A main topic of contention and a bill that came to a compromise in the conference committee at the Statehouse was on property tax reform.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green says the legislation that the House and Senate passed will save Iowans about $4 billion over the next six years. 

He tells Raccoon Valley Radio some of the highlights of those eventual savings comes from reducing the Secure an Advanced Vision of Education (SAVE) fund by one cent and using that to provide property tax relief, and phasing out the state portion of the homestead tax credit to an exemption and utilizing those funds to drop the statewide property tax levy of $5.40 per $1,000 of property valuation to $4.90. Green points out that the legislation also includes a “soft cap.”

“What I mean by a ‘soft cap’ is that we provide flexibility for items such as insurance, retirement and some of those uncontrolled expenses that local governments face, that they just have no control over. And year after year, you see these double digit percentage increases in some of those items. And I don’t think that’s fair to local governments to put a two percent cap on something that’s outside of their control. So, I was really happy to see that at the end of the day, that we were able to negotiate that out.” 

A couple of items that Green was disappointed to not make it into the final bill was the Senate’s original proposal of increasing the Local Option Sales and Services Tax (LOSST) funds, as well as the Gas Tax to help with money for secondary roads and bridges. According to the bill, there is also a two percent revenue growth cap for county and city governments.

Green details that he was nervous that nothing was going to happen with property taxes by the end of the session, due to the varying viewpoints from both chambers.

“Fully transparent, I mean a lot of constituents want to see a property tax cut. The reality of that is, it sounds good but it’s just really hard to accomplish an actual immediate cut. But we can certainly put a cap on the future bell-curve up that seems to be just getting out of control and the taxpayers feeling that.”  

If the governor signs it, the bill is slated to be implemented at the start of 2027.