![]() “And that’s the pitch that I made to the legislators: They have the ultimate decision by setting the budget. “The budget is the constraints,” she said. And, hopefully, we’ll get that across the finish line.” Giving more leeway in setting state agency directors’ salariesĪfter Republican state lawmakers gave the governor’s office more freedom to set the salaries of state department and agency heads, via a massive executive reorganization plan, Reynolds said Thursday the state budget is what will limit how high those salaries can go. “We’ve tried a lot of different paths to get there, and we haven’t been successful yet. “Hopefully, we can continue to work with the legislators and continue to educate them and talk about why we believe it’s the right thing to do,” Reynolds said. The proposal passed the Republican-led Iowa Senate this session, but not the Republican-led Iowa House Reynolds said she will try again next year to convince state lawmakers to pass her proposal to make birth control accessible through a pharmacist without a doctor’s visit. “And I just don’t think it’s unreasonable that we can’t come to some resolution through the arbitration process.” Planning another go at behind-the-counter birth control And … to go to the courts, to have executive branch agencies competing against each other, the taxpayers have to pay for it twice,” she said. “If my agencies have some conflict, we bring them in, we set them down, and we ask them to work it out. It puts a process in place that allows us to do that,” Reynolds said. And I think Iowans expect the executive branch to be able to work things out. “The auditor’s office is part of the executive branch. Critics of the bill have called it a politically motivated power grab. Iowa’s current state auditor, Rob Sand, is the lone Democrat in a statewide elected office. Comptroller General David Walker, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents. The arbitration panel is comprised of the auditor’s office, the state department or agency that is being investigated, and a representative of the governor’s office.Ĭritics of the legislation include the National State Auditors Association, the Institute of Internal Auditors, and former U.S. The arbitration panel’s ruling would be final, with the auditor no longer able to challenge the decision in court. The bill also eliminates the ability for the office to challenge the decision of a three-member arbitration panel to settle disputes over the auditor’s access to information. Reynolds has not yet signed into law legislation, passed by Republican lawmakers, that would restrict some information that the state auditor’s office can access during an audit investigation. Reynolds said she does not feel that reports of some Iowa private schools increasing tuition weakens the state’s new financial assistance program.ĭefending bill to constrain state auditor Reynolds keeping an eye on private school tuition Reynolds made the comments while discussing education and myriad other topics while recording her appearance on this weekend’s episode of “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS. In the 2021-22 school year, the average was $59,581, which put Iowa 27th in the nation, according to the National Education Association. Iowa’s average full-time teacher salary in the 2022-23 school year was just above $63,000, according to state education department data. ![]() And then we’ll take a look at that next year … continue to work on teachers’ salaries moving forward,” she said. “We’ve given them a mechanism to do that right now. “They weren’t able to pay, a lot of times, as much as some of the more urban school districts were able to pay,” Reynolds said, while highlighting legislation passed this session that provided some regulatory flexibility for school districts to use more funding sources to pay for teachers’ salaries.
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