The 2014 legislative session continues to roll along, and District 20 State Representative Clel Baudler says he’s invested much of his time the past couple weeks looking into how the state’s road use tax dollars are spent.

Baudler says the state currently has a shortage in the revenue needed to take care of infrastructure problems, and he is in support of a proposal making its way through the House that would increase the state’s gas tax by three cents, three cents and then four cents over a three-year period.

Baudler explains why he supports this proposal.

“I don’t want to the DOT and the county engineers to have a whole glob of money and not know what to do with it.  I think the money comes in three cents the first year, an additional three cents the second year (and so on), so they can have some long-term planning to fix our infrastructure.”

There hasn’t been a gas tax increase in Iowa in almost 25 years according to Baudler, and he feels fixing the state’s infrastructure is of preeminent importance for our future.

“If we don’t fix this stuff now, well shame on us… we’ll just pass a defective infrastructure onto our kids and grandkids and it will be a whole lot more expensive to fix it down the road.”

Baudler adds that his drone use subcommittee has been working to draft a drone bill but amendments continue to be made, though he does feel a draft is close to being finalized and moved out of his committee for House debate.

To hear more from Representative Baudler as he reflects on recent activity in this legislative session, tune-in to tomorrow’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County on K107 during the 9am, noon and 5 o’clock hours.