DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – A group of Iowa casinos wants to make their annual audits confidential and stop releasing them to the public. The Des Moines Register reports 16 of the 19 state-regulated Iowa casinos have joined a lawsuit challenging the release of those financial records.

Wes Ehrecke, president of the Iowa Gaming Association, says the audits include trade secrets that shouldn’t be released publicly. But the reports have long been public in Iowa, and they are relied upon to gauge the health of the industry. Last year, Iowa’s casinos paid over $312 million in gambling taxes and contributed nearly $40 million to charities. The groups that rely on charitable contributions from casinos or gambling taxes have a particular interest in the financial reports.

Two of the top Republican leaders in the Iowa Legislature gave a few details Wednesday on the agenda they’ll pursue in January. Senator majority leader, Bill Dix a Republican from Shellrock, says he is one of the few legislators who were around the last time the Republicans controlled the House, Senate and governor’s office. “The message that I am taking from voters is that they expect us, for lack of a better term, to kick the door in. We don’t expect government to continue to do business the way that we have.”

Speaking at the West Side Conservative Club meeting in Clive, Dix says the state needs to not overspend and create policies that grow the state. He says education and education funding is key example of why the state needs to grow. “We can add additional dollars to the per pupil funding on an annual basis — and we almost always do — yet some districts because of declining enrollment will have less resources to work with. So the answer to many of our problems, including this one is growth,” Dix says. “There are a lot of lessons that we can learn. All across the country the last couple of decades — the state’s that are growing the fastest are the ones that are exercising fiscal discipline.”

Dix says tax reform is part of the solution to helping the state grow. “High income tax punishes people who want to work, save and make investments in our state. And we need to recognize that. And the states that have grown the fastest the last couple of decades across our country today are the ones that either lowered their rates, broadened their base, kept things simple, or moved to no income tax at all,” according to Dix.

Dix says another issue he expects to Senate to handle is requiring an I-D to vote. “Without question we need to continue to work to ensure higher levels of integrity in our voting system. And one of the best first steps we can do that is in voter identification. A voter I-D is clearly something we can do,” Dix says.

House majority leader Chris Hagenow, a Republican from Windsor Heights was also on the program. He says he is excited to have a Republican Senate to work with. Hagenow says House members have had some initial planning meetings, but haven’t gotten down to specifics just yet. “We have to still talk in terms of themes and top priorities, and then once we come around to January and work on that. But what I can say, is in the Republican majority in the House we did a lot of these things. Over the last six years some of the bills that we passed are going to be the starting point going forward,” Hagenow says.

He says many of those things were blocked when the Democrats controlled the Senate, but now things like water quality will be back on the table. He says tax reform is another important issue for the Iowa House. Hagenow says the changes to collecting bargaining laws, like other issues, were blocked by Democrats in the senate last session. He says there are a variety of other issues they plan to bring up again.

“The election law reforms that we talked about, we’ve done some of those things,” according to Hagenow. “Many of you care about the Second Amendment and making sure we protect Second Amendment rights. Year-after-year we have passed legislation to do that. Now we have a partner who is going to work with us on that.”

Hagenow says it looks like Governor Terry Branstad will be in the state for much of the legislative session and when the governor does leave to become Ambassador to China, he expects little to change in the working relationship Republican legislators while have with new Governor Kim Reynolds.

(Radio Iowa)