But so long as state government denies forms of health care and casts suspicions on members of certain demographics, efforts to sell Iowa will have a ceiling.

Iowa doesn’t have enough people. Job openings are too hard to fill, particularly ones for medical professionals. Child care options are scarce enough that some people who would like to work or work more choose not to.

Gov. Kim Reynolds and her Republican colleagues in the Legislature note those problems accurately. On Tuesday, the governor proposed a few innovative investments and policies to attack them. But the state’s GOP leaders aren’t articulating the entire picture of why there’s a shortage of people who want to live and work here. Specifically, they aren’t looking in the mirror.

It was no surprise that the governor’s sales pitch for the state focused on tax reductions and national rankings while omitting mention of laws that make people feel unwelcome or even endangered in Iowa — people who fear whether they can find adequate care during pregnancy in light of a strict ban on abortions. People who could face scrutiny based on their appearance under harsh immigration laws. People who see the state formally labeling information about their or their family members’ sexual orientations and gender identities inappropriate for schoolchildren.

It is indisputable that the state’s aggressive income tax reductions make living here more attractive. Pumping money into rural recruitment problems and chipping away at preschool and child care burdens would make a positive difference, too.

But so long as state government denies forms of health care, casts suspicions on members of certain demographics, and refuses to take meaningful action to protect the state’s soil and water, those efforts to sell Iowa will have a ceiling.

More: Gov. Kim Reynolds peels back plans for DOGE, budget cuts, Medicaid in 1-on-1 interview

Policy ideas range from terrible to adequate

Many of Reynolds’ policy proposals during her annual address to lawmakers were less sweeping than the “flat tax” or “school choice” unveilings of previous years, but their potential impact on the state is still great. A few highlights, and lowlights, deserve notice:

• MEDICAID WORK REQUIREMENTS: Reynolds insists that now is the time to try again on a bad and tired idea: requiring some prospective Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive health care coverage. Or, to put it another way, putting obstacles between health insurance and a small, small slice of low-income Medicaid recipients (those who are not children or retired or disabled or already working). Or, to put it another way, creating a costly new apparatus of bureaucratic red tape using money that could instead pay for needed care for Iowans. This popular Republican idea has progressed furthest in Arkansas and Georgia, and neither state’s experience is in the least encouraging. Georgia’s rules have not led to increased employment, which is, you know, the point.
• NUCLEAR ENERGY: Reynolds said she’d set up a task force to explore bringing nuclear power generation back to Iowa. A robust debate on this topic over a decade ago ended with MidAmerican Energy declining to pursue the idea beyond a study. Reynolds is correct that the massive electrical demands of data centers, especially for artificial intelligence, counsels an open-minded look at the state’s energy mix.
• CANCER RESEARCH: Iowa’s cancer statistics are among the nation’s worst, and Reynolds says she wants to spend $1 million to launch a new research team to better understand what’s happening. That’s a start, to be sure. Almost no investment would be too much, and the task force should have freedom to investigate and deliver, if necessary, unpleasant answers or hypotheses about what contributes to cancer in Iowa.
• GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: Nobody is against government efficiency. Reynolds’ remarks about copying the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency weren’t particularly amusing to people like Democratic state Sen. Zach Wahls, who sarcastically and correctly wrote on X about Reynolds “inventing” … the office of state auditor, the real-life version of which the Legislature keeps kneecapping.
• ATTRACTING MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS, IMPROVING CHILD CARE: Reynolds’ overall state budget proposal would increase spending 5.4% over the current year, with tax revenue continuing to fall. Large chunks of new money will go to educating savings accounts for private school students and to cover a projected $174 Medicaid shortfall. Reynolds also says Iowa should put millions of dollars into projects to bring more physicians and nurses to rural Iowa and to fill gaps parents face in managing preschool and child care. Those are solid proposals, though a bigger and better swing would be expanding state-paid universal preschool to full days for 4-year-olds and at least some subsidy for 3-year-olds.

More: We analyzed Gov. Kim Reynold’s Condition of the State speech. Here’s what words stood out.

Iowa has reasons to be proud and to stay, and reasons to run away

Reynolds opened her address by taking a deserved victory lap for state and local government success in 2024: responding meaningfully to natural disasters and providing for recovery and implementing her far-reaching state government reorganization. Iowa does have plenty to be proud of, plenty of reasons to stay, plenty of reasons to come. The governor and the Legislature need to realize that they have also given people reasons to flee. Until that changes, they aren’t doing all they can to solve Iowa’s worker shortages.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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