Reynolds poses plans to ‘change how local government works’ in Condition of the State speech preluded by protests

“As I’ve declared every time I’ve been at this podium, the condition of our state is strong,” Gov. Kim Reynolds said the Condition of the State Address on Tuesday night. This is the last legislative session in which Reynolds, who announced in April she was not running for reelection, will have the power to sign or veto bills.

The governor’s declaration about the state’s strength came one day after the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia published the latest report on its Coincident Index, an assessment of state economies based on nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, wage and salary disbursements and the unemployment rate. Iowa ranked last among states in terms of growth. 

“The rank of Iowa’s Index growth over the most recent 12 months is 50, meaning that the Index views Iowa’s recent economic growth performance as below average when compared to other states over the same 12-month period,” according to the report. 

Reynolds usually makes her declaration about Iowa being strong close to the beginning of her address, but on Tuesday, it didn’t come until almost 15 minutes into the 55-minute speech. The governor began this year’s speech by paying respects to the three members of the legislature and one former member who died last year. She then eulogized the two members of the Iowa National Guard who were killed while in Syria last month. She also praised the three other Iowa Guardsmen who were wounded during the attack, as well as Iowans deployed to Syria.

After her standard declaration of strength, Reynolds returned to talking about the National Guard, then segued into the state of veterans benefits in Iowa. 

“Iowa is home to nearly 178,000 veterans,” she said. “Yet only one-third is receiving the benefits they earned, placing Iowa 44th in the nation for VA compensation.”

“That’s not acceptable.”

For her ninth and final session of the legislature as governor, Reynolds said she will propose an extensive modernization of what she called an “outdated system that provides little accountability.” 

The governor then turned her attention to cutting taxes, a favorite topic in her Condition of the State speeches. Reynolds listed the tax cuts she has signed into law since becoming governor after Terry Branstad left the office to join the first Trump administration. 

“I’m proud to say, we’ve cut taxes more than any other state in the country,” she boasted.

The governor did not mention the impact those tax cuts have had on state revenues. Last year, the legislature approved using $917 million from the Taxpayer Relief Fund and budget surpluses from previous years held in the state’s reserves to cover the shortfall in the budget. 

In last year’s speech, the governor declared cutting property taxes to be her top priority. Differing versions of property tax bills advanced in both the Iowa House and Senate, but none of them passed both chambers. This year, Reynolds is also making reducing property taxes a top priority. 

The governor listed several proposals for cutting property taxes and creating new exemptions, but framed the issue overall as a way to control spending by cities and counties by slashing a major source of revenue for local governments. 

“Over the years, we’ve tried to rein in local taxing authority,” Reynolds said. “But it’s often felt like squeezing a balloon — limit one levy and another one expands. So this year, we need to go after the real driver of the problem: spending.”

Since Iowa Republicans assumed control of both chambers of the legislature, as well as the governor’s office, in 2017, they have routinely passed bills engaged in severely limiting or eliminating the authority of local governments to pursue goals the conservative Republicans in charge do not approve of. They have also routinely cut funding to local governments and restricted the ability of cities and counties to raise funds themselves to provide services for their residents. 

“I’m introducing a property tax bill that will cap overall revenue growth for local governments,” the governors said, claiming that was necessary to “protect families from runaway spikes and provide more predictability.” Reynolds also wants to shift the burden of proof in appeals of property tax assessments from the property owner disputing a new assessment to the assessor’s office, whose new assessment would be considered incorrect unless the assessor can prove it isn’t. 

“If Iowans want lower property taxes, we must also change how local government works — and who we elect to run it,” the governor said. “If you’re one of those people, please run for office. Because we need a government that lives within its means, and leaders who will do the same.”

That touches on one of the most important bills preempting local authority Reynolds signed into law last year: a bill that eliminated the ability of citizens in Black Hawk, Johnson and Story Counties to determine how they will elect members of their boards of supervisors. All three counties elected supervisors on an at-large basis, as some other counties do. Other counties elected supervisors by district. Except in Black Hawk, Johnson and Story, citizens in all of Iowa’s other 96 are free to maintain or change how they elect supervisors. Proponents claim the change was needed in order to ensure the votes of rural citizens in the three counties with state universities are not overwhelmed by those of students, despite U.S. Supreme Court decisions guaranteeing students have the same voting rights as longer-term residents of a municipality. 

