Sen. Tim Kraayenbrink, R-Fort Dodge

“I’m involved mostly in the financial part of the state. The bill that we passed last year to escalate the tax decrease from the flat tax to a flat 3.8 percent. I think mainly, I’m interested in slowing things down a little bit to be able to monitor that and make sure that that decision is a good one. I fully believe it is and I want to make sure that the revenues of the state keep coming in to be able to support that tax cut.

“A lot of people are talking about property taxes and wanting some type of property tax relief. My goal there would be if we’re going to do property tax relief, it’s not going to be something that would cause a backfill from the state’s general budget to accomplish that. They would have to be a true property tax reform. In essence that would mean that there wouldn’t be as much revenue coming in to the local and county area. I think a lot of people are just concerned about the continued increases in their property values which then equates to higher property taxes. People I know are wondering why these entities need that much more money constantly and it’s always from property taxes. I would like to make sure that that is done right and doesn’t fall back on the state’s general budget having to supplement the locals and counties for the amount of money that they’re not getting from property owners. That’s going to be an interesting conversation. That’s going to probably be the biggest thing that we do this year.

” I also think that we need to look at some of the other laws that we passed as far as for AEAs to see if there’s tweaks that we have to make on unintended consequences. Every bill that we pass has good points and they have some unintended consequences that should need special attention for the following session so we can go back and make tweaks for changes to some of those things to fix some of those situations.

“Other than that, I’m hoping we can get the budget done early.”

Rep. Ann Meyer, R-Fort Dodge

“I am the Health and Human Services budget chair where in the past I’ve been the policy chair. I’m still working closely with the policy chair, though, and our main focus for HHS is going to be increasing access to maternal health care. We have a shortage of OBs in the state. We are working on how to increase training for OBs. We don’t have enough residencies in the state. There’s only five at the University of Iowa. There’s a combined family practice and OB residency, but we’d like more OB focused, strictly OB focused residencies, so we’re going to work on increasing those this year. By increasing those, it’s pretty much funding. That means funding the training that it takes to get those up and running. The governor is going to talk about a rural health bill and there’s a lot of focus on maternal health care access. I think that’s the main focus of HHS this year.

“Personally, my main hope for this year is that hands-free driving is going to pass and be signed by the governor. I think we’ve got a lot more people on board with getting it across the finish line this year. A lot of different organizations out there including ABATE are on board. It seems like everything’s lined up this year. That’s my main hope. It’s one of the things that’s just lingering from the first year I was in the legislature.”

Rep. Mike Sexton, R-Rockwell City

“One of my goals is to try to update the Iowa grain indemnity fund. We need to update the Iowa grain indemnity funds. It hasn’t been updated in 20 years and agriculture has changed a lot in the past 20 years, so it needs to be updated.

“The other thing is for the Sheep Association, the sheep and lamb wool check off. Producers get charged two cents a pound for wool check off. Right now, wool has basically no value, so it ends up being a kind of regressive tax for sheep producers. We’re going to try to look at eliminating or suspending that until such a time that it has a value.

“Also a top priority for me is foreign animal diseases in the United States and specifically in Iowa. If we get a foreign animal disease in the State of Iowa, it will be devastating economically to producers, but also to the state it will cost billions of dollars. One of my goals this year in ag is to try to draw attention to what happens if we get a disease like that. We need to be ready to be able to combat it if it does happen and we also need to explain to people what the economic impact would be if we get a disease like that in Iowa.”