Iowa lawmakers shift mental-health funding to state

The 2021 legislative session of the Iowa General Assembly passed major legislation on several issues including charter schools, law enforcement, child care, mental health funding and concealed carry.

“The tax reform bill was a big deal. It’s going to give a lot of real tax relief to a lot of people, particularly this part about mental health funding” said Sen. Mark Costello, R-Imogne.

The bill shifted mental health funding from the county to the state level. He said there were inequities in the levels of funding from county to county, and that’s why most other states fund mental health at the state level.

“Some of the counties had a cap on the levies so they couldn’t pay more. It just makes it more consistent. And the state has put more requirements on the services that need to be offered,” Costello said.

Senate File 546 allows charter schools to be created without being approved by a local school board.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction to give parents a bit more of a choice in education,” said Rep. Cecil Dolecheck, R-Mount Ayr. “There are some disadvantaged areas of the state that might be able to take advantage of it.”

Costello said he was happy to support the “Back the Blue Act,” which signed last week. It provides qualified immunity for law enforcement.

“Police have always had, in general, qualified immunity. And there were some concerns that it was going to be taken away, and we wanted to make sure that it is not,”said Sen. Mark Costello, R-Imogne. “Now that doesn’t mean they can’t be sued if they do something really wrong. But of course, in their normal duties, they have to make a lot of quick decisions. And if they don’t have some degree of protection for mistakes, then it could be a real problem. So I think it was important that we got that done.”

Dolecheck they also boosted funding to law enforcement.

“That package that we passed for the budget put about $20 million in new money into corrections and the Department of Public Safety, to be able to hire the officers to get out in the street and do the job,” he said. “We’ve been lacking for quite some time with not enough funding to be able to get the numbers up where they were about 10 or 12 years ago.”

Dolecheck said he was pleased with a bill to fund child care resource centers and provide a tax credit to help parents send their children to daycare.

“I think that was a very important piece of bipartisan legislation that both chambers worked in concert with the minority and majority parties to get those very important issues passed,” he said. “So that was another big positive that’s come out of a very bipartisan effort to work together.”

Costello said he was disappointed that a bottle bill to better reimburse stores or “redemption centers” that take back bottles and cans with a five cent deposit. He said the redemption centers don’t make enough money from the one cent per bottle to pay their workers for the necessary labor.

“There are a couple of different options out there to maybe give the redemption centers more of a payment. Instead of one cent I think it would go to two cents,” Costello said. “One of the options was that the redemption centers would take the cans and get to sell them as part of their income, which is not the case now.”

Rep. Tom Moore, R-Griswold, said permitless concealed carry of handguns was a necessary change.

“That instituted what we call constitutional carry, because of the Second Amendment to the Constitution that affords everybody the right to keep and bear arms. We took away the criteria for having to have a permit, as long as you’re not a felon or a convicted abuser,” Moore said.

“I have my carry permit so I can carry my 9mm handgun with me in the vehicle as a carry weapon. A lot of times I keep it in either the center counsel or the door of my pickup truck,” he said. “Well, my daughter doesn’t have a carry permit. But there are times when she comes to visit me from New York and she jumps in my pickup and drives. Now she gets pulled over, she’s in violation of the law even though she maybe didn’t know the gun was in there.”

He said the bill also increased the penalty on private individuals who sell firearms to felons.