We are now at the half-way point in this session. Next week will be the busiest week yet, as sub-committees and committees race to beat the first funnel deadline that comes at the end of the week. Any bill that has not been passed by at least one committee by Friday, March 11, will not be considered during this session.

In the next few weeks, the major decisions regarding budgets for education and health care will be made. Influencing the debate on those two major parts of the state budget is the proposal to increase the tobacco tax. Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate have so far refused to consider any tobacco excise tax increase. An attempt to balance the budget without raising tobacco taxes leaves a $129 million hole in the budget that was proposed by Gov. Vilsack. This refusal to increase tobacco taxes will cost us in many ways, but one of the most significant losses is in addressing the needs of parents and very young children in our state.

Unfortunately, during the past week the debate regarding early childhood legislation was treated by some legislators as a political football. We cannot afford to play political games with the lives of our very youngest citizens. We know that 85% of intellect, social skills and personality are developed by the age of 5. More brain development happens during the first five years of life than in the next twenty years. We also know that fewer than 18% of Iowa’s children attend a quality, accredited preschool, in spite of the fact that research has shown that for every $1 invested in high quality preschool programs there is a $7 return on investment.

High quality early education programs have been shown to reduce future costs associated with special education, remedial education, school drop out rates, teen pregnancies, juvenile crime, welfare and adult incarceration. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that investments in high quality early education brought a higher rate of financial return on investment than virtually any other type of economic development activity.

Iowa ranks fourth in the nation (69.8%) of children under 6 years old with all parents in the labor force. Unfortunately, Iowa also ranks very low in the quality of child care and preschool settings available to these working parents. This makes early childhood a critical economic development and work-force development issue for the State of Iowa.

When I helped author our state-wide early childhood initiative, Community Empowerment, in 1998, it was a bi-partisan effort, and it passed with strong bi-partisan support. I still believe that we have a responsibility to assure that Iowa's youngest children have safe, high-quality child care and preschool settings where they can flourish while their parents are working to build Iowa’s economy. I have made arrangements to put together a House task force of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats to find consensus on workable solutions and to make recommendations to expand Community Empowerment and to address some of these critical early childhood issues in a bi-partisan way.

One of the most important investments we can make in the state of Iowa is in the area of early childhood. To learn more about Iowa’s and Linn County’s effort to address the needs of our zero to five year old children, I urge readers to attend the Early Childhood forum on March 15, 7 PM, at the Hills Bank meeting room in Mount Vernon.

Many of you know that when I was visiting various state institutions, I asked the supervisor of correctional officers in a prison how legislators could be the most helpful to the prison system. His response surprised me. "Invest more money in early childhood education and quit building prisons". I couldn't agree more.

You can write me at the State Capitol, Des Moines, IA 50319; call 515/281-3221 or e-mail me at ro.foege@legis.state.ia.us.

Ro

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