about the legislative session. Senator, thanks for taking some time to visit with us today. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for having me. I know that, yeah, we, I would have been saying, are we done yet? You got a lot of things that you're getting done here. A lot of appropriations bills going this week. I keep checking with the schedule what's going on the floor. You were busy earlier this week. You had that charter school bill. You talked about that the last time we visited the beginning of the month and finally got everything together and I got it out there for a vote and off to the governor. So I feel pretty good about that one. Yeah, so this is definitely the busiest time of the session. It's interesting that every single day, there's just so much action happening in the House and the Senate. A lot of bounce back bills. So sometimes it's kind of hard to keep track of the process of some of the bills because again, even a slight word adjustment in one chamber, it bounces it back to the other chambers. So, but, but yeah, the Charter School Bill, I've been working on that this session. It's the governor's, one of the governor's priorities and just to put a little context to this. In the last couple of years, we have established 10 new charter schools in Iowa. It might not sound like a lot, but that's, that's just in a period of two years. Charter schools are public schools. They have to accept all students. The beauty of a charter school is that they are able to be more flexible in how they do their curriculum and how they do their schedule, but they're held to a higher expectation. So if they break, if they break that contract of the state or those expectations, they are at risk of being closed and, and historically that's brought a lot of fear to people is that, is that one, one in four charter schools, historically a closed, that's not quite accurate. When you look at it, the last 10 years of charter schools, it's about a 3% closure rate. So over time, you know, the, the laws around charter schools and how they operate has been more tested and proven in other states. And so we've kind of built off that. So I, I'm really confident that the language that we have is, is going to do is Iowa's good, but just a little historical context. The first charter schools were established in the late 80s and early 90s in Philadelphia, Minnesota. And then also that was about the same time as our first voucher program, which was established in Milwaukee by a Democrat representative, Paul Williams. And so obviously the landscape of education has changed ever since. And so I kind of built off that in my, in my argument on the floor to set up what the bill actually does. And in this bill, there's over 10 different divisions. So this is the largest bill I've ever ran in my six years in the legislature and dealt with many different topics in regards to education and charter schools, whether, you know, who qualifies for IPERS, how many students can a homeschool family teach? Can you pay a homeschool private instructor tuition? You know, a lot of people didn't realize that we actually had some, some laws in place regarding homeschool students like that. But in the, in the charter school portion, the financial component that was controversial was that teacher salary supplement is the last categorical that doesn't follow the student to a charter school. And that's on average about $680, if I remember right. And that was designed to support the student's education by going towards teacher salaries. And so you got to ask yourself, why would that not follow the students? If a categorical that comes from the state supplemental aid and public schools say, you know, that belongs to the public school, even though the child leaves. But I stood very strong on that, that I believe that was supposed to follow the student to help that student. And then some of the opposition was like, well, in this bill, there's no mandatory minimum salary for a charter school teacher. So if this, if we're sending them this extra money from the state, why do we not establish a minimum salary for charter schools? And my argument is that all, all charter school schools are paying their teachers more than the state mandatory minimum. And so it's not necessary to establish that minimum. But the other thing to remember is that charter schools are in need of compete for these teachers, so that naturally is going to be hard for them to pay less than a traditional public school. But we want charter schools to be able to innovate and deliver different packages to teachers on benefits and stuff like that, that will attract those teachers to those schools. So that's kind of a broad overview of what the, the Charter School Bill did. The last controversial piece to that was that we established a revolving loan fund for charter schools. We don't, we didn't put any money towards that. That'll be determined at a later time. But the opposition said that that's risky to do that because the charter schools might close down and then maybe taxpayers would be put on the hook for that. But the reality is that the Iowa finance authority that oversees the revolving loan fund, they've, they've been working with loans and different projects for decades now, and I trust them to look at these situations and, and understand what, what a risky loan would be or, or what would it not be. So anyway, we got that done and, and it's off to the governor's desk. And I think one part I was going to ask you, the one part you had mentioned earlier was allowing those students that are in charter schools the eligibility for extracurricular activities in public schools. Yeah. So there was some debate about that, but I think we all understand that athletics is an important part to a child's education. And so last year we, we did the same thing for private schools that have a private school doesn't offer one of those