“I think it’s time for new people to step up with new ideas and a new agenda for Iowa,” Corbett, who is a former speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives, said Wednesday during a visit to Fort Dodge. “I call it a new game plan for our state.”

He faces Gov. Kim Reynolds, a protege of former Gov. Terry Branstad, in the June 2018 primary election.

“We have an election process in Iowa, not an appointment process or an anointment process,” he added. “Terry Branstad doesn’t get to decide who the future governors of Iowa are. The citizens do. And the establishment doesn’t always get it right.”

The candidate did not shy away from criticizing Branstad and Reynolds, especially with regard to the privatization of Medicaid, the joint federal and state health insurance program for the poor. Corbett said the privatization plan was “concocted in the back rooms of the state Capitol.” He said Branstad and Reynolds should have spent six to nine months talking to people across the state about changing Medicaid before introducing a plan.

Corbett was a member of the state House of Representatives from 1988 to 1999. At the end of his tenure, he was the House speaker. But he decided not to run for re-election so that he could spend more time with his young family. He then became the director of the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce and was elected to two terms as the city’s mayor.

As he seeks to return to state government, he’s basing his campaign on four core objectives.

Reforming the income tax system is the first of those objectives. The state’s income tax system, he said, is neither fair or competitive.

He said he wants to raise the state’s sales tax and at the same time reduce the income tax.

“I would advocate for a jump in the sales tax, a bump in the sales tax, by one penny,” he said.

He said he would use three-eighths of that penny increase to finally fund a new environmental account approved by state voters a few years ago.

The rest of the income from the one-cent increase would be used to drive the state income tax rate down from 8.9 percent to 3 percent.

The sales tax rate in Fort Dodge is currently 7 percent. That includes 5 percent for the state’s general fund, 1 percent for the statewide school infrastructure fund and 1 percent for the city, to be used for road projects. Corbett’s proposed increase would raise the sales tax rate in Fort Dodge to 8 percent.

The sales tax increase figures into Corbett’s second core objective, which is improving water quality.

“We don’t need lawsuits or excessive EPA regulations mandating our water quality program,” he said. “We need an Iowa plan.”

He said the money from that portion of the proposed sales tax increase reserved for environmental programs would provide a “sustainable, annual, constitutionally protected revenue stream so we can start partnering with farmers on cost share programs.”

Supporting public education is Corbett’s third core objective. He said the majority of Iowa students go to public schools. He said he wants to pay high performing teachers more. He said that he also wants to establish a leadership academy for public school teachers to prepare them for dealing with things like students who speak English as a second language.

Showing concern for people is Corbett’s fourth core objective.

The roughly 72,000 Iowans in the individual health care market who could lose their insurance or have the choice of one insurance provider planning to increase premiums by 43 percent top the list of those Corbett said he wants to show concern for.

“This last year, the governor didn’t do anything to help those people out,” he said.

He said he would allow those people to buy into the health insurance plan for state government employees for up to three years. That, he said, would “get them out of limbo land” until a more permanent solution can be found.

“I don’t think looking to Washington, D.C., for the solution is the answer,” he said. “I think we really have to solve this problem in Iowa.”

He said that many of those in the individual insurance market are entrepreneurs and self-employed people.

“That’s a culture that we want developed and fostered in this state,” Corbett said.