TheThompson Times

By State Rep. Mark Thompson

This past week Iowa students joined Governor Reynolds to support the signing of the no cellphones during class time legislation. It became law this week. The communities that started the policy in the last couple of years have seen profound changes as grades rise, students are more engaged in the classroom and also with each other. I am very glad we were able to get this legislation passed.

By statute, our last day of pay was May 2. The House is in a pause waiting on some Senate business to finish and to work on budget negotiations. Those negotiations revolve around, among other things, para-educator pay. While the majority of the House were at home on standby I continued to travel to the Capitol to work on legislation with the Senate. The Justice Appropriations which I am vice-chair met to discuss the funding of our courts and state law enforcement agencies. During those meeting I learned we have 2 Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers dedicated to human trafficking, and 65 DPS officers dedicated to ensuring rules governing casinos are enforced. Those numbers have grabbed my attention and I will continue to research.

This week, the House, Senate and Governor all released their targets for the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. This is an important step toward reaching final budget agreements.

The House are moving forward with a state budget of $9.453 billion for the next fiscal year beginning July 1, 2025. The proposed budget is an increase of $506 million over the current year's spending level of $8.947 billion. This amount is an increase of 5.65 percent over Fiscal Year 2025.

The Senate and Governor agree on an overall budget number of $9.417 billion, about $36 million lower than the House budget.

The Iowa House has built our reputation on passing responsible budgets that have allowed us to lower the tax burden while funding Iowans' budget priorities. This budget is fiscally responsible while following through on the commitments we have made and properly funding the priorities of Iowans.

The House fighting for a budget that uses Iowans’ taxpayer dollars wisely to fund important priorities like caring for elderly Iowans in nursing homes, maintaining our commitment to increased paraprofessional pay, and providing support for human trafficking victims.

House Releases Health & Human Services Budget

This week, the House and Senate both released FY2026 Health and Human Services Budgets. 

The House budget appropriates $2.47 billion of state general fund to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Health and Human Services. This is a $253 million increase in general fund compared to FY2025. In total with federal matching funds, the House budget appropriates over $6 billion towards Medicaid, childcare, child welfare, public health, aging and veteran services in Iowa.

1. Fully Funding Medicaid – This budget appropriates an additional $20 million on top of the March Medicaid estimate for FY26. The House is dedicated to fully funding Medicaid and have always provided that commitment to vulnerable Iowans. Allegations that Medicaid is not being funded are inaccurate. 

2. Provider rate adjustments – This budget provides necessary increases to the following Medicaid providers:

•Nursing Homes – The House has fully funded Iowa’s nursing homes at the rate developed through cost reporting. This $25 million of state funding amounts to almost $70 million increase to Iowa’s nursing homes to care for Iowa’s elderly. 

•Home and Community-Based Services – The House budget provides a $3 million increase to care for Iowa’s disabled population in their communities, which amounts to $8.5 million in total funding increase. 

•Maternal Health – Increases rates for prenatal, delivery and postnatal care

•Dentists – Provides $3.1 million to increase dental rates to the 85% Medicare benchmark

•Pharmacy – Provides a $1 million increase to the Medicaid dispensing fee

•Prosthetics – Increases prosthetic and orthotic provider rates by $295,000

3. Mental Health –

•Autism Coverage – fully funds adding autism coverage to the hawk-i program ensuring over 600 youth have access to autism care

•Commitment Discharge – adds in the majority of House File 385 that requires responsible discharge planning for individuals committed for substance abuse or mental health. 

•Commitment Hearing Testimony – adds in House File 313 that allows PAs and ARNPs to testify at committal hearings if they witnessed the examination, reviewed the report, and the professional that examined the individual is unable to attend the hearing. 

4. Adoption and Foster care – This bill increases foster care and adoption subsidy rates by 5%

5. Emergency Medical Services – Funds House File 977 to expand federal support for Iowa’s EMS providers. This bill will enable additional tens of millions of dollars to come to the state to support rural EMS.

6. Personal Needs Allowance – increases the monthly allotment for Medicaid individuals in nursing facilities to retain $65 per month to pay towards personal needs. 

7. SNAP – Double Up Food Bucks – Fully funds the $1 million in House File 970. This bill importantly provides a $1 million appropriation to the Double Up Food Bucks Program if Iowa receives federal approval to include healthy food based on necessary nutrition for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

8. Veterans – Fully funds House File 1000, which appropriates $250,000 to the veterans service organization grant program to provide matching funds for employing new staff to assist veterans with federal claims. 

Government Oversight Meeting 

 This week, the House Government Oversight Committee met for another hearing on the misallocation of court debt funds by the Iowa Judicial Branch. 

The committee heard testimony from Iowa State Auditor Rob Sandon his office’s attempt to catch the misallocations in a timely manner.  In the meeting, Auditor Sand continued to downplay the significance of the at least $27 million that was misallocated. Auditor Sand says that those funds were not lost and instead were redirected to the general fund, but we have yet to see satisfactory documentation to verify whether that is true.

This misallocation has had significant consequences. Victims of crime have been denied timely compensation owed to them, infrastructure projects such as bridge repairs and road improvements have been delayed, and community safety programs have been underfunded. One of the biggest issues we have here is the lack of timely communication to the Legislature from both the Judicial Branch and the Auditor once they were made aware that there was an issue.

The House Government Oversight Committee is committed to a thorough investigation to uncover the full scope of this misallocation, ensure accountability, and prevent future errors.  The people of Iowa deserve a government that prioritizes transparency, safeguards public resources, holds public entities accountable when funds are improperly dispersed, and delivers on its promises to support victims, infrastructure, and community safety