The Cass County Board of Supervisor’s today (Thursday) approved a wage adjustment for one county department assistant and denied raises to two others. The board approved a request proposed in December by County Attorney Dan Feistner, for Assistant Stacey Platt. Platt has been with his office for nearly three-years.

Monies for her wage increase will come from the Delinquent Fines and Fees account, and will not affect his budget or what the tax payers contribute to her salary. Her pay will increase $260 per pay period.

The board denied a request by General Assistance/Mental Health Coordinator Teresa Kanning, for wage adjustments to the salaries of her assistants Debbie Schuler and Vicki Adams. If approved, Schuler’s pay would have increased $102 per pay period, while Adams’ would have increased slightly more than $196 per pay period.

Supervisor Chuck Kinen said he was opposed to the wage adjustment because the board had already approved a two-percent across the board increase earlier in the year, and because the board had agreed not to provide middle of the year increases in salaries.

Kanning told Kinen the issue was discussed during a budget work session, and she was instructed to present her proposal at the beginning of the Fiscal year. Kinen said the increases are “completely out of line.” Kanning said the increase would have brought her staff up to the same rate of pay as others who perform similar tasks in the courthouse are receiving.

Kanning said she has approached the board many times over the past few years asking for an increase in her assistant’s pay, especially for Schuler, who was required to have, and does hold, a college degree. Schuler has worked for Kanning for the past seven-years.

Kinen said people should be more concerned about having a job than how much they are going to make, to which Kanning replied neither of her assistants were aware she was making the request on their behalf. Because a motion to approved the wage increase for Adams died for lack of a second, Kanning left the Board room. The supervisors then failed to approve an increase for Schuler when there was no second to the motion.

Supervisor Mark Wedemeyer said the board should make note of the pay requests and have them equalized by January 1^st. Kinen said later, it doesn’t make sense for the assistants to be paid more than their director, in any department.

Lawmakers spent most of Wednesday grinding away on just a couple of issues, delaying the final adjournment of the 2011 legislative session until sometime today (Thursday). They’re close to the deadline for approving a state budget plan, as the new state budget year begins Friday. The six-month-long effort to strike a deal between the two parties on property tax reform was abandoned Wednesday and legislators focused solely on the final details of the state budget. Senator Bob Dvorsky, a Democrat from Coralville, is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“We have a good group of senators and house members who really worked at it,” Dvorsky says. “And once people of good faith sat down, we were able to move some things forward.” Representative Scott Raecker, a Republican from Urbandale, is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

“It has taken a long time this year,” Raecker says. “But I believe the end result will be something that people will walk out of the capitol knowing that they did an exceptional job and Iowans will be very proud of the budget that’s been delivered.” A huge budget bill cleared both the Senate and House last night before lawmakers adjourned for the evening. But property tax reform has fallen off the to-do list. Republicans like Senate G-O-P Leader Paul McKinley of Chariton blame Democrats for failing to pass the property tax cut Republican Governor Terry Branstad has been pushing. Democrats like Senator Joe Bolkcom, of Iowa City, fault Republicans for failing to embrace the significantly different property tax relief plan Democrats devised.

The two parties did strike an agreement on education spending, approving a status quo spending plan for K-through-12 schools for the next academic year and a two percent increase in the following year. The House and Senate are scheduled to return to the statehouse this morning (Thursday) to take action on two final bills, including the legislation that has been at the center of the latest abortion fight. Lawmakers faced a looming deadline for final approval of the budget, as the new state fiscal year begins July 1st. One of the two bills scheduled to approval today (Thursday) would ensure the governor has the authority to keep state government operating before he gives his formal approval to each of the budget bills. The governor will have 30 days to review the bills, and he could use his item veto authority on some individual spending items.

(O.Kay Henderson/Radio Iowa)

After a protracted stand-off over state spending on schools, the two political parties have agreed to a status quo level of state aid to K-through-12 public schools for the school year that begins this fall. However, the agreement calls for two percent more in per-pupil state aid in the following year. Representative Cecil Dolecheck, a Republican from Mount Ayr, helped craft the final deal. “It’s a compromise that’s pretty close to middle ground,” Dolecheck says.

Republicans had proposed ending state-funded preschool programs, but Democrats objected. This year, the state spent about 36-hundred dollars on each four-year-old enrolled in public preschool programs. The compromise calls for reducing that state spending by about seven-hundred dollars per student. Senator Bob Dvorsky, a Democrat from Coralville, is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and he sees that as a victory. “There’s a lot of support for preschool out there,” Dvorsky says.

Dvorsky says school districts needed that extra seven-hundred dollars per preschooler the past few years as programs were started, but Dvorsky says preschools should be able to easily operate on with about three-thousand dollars per student in the coming year.

The Iowa House has just endorsed the education budget bill, which includes spending for the state-supported universities and community colleges, too. The Senate is expected to take up the plan soon. The next state budgeting year begins Friday, July 1st and legislators are racing to strike final deals and pass bills that outline the final details of a nearly six-billion dollar state budget.

There is a budget-related dispute over abortion policy which remains unresolved. The effort to enact a major property tax reform package has been abandoned today, but Governor Branstad is hinting he’ll press the issue, perhaps in a special session later this year.

(O.Kay Henderson/Radio Iowa)