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Why Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Have a Prayer in Iowa

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Why Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Have a Prayer in Iowa


Those social conservatives had won big legislative margins in the 2022 midterms that had gone against Republicans in other states, and they had used their majority to pass a “fetal heartbeat” bill, outlawing most abortions after around six weeks, which in effect comes close to an outright ban. DeSantis had signed a nearly identical bill in Florida; Trump has criticized these measures as too extreme, saying they would backfire on Republicans. So the true believers in Iowa had a substantive reason to turn away from the former President, too.

It was a highly self-selecting crowd at the Thunderdome—people willing to spend a couple of hours of their Saturday at a DeSantis campaign event—but, as I walked around chatting, I did get the impression that the fetal-heartbeat contretemps had given some Trump-skeptical conservatives something to point to, evidence that the former President really wasn’t on their side. I spent a few minutes talking with Jon Dunwell, an evangelical minister who, in 2021, won a state House seat that had been held by Democrats for decades. Dunwell, who, once in office, had sponsored the heartbeat bill, isn’t as smooth as Vander Plaats, but he has an intensity of purpose that I recognized from the Bush-era religious right, too. When Trump had turned against the fetal-heartbeat bills, Dunwell said, “I was shocked. I mean, my jaw dropped. I don’t get it. I look at some of my fellow-legislators—there are a few who support Trump who are also pro-life—and I just don’t get it.” He had endorsed DeSantis. Of Trump, he said, “If he’s willing to compromise on something as important as life, what else is he willing to compromise on?”

The point of the Jasper County event had been to commemorate DeSantis’s completing “the full Grassley,” as everyone seemed to have agreed to call it, in honor of the ninety-year-old Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, who has made it his practice to visit every single county each year. People said the phrase “the full Grassley” so much that you figured an intern backstage had organized a drinking game. Highlighting this made sense from several points of view, including character: whatever else you might think of Ron DeSantis, he does not lack doggedness. The crowd was healthy—maybe two hundred people—but more notably it was mobbed with press, who kept assertively asking voters questions they didn’t really know the answer to, namely how they thought DeSantis could beat Trump.

The setting also seemed to beckon a quality that DeSantis does very much lack, which is folksiness. The plan seemed to be that the candidate would reminisce about all the charming things he had seen on the campaign trail, and all the personal connections he’d made. Onstage, DeSantis kept consulting a list of such visits, but he was short on detail and emotion, making it sound like he was narrating someone else’s scrapbook, or possibly just reciting driving directions. “When we were in Audubon County, my kids and Casey and me went to this big large bull statue, which I think is the largest bull statue in the entire world, and we got to get some good pictures with that, which was a lot of fun,” DeSantis said. “Casey, me, and the kids, when we visited Sac County, we saw the world’s largest popcorn ball. Quite a sight.” On it went. “We were in Chickasaw County . . .”

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US Court Upholds Block on Iowa Immigrant Arrest Law

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US Court Upholds Block on Iowa Immigrant Arrest Law


By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court refused on Friday to allow Iowa to implement a law allowing for the arrest and prosecution of people who are in the United States illegally. The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Republican-led state’s law, which had been …



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IEDA chief seeks to revamp incentives as Iowa’s tax climate shifts, job growth lags

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IEDA chief seeks to revamp incentives as Iowa’s tax climate shifts, job growth lags


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Iowa’s economic development chief is laying out how she believes the state should overhaul and scale back business development incentives after Iowa legislators cut corporate, income and other taxes in recent years.

With Iowa’s more competitive tax climate for business, Debi Durham said, she hopes a smaller, more targeted set of tax credits, capped at $110 million annually, can help raise the standard of living for Iowans while bringing more transparency and certainty to state budgeting.

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“The Legislature’s going to know exactly how much we’re handing out in any given year,” Durham said.

The executive director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority since 2011 and Iowa Finance Authority since 2019, Durham said she wants to replace the longtime High-Quality Jobs Program, which currently receives $68 million annually, with Business Incentives for Growth — and recommends spending $18 million less doing so.

Created in 2005, the High Quality Jobs Program provides a mix of tax credits for investment and research activities, refunds of sales and use tax, forgivable loans and direct financial assistance if companies meet certain hiring, wage, retention and other standards.

The program, whose funding has been scaled back from $130 million over time, also has allowed the use of 20-year property tax abatements, like those used to help Meta, owner of Facebook, expand its data warehouse campus of 11 buildings in Altoona. In 2024, the value of those controversial tax abatements in the growing city reached $1.1 billion.

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But as the Register reported earlier this month, Meta’s data centers and its property won’t be subject to property taxes until 2034 and in the meantime, changes in Iowa’s property tax system at the Legislature could reduce the payout the city is counting on.

Durham said last week that IEDA no longer allows municipalities to use 20-year abatements as part of the incentive program. And she said state leaders need to evaluate whether data warehouses, which are expanding rapidly across the country while their demand for energy and water grows, need to continue to be incentivized in Iowa, like the ethanol and wind industries before them.

“The question is, should any industry, once they’ve established themselves in the marketplace, continue to receive incentives?” she said. “That is a legislative question.”

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Durham said the IEDA also is proposing replacing an existing uncapped tax credit program for research activities currently administered by the Iowa Department of Revenue with one that would be run by IEDA and have a $40 million annual cap.

The current research activities tax credit can provide individual and corporate income tax refunds for qualifying research expenditures, including wages and supplies. The proposal says businesses’ research in Iowa must be “experimental” and aimed at discovering technological information or developing a new product.

Both the Business Incentives for Growth and the new research and development tax credits would apply to tax liability first and then be refundable.

John Fuller, a spokesperson for the revenue department, said the agency “supports proposals that increase efficiencies in state government, including changes in how state tax credit programs are administered. This aligns with the Governor’s continued efforts to improve how government agencies work together for the people of Iowa.”

