‘Fired up for Fred’

Democratic Party candidate for governor Fred Hubbell made a campaign stop Thursday in Creston at the Union County Democratic Headquarters, 216 W. Montgomery St.

The packed room heard about issues ranging from health care and education to economic growth and ways he plans to balance and restructure the state budget.

“Let’s talk about why we really need to win this race,” said Hubbell. “Governor Vilsak and I spent a better part ... going around and meeting with a lot of different groups, and every single group we met with said, ‘This is the most important election for the governor in Iowa in the last 50 years.’ And, that that includes the time that he was running for governor. He thinks we’re running at a crossroads and we need a change.”

What’s at stake

Medicaid privatization was the first issue Hubbell highlighted.

“There isn’t anyone here that doesn’t think we shouldn’t stop that as soon as we can,” said Hubbell.

At a number of mental health round tables Hubbell has attended, he said patients and providers alike claim mental health access and affordability is, in fact, getting worse.

“Over 70 percent of the people who have mental health are also on medicaid,” said Hubbell. “So they are getting hurt both ways. Our mental health system is broken.”

Hubbell said, as governor, he wants to make Iowa schools the best in the nation again. After meeting with his constituents on the campaign trail, many of which are educators, he said the message is the same.

“There are more kids in every classroom. There’s more of society’s issues showing up in every classroom, so the teachers are being expected to handle more challenges and more issues with more kids and less resources,” said Hubbell.

He said it’s no surprise that Iowa is no longer the best in the nation in terms of education, but he said he is committed to changing that.

Hubbell called for more funding for higher education and workforce development.

“Tuition there is going up,” said Hubbell. “For three years in a row they’ve been reducing funding for the community colleges. That just means more student debt and more kids that can’t afford to go to college.”

Hubbell said with the closing of more Iowa Workforce Development locations under the current administration, more funding needs to be reallocated to those agencies and programs to meet the demand of unfilled skilled labor jobs.

“There are literally thousands of jobs still available on the Iowa Workforce Development website – tens of thousands – literally,” he said. “And, they are taking away more of the workforce development centers, so it’s harder to find the jobs and its harder to find the training.”

Hubbell said, in the state of Iowa, 40 percent of the working class can’t meet the basic needs for food, shelter and clothing.

One person from the crowd pointed out that Iowa is 43rd in the nation for minimum wage, which stands at $7.25 an hour. Hubbell agreed and proposed raising the minimum wage and making it easier for more communities to have the flexibility to go higher.

“We need to raise the state minimum first,” he said.

Hubbell pointed out that Iowa has been between 46th and 49th in the U.S. for personal income growth.

“People aren’t getting a much better opportunity in our state these days. No personal income growth. Education is not as good as it used to be. Health care accessibility and affordability is going the wrong direction,” said Hubbell. “We need change, and we need a governor who knows how to produce a balanced budget with the right priorities.”

On collective bargaining, Hubbell said the goal is to restore it so that people – in education, human services and infrastructure – can negotiate higher wages and benefits.

He said the current state administration’s budget reductions are detrimental and are comparable to a budget model seen in Kansas, where districts are underfunded and schools have turned to a four-day school week.

Budget

When asked about where the money would come from to support his plan, Hubbell said one way is to change business, investment and corporate tax credits to deductions.

While some of those credits make sense, Hubbel said the state budget can be distributed a bit differently. As the state department head of economic development in 2009, Hubbell said he – alongside a panel of state department heads, economists, and analysts from Iowa State University and University of Iowa – reviewed every corporate and individual tax credit, tax deduction and tax exemption to weigh its benefit.

In their research, for every dollar spent, the panel recommended that tax credits, deduction and exemption that did not return more than the investment be reduced or eliminated, and to keep or add additional funding to the credits, deduction and exemptions that generated revenue.

“And, if you add up all of those recommendations, it’s $161 million dollars in 2009 that we could have been saving every year if we stopped making those wasteful decisions and instead be using that to invest in health care, education and infrastructure. That’s eight years now of $161 million dollars that we could have been saving,” said Hubbell.

Hubbell called for less investment in corporations and more investment in the people of Iowa.

“People are the best resources we have,” said Hubbell. “If we invest in our people, they will make our communities and make our state better.”