extracurricular activities that they should be allowed to take part in a public school activity. And so I think that the same logic would apply to charter school students. And again, I just want to reiterate that charter school students are public school students. So I didn't think that was too big of a deal. The opposition tried to attach a fee, an additional fee to it so, so that the public schools weren't losing resources, additional resources for students that they don't have, but already in the bill there was some language in there that said that the charter school on the public school have to come to some sort of contractual agreement on fees and stuff like that, and that the charter school would be responsible for that. Yeah. Okay. Speaking of budgets, and because I know that's one of the areas we, we talked about coming into this final part, you know, we've got a lot of different things that are still going back and forth, some policy related items, but big, the bottom line is budgets and we've been doing a lot. And you guys passed out the, what I call the full education funding. So far, everybody talked about supplemental state aid. That's one thing, but there's a lot of other areas that you're responsible for. You're actually, you're that, you're that man. Yeah. Well, it is the largest sub appropriations committee. It's over a billion dollars. So that's, so it's an honor to be able to be responsible over that. It's a fairly simple committee though. It's not a lot of different mind items that take, for example, like health and human service budget, that that is by far the most complicated budget. And that's of course, a lot of money as well. So mine is a lot simpler. And the main conversation within mine is always going to be around regions and community colleges. But this year, I was only given 10.4 million additional dollars to work with. And so I had to be very careful of how I spent that 10.4. I could just willy-nilly be like, Hey, let's, let's shift 5 million to the regions and then let's shift the last 5.4 to community colleges. But I wanted to make sure I did my due diligence to reflect the desire of my district and the desire of the state as to how to spend those to 10.4 million dollars. And, and all year long, I think it's interesting that I hear from superintendents and in my constituents, their concern is always K through 12 primarily. And, and I've tried to do a good job to reflect that within my budget. So how I did that this year is with that 10.4 million, I renewed the reorganization incentives fund and very few people talk about that. But if you, if you have a small rural public school, you want some of those whole grade sharing dollars to help you enter into relationships with other schools to find efficiencies, to keep your schools open. That's one thing that that does. One thing that that does is it establishes the potential for future consolidation as well. And once you enter into that consolidation, this reorganization fund will help draw down on property tax or tax dollars and give a shot of money into those schools to help make it a smooth transition. So a lot of times what you see is one school will be very well off financially, and then another school will not be well off financially. And so the well off school is going to argue, well, why should we take on this, this reliability? And so this, this fund that we establish in my budget will help ensure a smoother transition. So that was 2.5 million. Then the, we expanded upon the Teach Iowa Scholar program, which is Teacher Loan Forgiveness. I'm really proud of that. Last year we expanded it by 40%. Then the main thing I did this year with that program is I put a priority on rural Iowa and within the bill it establishes what a rural Iowa school is. And so what it does is identifies that needs positions that we need to fill. And so this fund goes to help pay off those loans for those teachers on their tuition. Also, I was able to get through a new grant for cybersecurity. So one thing I've realized is that smaller K through 12 schools don't have the proper cybersecurity protections. And we're seeing an increase nationwide in these attacks. And so if a public school gets attacked, it could cost upwards to $5 million to help go back to normal and retrieve that information. And Des Moines Public School and Len Marr, they've gone through some problems with that and cybersecurity attackers will generally attack the larger schools. But now most of larger schools have the proper protection. So I do believe that the smaller schools are more vulnerable. So this grant goes to help those schools. But that's the community colleges again, did receive an increase. It's a 1.4% increase every year that I've been there, the community colleges get a higher percentage increase than anybody else in the education system. It seems like regardless of party, there's a, there's a healthier relationship and a more positive relationship with community colleges. Every legislator has a community college and, and we always feel that that's your best thing for your buck when it comes to higher education is to put, if you do have a few extra dollars to play with, put it towards community colleges. So, uh, Iowa State did get a win, uh, in this budget, not in the form of, of necessarily new dollars, but, uh, I, I condensed a few different mind items and buckets of money that they haven't been using. And I consulted and got rid of those buckets to allow Iowa State to spend those dollars, however they see fit. So in a roundabout way, they got an extra about $50 million to play with, uh, without me having to allocate funds to them. Okay. Free up, free up those buckets. Those are challenges. Yeah. People keep forgetting about those. They are out there all the time. So, uh, so pretty well, let's talk a little bit before I run out of time, because again, you are getting, uh, into the final days. You