Governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds were in Jefferson for their 99 county trip around the state for “Our Opportunity, Our Iowa” campaign.

After initial opening introductions, Governor Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Reynolds laid out three topics for discussion:  job creation in Iowa, improvements in education and healthcare improvements for Iowans.

Governor Branstad states that he’s in favor of giving the $830 million budget surplus back to the citizens.  He also outlined a property tax reform plan that includes cutting commercial property taxes from 4% to 2%.  He wants to permanently reduce commercial and industrial property taxes by 20% over four years.

The next component was about education reform plans.  Governor Branstad says education needs to return to where it once was in education.

“I think we’ve been complacent too long.  And I think its time we get serious about putting in place reforms and changes that will make it more attractive for high achievers to want to go into teaching.  That it’ll provide some career pathways for our best teachers to be leaders and to be mentors and be coaches and help us improve the quality of education in our state.”

Some plans were to provide new roles for teachers to be mentors and a pilot program in colleges to change from doing one semester of student teaching to a year long program.

The last part of the meeting was about healthcare.  The Governor says Iowa is one of the lowest states in the country when it comes to internal medicine, pediatrics and mental health.  In order to fix that, Branstad proposes $2 million be reserved for medical residencies in Iowa and $2 million in forgivable loans to rural physicians to retain doctors in Iowa.

The Governor and Lieutenant Governor continue their campaign trail through central Iowa later this week.