I met my friend K.C. inside the Panoramic Awareness Pavilion in the southeast corner of the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park. 

The pavilion is a light sculpture created by artist Olafur Eliasson. Its 23 panes of colored glass are arranged in a circle. The vertical panes are opaque mirrors that fade to varying colors – sort of like a psychedelic house of colored mirrors. 

“All these distortions remind me of the oopses state government keeps making,” he said with a sly smile.  

“It’s one thing to have a bunch of random mistakes,” he continued, “but too many of their misfires go in one direction – against local governments. They’re making it really hard for cities, counties and schools.”

“Give me an example,” I said.

“A really bad one was the effort several years back to cap value increases of commercial property,” he said. “Lawmakers promised to backfill the lost property taxes with state money, but they reneged. 

“As a result, cities had to cut back on street repairs, police and fire protection, and stuff like that; schools eliminated special education programs and extracurricular activities.

“Then they screwed up again on property taxes last year. They said they were making meaningless changes in tax calculations, but when they wrote the law, they failed to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. What came out of the meat grinder was a change that would increase property taxes by $130 million a year.” 

“Didn’t they just fix that?” I said.

“They did,” he replied. “They passed it on to local governments, like they did before. Now, cities and schools have to make up the difference in budgets that were already drawn up for the coming year. That means more cuts for public safety, street repairs and schools. Just like before.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess that’s what happens when you get in a hurry and don’t check your work.”

“It’s going to be even worse when this session gets done,” K.C. said, “because they’re doing a lot of stuff in a hurry and not checking any of their work.” 

“Such as?” I asked.

“School vouchers, for one. They rammed that bill through without giving anyone time to think it through and do the math so they could really know the impact. 

“The math they did was with numbers the governor pulled out of thin air and are likely a  massive understatement of what the program will cost.

“They say it will cost $341 million a year when fully implemented. But it could be half a billion dollars or more, if you believe that the governor lowballed estimates on how many families will take advantage of the vouchers. 

“The voucher law was rammed through so fast that opponents never had a chance to question the numbers or show why the governor’s estimates did not make sense, which they don’t.

“Nor did they give anyone a chance to predict what will happen when all of a sudden you flood Iowa’s private schools with oodles of money.

“They will grow like weeds with little control. There will be lots of room for graft and corruption, because they are going to start immediately before any meaningful controls are in place.

“But that won’t even be the biggest oops this year,” K.C. continued.

“After changing the income tax from progressive rates to a flat rate that takes effect this year, the governor now wants to eliminate the income tax altogether. 

“And she wants to do it before she even knows what impact her flat tax will have beyond reducing state revenue by $2 billion a year. 

“She’s doing that because the state is still flush with federal pandemic money, which has kept businesses operating for the past two years. But what happens when that money runs out and state government finds itself short $2 billion, which is about a quarter of its budget?

“It’s all blue smoke and mirrors,” he said, as he walked out of the colored-glass pavilion.