Democrat Jack Hatch says if he’s elected governor, he’ll “realign” the Iowa Economic Development Authority advisory board, splitting it into four regions, along the lines of Iowa’s four congressional districts. Each region would get an equal amount of money from the state and the local boards would decide which projects quality for state grants and loans. “As a state, we find our best ideas come when we allow our communities to determine their own destiny and not rely on a top-down model in which government picks winners and losers,” Hatch says. Hatch would forbid any of the members of these advisory boards to be involved in a business that gets a grant or loan from the state.

“It’s now like an ‘old boys club’….You have to know somebody in Des Moines,” Hatch says. “That just leads to abuse and loss of opportunities.” Hatch says the regional boards he envisioned would likely dedicate more state resources to smaller businesses rather than the big corporations Republican Governor Terry Branstad has been courting.

Branstad reconfigured the Iowa Department of Economic Development shortly after returning as governor in 2011, establishing a public-private partnership instead of a strictly state-run agecny. Hatch unveiled his idea for regional advisory boards during a speech in Davenport on Monday.

(Radio Iowa)

Governor Terry Branstad says he’s open to continued discussions about how to find new funding sources for road and bridge construction in Iowa, including the idea of imposing the state sales tax on fuel. “That kind of an approach is an approach that has been used now recently by a number of other states and its one that would be more of a permanent soluation,” Branstad says. Charging the six-percent state sales tax on gas would add far more to the cost of filling up the tank than just raising the state gas tax by 10-cents a gallon.

For example, someone buying 10 gallons of gas would pay a dollar ($1) more if the state gas tax went up a dime. But, if the state sales tax were charged on that transaction, the consumer would pay two-dollars ($2) more. “Anything you do, obviously, the users are going to have to pay for it,” Branstad says. The state fuel tax hasn’t been hiked since 1989, when gas was selling for less than two-bucks a gallon. The average price today in Iowa is 3-37 ($3.37) a gallon. Branstad says charging the state sales tax on fuel purchases would keep up with inflation.

“Going away from the old-fashioned gas and diesel fuel tax, to me, makes sense,” Branstad says. But the governor is not calling on legislators to pass a bill that would make the change. Branstad has repeatedly said he’s waiting for a “bipartisan consensus” to develop in the legislature. According to Iowa D-O-T estimates released a couple of years ago, the state is at least 215-million dollars short of what’s needed to maintain and expand the state’s transportation network.

(Radio Iowa)