Proposed Budget Highlights
The governor’s fiscal 2027 budget is focused on maintaining common-sense, fiscally responsible policies that make a real difference in the lives and livelihoods of Iowans. Specifically, her vision for Iowa is aimed at cutting taxes so families can keep more of their own money, expanding educational freedom so parents can choose the best school for their children, transforming rural healthcare so every Iowan has access closer to home, ensuring the safety of communities, and honoring Iowa’s heritage. Highlights of her proposal include:
Delivering Property Tax Relief
- Restricting total revenue growth for all local government taxing authorities to 2 percent plus new construction, with exceptions for debt service and school funding.
- Moving property tax assessments from every two years to every three years.
- Limiting Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to public purposes within public infrastructure, redevelopment, and economic development projects and setting project time limit of 20 years.
- Freezing property tax bills for seniors 65 and up who live in homes valued at $350,000 or less.
- Expanding tax-deductible saving accounts for first-time home purchases.
- Creating a fund to provide grants to local governments to assist in efforts to consolidate government positions and pursue shared services agreements with other local governments.
- Eliminating election mandates for County Treasurer, Auditor, and Recorder.
- Setting Iowa on a trajectory to allocate 30 percent of Secure an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) funds to property tax relief by state fiscal year 2030.
Transforming Healthcare in Iowa
- Requiring a Continuing Medical Education Nutrition Course for physicians to maintain their Iowa medical licenses.
- Requiring Iowa HHS to seek a waiver for Healthy SNAP and Healthy Summer EBT purchases.
- Prohibiting public schools and public charter schools from providing foods or beverages during the school day that contain certain dyes and additives.
- Allowing psychologists licensed in other states to practice in Iowa.
- Eliminating the Certificate of Need requirement for outpatient behavioral health.
- Allowing human-use ivermectin to be sold over the counter.
- Allowing pharmacists to dispense self-administered hormonal contraceptives to women 18 years and older without a prescription.
- Allowing Iowa to seek a waiver from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to establish a state-based health insurance exchange.
Expanding Educational Freedom
- Enabling all state per pupil funding to follow a student from the public school district of residence to the public charter school of choice.
- Ensuring charter school students can access concurrent enrollment courses.
- Allowing eligible charter school students to participate in extracurricular activities at their public school district of residence.
- Naming charter schools as approved settings for student teachers to gain experience and earn their degree.
- Requiring charter schools to make driver education available for students.
Keeping Iowa’s Farms in the Family
- Updating the Beginner Farmer Tax Credit to include land sales as an eligible transaction, make the credit refundable, and modify lease credits to incentivize more favorable terms for beginning farmers.
- Codifying and expanding an executive order stipulating that a private entity must make the same certification prior to being awarded a contract for state passenger vehicle rental or leasing.
Serving Iowans Who Served Us
- Developing a County Grant Program that incentivizes performance and delivers more benefits to veterans.
- Aligning all counties on one veteran claim system and eliminating paper claim applications.
- Establishing a formal Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs training budget to support county veterans services offices and offer enhanced 1:1 on-the-ground training and assistance.
Preserving Public Safety
- Codifying an executive order on SAVE and E-Verify, requiring by law that state departments confirm employment eligibility and verify immigration status or citizenship.
- Establishing a rebuttable presumption of no bail for all charges of forcible felony and non-simple misdemeanor charges for illegal immigrants.
- Requiring everyone registering to vote to swear he or she is a U.S. citizen and recategorizes the crime of election misconduct as a Class D Felony.
- Codifying an executive order on antisemitism, requiring an annual report on all antisemitic actions from the Regent Universities, community colleges, and public K-12 schools.