got some, uh, debate going on today. Uh, again, how's it look as you, uh, head towards the end here? Because I know there's still that property tax out there. Yeah. Well, real briefly, that is, that is the number one thing that's, uh, holding this up from getting out, um, the house and the Senate are quite a ways apart in our philosophies. The house wants a 2% across the board cap on all property taxes. Uh, we in the Senate feel that that's, uh, that's, uh, uh, a little, uh, unrealistic because of, um, uh, especially with 718 that was filed a few years ago. If you don't get rid of, uh, 718, house file, 718, and how that affects small governments, local governments, and you add this 2% across board cap, I think you'll literally see small communities, unincorporating and, uh, and counties taking them over. Um, it's just, it's just so unrealistic, especially when, uh, there's a lot of expenses that are outside the county's control, like insurance, pensions, and those, uh, ongoing obligations. So the Senate has a soft cap where we identify those expenses that, uh, are outside the control of local governments and we put them into a, uh, uncap levy. I said the main philosophical difference between the house and the Senate, the Senate also has, uh, consumption tax, uh, revenue, um, in, in ours. So, but it sounds like the house is not going to budge on that. They don't want that. So that's where we're at with that today. I'm going to run out, uh, I'm in charge of the legislative salary bill, which will be, uh, it'll hear controversial. I don't think it's controversial because we haven't seen a raise in, in since 2007 and, uh, I get the politics on this and why some people will be nervous about it, but I want to make sure that we do the right thing. And government is supposed to reflect, uh, its citizens and, uh, the working people of Iowa. And I think most people, when they step back and see the legislators make 25,000, uh, that makes it pretty hard to recruit, uh, working age Iowans into the legislature and so, um, uh, I'll be, I'll be doing my best to represent that bill and do what's appropriate. Uh, um, I don't want to give too much of an increase, but right now, the way the bill stands, it'd be a $12,000 increase to legislators, uh, and, uh, the same $12,000 increase for statewide. I'm sure the statewide officials are going to have problems with that. So, uh, as this, uh, goes through the legislative process, I'm sure those numbers might change. Okay. So that, that's coming up for you today, right? Yeah, that's coming up today to get out of committee and then hopefully the floor, uh, tomorrow, uh, it might be part of a larger negotiation package. Uh, in my personal opinion, if we can't deliver on property tax reform, I think, uh, I think it's a pretty hard pill for voters to swallow to give us a pay increase if we can't, uh, deliver on this property tax bill. Okay. Uh, anything else out there? I know there's a thing still coming over from the house side and I mean, this is fast. You guys are going back and forth as fast as you can without having a lot of your staff. Well, it's interesting, uh, time because, uh, a lot of legislators, uh, aren't able to come back because they're not getting paid. And so you're seeing, uh, yesterday, for example, in the Senate, we only had 27 Republican votes, so I could only lose two votes for, for example, on my education budget. And so that makes it a complicated, uh, you're right that, uh, we don't have our, our personal staff there. And so, uh, that makes it hard to, uh, respond emails and stuff. Uh, but, uh, it's, it's certainly, uh, a very interesting time with the legislature down there. And if some people are like, you know, why, why can't you guys finish on time? And reality is, I think the last time we did was in 2009 and this year we really tried hard to get out on time and inevitably here we are a week later. And, and we're still kind of buttoning things up, but, uh, I do think, uh, maybe this weekend we'll get out and, uh, uh, and, and wrap things up. Ooh, there we go. Folks, he's hoping for this week. It might be some all-nighters in there. Yeah. So usually every time I've been down there, it's always been an all-nighter, um, which, uh, it's kind of interesting. You'll, you'll hurry up and, and run a bill and then you'll wait four hours for the next bill. Yeah. Uh, it can be, it can be very, uh, um, hard to go through that. But one of my favorite memories was last year, uh, one of the senators brought up guitar out and, uh, within that four hours, we were playing music, both Democrats and Republicans and trying to kill the time while leadership was negotiating the last few bills. But, uh, uh, anyway, um, we'll, we'll do our best to get out on time and, and, uh, and we'll see what happens. All right. Uh, so, uh, getting back down there, a lot of work going today and over on the house side, I'm guessing the same kind of activity going on because when you do a budget bill, it's got to have, you know, comes from one chamber to the other back and forth, like, uh, like your education one billion down there. So, so today, uh, one, one last thing to keep, uh, on your radar is there is a large, uh, water quality bill is getting worked on. Uh, it hasn't been on my to do list, but I know that there's other legislators working on that. And so for how much work that has gone into that in the last few days, it wouldn't surprise me within one of those budgets. If we see some sort of, uh, water quality initiative. Okay. Well, uh, again, that's, uh, busy time. I know you're trying to get everything wrapped up as much as you can. Uh, we'll just keep our fingers crossed that, uh, you can get that done over the weekend or you and everybody else that's now in there, get it done over the weekend. I do appreciate you taking time visiting with us, getting us updated on what's happening. Thank you. Of course. Thank you, Jim.