Last year’s bill was not the first one introduced by Republicans in the legislature to change how some counties — Johnson County in particular — elected supervisors. A previous bill that failed would have required the state’s five most populous counties to elect supervisors by district instead of doing so at-large. The practical effect of the bill is to increase electoral chances of Republican candidates, although Republican leaders in the legislature deny that is their intent. 

There is an ongoing lawsuit challenging the bill targeting the three counties. Last week, a judge rejected the state’s request to dismiss the case. 

In her speech on Tuesday, Gov. Reynolds didn’t mention her history-making accomplishment from last year’s legislative session: promoting and signing into law a bill that made Iowa the first state in American history to eliminate part of its civil rights act in order to more freely discriminate against transgender and nonbinary people. That bill also preempted the authority of local governments, prohibiting cities and counties from gathering any data on transgender and nonbinary residents that references their gender identity. 

It wasn’t just last year’s historic bill that went unmentioned in the governor’s speech. Reynolds also omitted legislation on immigration she and her staff have identified as a top priority for this year’s session. 

“She wants the Legislature to make permanent an executive order she issued in the wake of Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts’ arrest last year,” Iowa Public Radio reports. “It would require the state to use E-Verify and SAVE to verify the immigration status and employment eligibility of state employees and those receiving professional licenses from the state.” 

Reynolds also wants to make Iowans swear under an oath they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote and make it “a class D felony to falsely claim to be a citizen when registering to vote,” IPR’s Katarina Sostaric writes. “She is also proposing legislation to establish a rebuttable presumption that immigrants without legal status would be held without bail if arrested and accused of crimes that are not simple misdemeanors.”

Reynolds may have avoided mentioning immigration on Tuesday night, but others at the Iowa State Capitol didn’t. More than 150 people gathered in the Capitol rotunda for a protest that started an hour before the Condition of the State Address. Most of the people carrying signs and chanting loudly at the peaceful protest were focused on ICE’s violent enforcement of Trump administration immigration policies. 

Trump didn’t go unmentioned in Reynolds’ speech, but this year the president’s name was used only once. 

“And thanks to President Trump’s historic tax cuts for working families, Iowans are set to save big on federal taxes, too,” the governor said, referencing the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

The governor also credited the Trump administration with allowing her greater control over how federal education funds are spent in the state, and for providing $200 million to fund her Healthy Hometowns initiative, aimed at improving health services in rural Iowa. According to the governor, this year more than $50 million of those federal funds “will be invested specifically in cancer prevention, screening, and treatment.” 

In addition to those efforts, “[t]hrough our Healthy Hometowns Initiative, we’re developing cancer care hubs — helping fund the oncologists, equipment, and advanced medical technology necessary to provide this specialized treatment.”

Reynolds said this new “effort expands upon our proven Centers of Excellence program, which has increased access to maternal health care in rural Iowa.” 

A report published by the American Medical Association last March found that 57 percent of Iowa counties do not have an obstetrics facility. 

“In Iowa, for instance, there are 3.3 ob-gyns per 10,000 women of reproductive age,” the report said. “This is compared to 4.5 ob-gyns for the same number of women in the U.S.”

Minnesota, on the other hand, was in one of the top three states in terms of “the highest number of ob-gyns per women of reproductive age.” 

Another health issue the governor said she wants to address is childhood obesity. Reynolds has already issued an executive order prohibiting people receiving SNAP benefits from using them to buy “candy, sweets, and soft drinks” as she said in her speech. The executive order also bans SNAP from being used to buy vitamins. The governor said she wants the legislature to pass a bill to make those restrictions permanent. 

“As I enter my final legislative session as your governor, I do so deeply grateful, fully committed, and determined to finish strong,” Reynolds said near the end of her speech. 

In 2018, Reynolds began her first Condition of the State Address by saying that as the first woman to serve as governor of Iowa, “I hope that I can be an inspiration to every waitress, every grocery checker, every overworked and stressed out mom, and the little girls who dare to dream: in Iowa, if you’re willing to work for it, those dreams can come true.”

In that year’s speech, the governor cited improving water quality as her top priority. 

“Improving water quality is a shared goal of Iowans,” she said. “Urban and rural stakeholders have worked collaboratively making great strides.”

“My hope is that a water quality bill is the first piece of legislation I sign as governor.”

Last week, Central Iowa Water Works, which provides water to more than 600,000 people in the greater Des Moines area, had to activate its nitrate removal facility, because nitrate levels in the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers exceeded federal safety standards. It’s rare for nitrate pollution levels to spike at this time of year. The last time the nitrate removal facility had to be activated in January was in 2015.