Locals urge legislators to watch medical, school bills

(Sentinel photo by Magdalene Landegent) Sen. Randy Feenstra and Rep. Chuck Soderberg touched on issues ranging from money for job training to proposed changes for community hospitals. [Click to enlarge]

Plymouth County residents concerned with proposed Iowa laws impacting everything from school dollars to anesthesiology in rural hospitals spent Saturday morning bringing questions before the local legislators.

At the Le Mars Public Library, Republicans Sen. Randy Feenstra and Rep. Chuck Soderberg held their first public forum of the year, outlining the beginning of the legislative session and hearing citizens' concerns.

Reorganizing government

Feenstra spoke on Study Bill 3030, legislation designed to reorganize government to save costs.

He spent part of the summer working with two other senators, both Democrats, writing the 300-page bill, which he says is a mix of good and bad, lumped together.

"That's not how I would have done it; I would have separated it out and voted on each piece," Feenstra said.

The bill would push to merge all the state's computers onto one mainframe instead of each agency having its own mainframe, which Feenstra said could be a good idea.

It would combine state agencies that are duplicating programs and cut the number of supervisors per agency from an 1-to-8 ratio to a 1-to-14 ratio over a number of years, Feenstra explained.

"There's such a bureaucracy," he said. "We need to move to where there's less middle management."

Bill 3030 also has items he wants to strike, including a rule that would allow government agencies to simply post public notices online, instead of in local newspapers.

Local pork producer Bill Tentinger shared his concern the bill would eliminate a commission that directs state dollars for livestock research.

Tentinger, a member of that Iowa Livestock Health Advisory Commission, said the group was created by the Legislature a few years ago to decide how to allocate those dollars.

Last year, the committee allocated $200,000 to various research projects at the Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine.

Eliminating the committee, Tentinger said, would cut out the livestock expertise from that allocation process.

The commission's total expenses for a year are $600, he added.

"If you have to cut the funding for a period of time, do it," he said. "If $600 for the annual expenses for the committee is a problem, I think there are a lot of committee members that would do it for free."

Schools

Soderberg said four education bills passed in the House of Representatives Friday, including one that required schools to limit their cash reserves to 20 percent.

Mark Stelzer, a Le Mars Community Schools board member, spoke at the meeting saying although schools may have cash reserves, it's not "extra money."

It's like having money for February's mortgage payment in the bank in January, he explained.

"That doesn't mean it's available to spend," Stelzer said.

Soderberg agreed.

"There are 10 or less school districts that have an undesignated balance to be utilized," he said.

Feenstra pointed out that rural schools need the reserves for times when enrollment fluctuates greatly.

However, the bill is all bark and no bite, Feenstra said.

LCS board member Dan Smith urged the two legislators to fight against education cuts.

"We're at the point in schools where we're going to either have to raise property taxes or we're going to have to reduce our ability to provide an education," Smith said.

The state government is shifting things around with no net gain, he said after the meeting.

"It ends up that a lot of the hard decisions aren't being made in Des Moines," Smith said. "They're going to come down to us locally."

Soderberg said the other education bills passed in the House Friday included one that pushed back deciding on schools' allowable growth for fiscal year 2012 until next year. That decision is usually made 18 months ahead of time, giving districts a better idea of how to plan their budgets.

Soderberg noted proposals for next year's allowable growth were at 2 percent, but nothing is approved at this time.

A pain for local hospitals

Floyd Valley Hospital (FVH) Administrator Mike Donlin spoke against another bill that would take away the ability for rural hospitals like FVH to administer certain types of anesthesia.

Physician anesthesiologists provide anesthetic care in urban hospitals and nurse anesthetists provide it in rural hospitals, he explained.

The proposed law would only allow physician anesthesiologists to do certain procedures that nurse anesthetists have been doing for more than 10 years, according to Gary Tillman, a nurse anesthetist at FVH, who was also at Saturday's forum.

"Tens of thousands of patients will have to go somewhere else, rather than have this done in a community hospital with money spent locally," he said.

Most impacted would be people who receive anesthesiology treatments for back pain, Tillman said.

He and Donlin urged the legislators to vote against the measure.

Job training dollars

Neal Adler, director of the Le Mars Area Chamber of Commerce, asked the legislators to protect a program that connects businesses in Iowa with money to train workers.

Currently, the program is a 3-percent withholding tax, but a committee is looking to do away with that system and replace it with a pool of dollars.

"I think that would be a huge mistake. It's probably the best program we have in the state to work with our industries and businesses," Adler said. "Plymouth County last year accessed just under half a million dollars for businesses here to assist them in job training."

The legislators took note of his concern.

Feenstra and Soderberg will continue meeting with Le Mars residents and other in their district throughout the session.