The murders at the Iowa State Prison in Anamosa are heartbreaking. After years of cuts and neglect in public safety departments, the governor and Republican lawmakers have failed in their responsibility to keep the dedicated frontline workers in our prisons safe. Iowa’s prisons are 10 percent over capacity and public safety is down 600 employees over the last 10 years.

The Republican budget is inadequate and short-sighted. It falls short of the investment necessary to replace lost and unfilled staff positions while ignoring the outdated safety measures and equipment at Anamosa. We must do better. We need to listen to the workers at Anamosa to hear what they need and look at how to make Iowa’s corrections facilities safe again for the Iowans who put their lives on the line. That means repealing the Chapter 20 changes from 2017 that stripped discussing worker safety from collective bargaining. Robert and Lorena deserve to have their colleagues as a part of the discussion on how to make our state workplaces safer.

The $20 million dollars proposed by the Republicans will not solve this problem. It will not introduce new employees to our prison system. It will only backfill from years of underfunding the corrections systems. This breaks my heart that we let down Robert and Lorena. Please contact your legislators to prevent this from happening again.

The Republican Education Appropriations budget provides no increase for the regents universities.

I am very concerned with the motivation from the Republican party toward our regents universities. I sit on the Educational Appropriations Committee. The budget presented in the committee on Thursday made no sense. The committee provided 0 percent increase in funding for the universities and a freeze on tuition and fees.

The Republican budget provided for funds to our community colleges and student financial aid for private colleges even though they also received funds from the Federal Government COVID relief acts. This lack of equity has me questioning the motives of the Republicans in dealing with universities.

Bills were introduced that would severely impact universities. Many of them did not make it to the floor, but the fact that they were proposed shows a disdain by the Republicans for universities. Bills relating to doing away with tenure, requiring resources of the syllabus to be posted online, a survey to learn the political affiliation of staff members, free speech and diversity training and relating to the resources to be used in classes were all introduced this session.

In one of the meetings, the lead Republican on the dissolution of tenure bill stated this was needed because the universities were no longer a place of divergent thought. I disagree. I feel our universities are bastions of divergent thought, they just might challenge the Republican viewpoint.

Our universities are a key economic factor in our state. A university is a place where anyone can go to learn different viewpoints and see an event through a different lens. By underfunding universities, we harm ourselves, our state and our economic progress. We need to be equitable in budgeting for our educational institutions and not let our political views get in the way of progressing our state.

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Sue Cahill is the state representative for District 71. Contact her at Sue.Cahill@legis.iowa.gov