The Iowa Senate has approved a $115 million supplemental state spending bill but our local lawmaker calls it a “gimmick”.

District 10 State Senator Jake Chapman agrees that some of the spending is needed.
“I believe personally that we have obligations that we have to fulfil.  For example, out of that $115 million, a little over $80 million went to Medicaid.  Those are services that we have promised we are going to provide, they were services provided, and unfortunately we had not budgeted appropriately enough money last year to cover those expenses. So that necessitates us to come back this year and fulfil those obligations that we have.”

But some of the other money Senator Chapman says is just feeding the “never endless appetite for spending”.

“Senate Democrats are taking $30 million out of the ending fund balance, placing it into fiscal year 2017, into a fund called RIIF which is the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund.  RIIF is funding through gaming receipts or casinos.  By doing what they did, they were then able to take $25 million of gaming receipts and put it in the general fund for fiscal year 2017.  Thereby freeing up additional dollars to spend more money.”

Chapman voted against the bill, as did the rest of the Republicans in the Senate.

He’ll tell us more about this and other happenings at the capitol on today’s Let’s Talk Dallas County during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours.