Today, a spokesperson for Governor Kim Reynolds announced that the Governor would be ducking responsibility for the Reynolds Budget Crisis and risk waiting until 2018 to fix the massive budget issues facing the state.
Five years ago, the state of Iowa had a budget surplus of nearly $1 billion and another $600 million in reserves, but today the Reynolds Administration is officially closing the books on a $350 million dollar deficit in the last fiscal year—a direct result of the massive special interest tax giveaways she championed in 2013.

While Governor Reynolds may try to hide from her responsibilities, she can’t escape the impacts the Reynolds Budget Crisis is having across Iowa:

A recent report from the Des Moines Register found that not only have these handouts destroyed our financial stability, they have not produced the economic gains Reynolds and her team promised.

These special interest giveaways are depriving Iowa’s towns of revenue they were promised to keep vital services like schools and law enforcement running. Just yesterday, Reynolds announced that, thanks to the Reynolds Budget Crisis, she may not be providing those promised resources to local towns and schools after all.

Iowa towns and all those who rely on the services provided by them (roads, police, etc) are not the only ones suffering from the blowback of the Reynolds Budget Crisis.

Under cuts forced by the Reynolds Budget Crisis, Iowa’s schools were significantly underfunded. Third graders in need of assistance to reach critical reading levels were stripped of a promised summer program. Schools were forced to look at consolidations and growing class sizes. Slashed resources for state universities and community colleges have led to tuition hikes, passing on the cost of Reynolds’ cuts to Iowa families.

Cuts hit the Department of Human Services hard, putting lives, including those of children and seniors, in danger. As Iowa still reels from reports of teen girls in foster care starving to death last year due to failures of underfunded DHS programs, further cuts call the Department’s ability to care for the most vulnerable Iowans into even sharper question.

Even following stories of rampant abuse going unreported in nursing homes, Governor Reynolds told the agency that serves as a nursing home watchdog to tighten their belts—even after the Director said there was nothing left to cut but services.

By hiding from her own budgetary disaster and punting to save political face, Governor Reynolds is only ensuring that these problems will get worse over the next year.

“Kim Reynolds is trying to hide from her own budgetary disaster to avoid political blame, risking our future more than she already has with her fiscally irresponsible special interest handouts,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price. “But she can’t hide from the impact of the Reynolds Budget Crisis. Iowa families already feel the pain from her mismanagement. Iowans will remember Reynolds’ cowardice and refusal to do her job in 2018.”