One Iowa lawmaker looks back on the 2023 Legislative Session that just ended.

House District 47 Representative Carter Nordman (R-Panora) tells Raccoon Valley Radio he’s proud of the programs and priorities of the Republican caucus that they were able to implement into the state’s next fiscal year budget. He says they passed a $8.5 billion budget with about $4 billion in its “rainy day” funds on reserve. He shares his thoughts on having just over $4 billion of reserves.

“You always want to make sure, just like the average Iowa family has their rainy day fund, to make sure that we’re ready for any kind of disaster or any kind of an emergency. During (the) covid (pandemic) we opened up our economy, we didn’t close it down, and that’s why we are seeing such fiscal health within our state now. But what I see is that we have collected too much money. We’ve funded our state priorities, we’ve collected too much of Iowan’s money, so maybe it’s time to look at another tax cut.”    

Nordman also chaired the education appropriation committee and its $1 billion budget, which passed along party lines in the House. He points out one aspect he saw come to fruition is a $6.5 million allocation for a new college workforce scholarship to the state regent universities. Nordman says these scholarships are for college students who are entering high need jobs such as education, nursing, engineering, among others. He hopes more funding can be allocated in the future, if this program is deemed a success.

“$6.5 million is a pretty substantial amount of money for a new program. And so we’re going to see how it is utilized, and there’s going to be plenty of data out there to follow up on it. If it’s a program that continues to work, it continues to produce more high need job degrees, then yeah absolutely, we’re going to look into continuing to fund it and maybe even fund it at a higher level.” 

Nordman adds other main highlights of the session included the state government realignment bill and the Students First Act signed into law.