Tax credits are no angel

The IEDA also wants to sunset the state’s Angel Investment Tax Credit program, established in 2002 to jumpstart venture capital investment in Iowa startups, and create a new Seed Investor Program in combination with an existing Innovation Fund so the state can offer up to $10 million annually in tax credits.

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The hope, Durham said, would be to better help rural Iowa businesses with a lower investment threshold qualify for the credits.

A report by the Department of Revenue in December found no hard evidence the existing Angel Investor tax credits, which amount to 25% of a qualifying business’s capital investment, benefit the state. The report said it was “not possible to definitively establish that the tax credit leads to investment that, in the absence of the tax credit, would not occur.”

Another 2022 state report said while studies have found that angel tax credits, offered in numerous states across the country, are associated with increased investment activity, their availability “does not necessarily result in robust growth of new firms in terms of employment growth and other measures of success.”

The IEDA’s proposal, which has not been filed at the Legislature or assigned a bill number, also would replace an existing tax credit program for chemical production with one for aviation fuel, and increase allowable credits by $5 million to $10 million annually. It would sunset or repeal tax credits for targeted jobs, assistive devices and employer child care.

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And the agency wants to establish a two-year pilot program for in-state film production. That program would provide a rebate after expenses to projects that qualify — up to a total of $10 million annually, Durham said.

The Legislature has been reluctant to consider any proposed film incentives since a 2009 scandal, closely covered by the Des Moines Register, that involved a poorly administered tax credit for film production. A state audit in fall 2010 uncovered $26 million in tax credits that were improperly issued — about 80% of what had been doled out.

Widespread abuse of the credit led to the firings of a half-dozen people at the Iowa Department of Economic Development — the IEDA’s predecessor — millions in settlements and the convictions of seven people on fraud or theft charges. The scandal also hounded then-Gov. Chet Culver as he made a failed bid for re-election against former Gov. Terry Branstad.

But a bill that would provide the new moviemaking tax credits, House File 2662, passed the House last year.

Rep. Ray Sorenson, who chairs the House economic growth and tech committee and an ex officio member of the IEDA Board, said the committee is looking forward to digging into the specifics of the proposals, as the session progresses.

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“We of course share the IEDA’s goal of bringing economic development to every corner of the state and work to help them get their proposals through committee and to the floor,” he said.

Proposal comes as Iowa’s economy sputters. Would it help?

When asked what the net difference would be in all the proposed incentives changes from the 2024 fiscal year, Staci Hupp Ballard, a spokesperson for the IEDA, said the Legislative Services Agency will do an analysis of the changes and “we believe the fiscal note will show a significant savings.”

Ballard said the new tax credits were proposed after the agency took into “account the types of projects we’re seeing, feedback from industry and stakeholders, and what other states are offering.”

It’s impossible how to know how the changes, if enacted, would benefit the state, as Iowa has faced increasingly stark revenue and economic forecasts.

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The Register reported last week that as of January, Iowa’s overall employment growth since 2019 was 0.6%, while it was 4.6% for the U.S. as a whole. Companies filed 99 notifications of plant closings or mass layoffs last year, the largest total for any year since 2016, and nearly 30 more than the 71 recorded in 2023.

In 2022-23, Iowa experienced a drop in real personal income of 2%, the worst in the nation, according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis statistics released last month.

Peter Orazem, a professor emeritus of economics at Iowa State University, said that doesn’t paint a rosy picture of Iowa’s economic outlook.

“Greater dependence on agriculture drags down income growth with weakness in that sector,” Orazem said. He noted that Iowa is lagging in finance and manufacturing, as well as in its agricultural sector.

In December, Iowa’s three-member Revenue Estimating Conference predicted Iowa will take in $9.15 billion in fiscal year 2025 — enough money to cover the $8.91 billion budget that began in July. But in fiscal year 2026, the panel said, the state will take in $8.73 billion, less money than budgeted.

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Lee Rood’s Reader’s Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Reach her at lrood@registermedia.com, at 515-284-8549, on Twitter at @leerood or on Facebook at Facebook.com/readerswatchdog.





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Big 12 men’s basketball power rankings: Did loss by Iowa State knock them from top spot?

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Big 12 men’s basketball power rankings: Did loss by Iowa State knock them from top spot?


Winning on the road in college basketball is tough. Doing it in a hostile environment like the one in Morgantown, West Virginia can be nearly impossible – especially if you are riding a win streak and a highly-ranked team.

Iowa State found that out the hard way this past weekend, dropping a low-scoring affair to West Virginia. But instead of letting that lone defeat turn into two, the Cyclones bounced back, throttling UCF with their highest point total of the season.

* How to watch Iowa State’s next game, opponent

So, do you drop them from the top spot in the Big 12 power rankings? Or chalk it up to a one-off letdown like nearly everybody else has had this year? 

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Below is the latest Big 12 Conference men’s basketball power rankings:

1. Iowa State (16-2, 6-1)

2. Houston (15-3, 7-0)

3. Kansas (14-4, 5-2)

4. West Virginia (13-5, 4-3)

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5. Arizona (12-6, 6-1)

6. Texas Tech (14-4, 5-2)

7. Cincinnati (12-6, 2-5)

8. Baylor (12-6, 4-3)

9. TCU (10-8, 3-4)

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10. BYU (12-6, 3-4)

11. Utah (11-7, 3-4)

12. Arizona State (11-7, 2-5)

13. UCF (12-6, 3-4)

14. Oklahoma State (10-8, 2-5)

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15. Kansas State (7-11, 1-6)

16. Colorado (9-9, 0-7)

Nextgame: at Arizona, Saturday, January 25



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