The following op-ed originally appeared in the Des Moines Register.
GOP wants businesses to control environmental research
It’s all about priorities.
That’s what Rep. Pat Grassley, Republican from New Hartford, said Monday about his party’s plan to root out centers for environmental research at two state universities.
“We have to make these tough decisions, and we’re to a point in budgeting where we have to prioritize priorities, because of a decline in state revenue,” Grassley, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee said.
The Legislature is moving toward adjournment, perhaps as soon as this week. So time is running out for Iowans to ensure their priorities get a fair shake.
Grassley had just heard from dozens of Iowans who turned up for a mid-morning public hearing on the proposed state budget. Many spoke against plans to close the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. The center, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, pioneered many water-protection measures in place on Iowa farms today.
He also made a new claim: The Leopold Center was never intended to get state money indefinitely, and private industry was expected to help support it.
“And my understanding of when it was created in the Legislature, it was to get this organization up and running and obviously with the goal that some private industries would help contribute to that and there’s been very little of that,” Grassley said.
That’s news to Senate Minority Leader Rob Hogg. “The Leopold Center’s been a magnet for students who want to study sustainable agriculture, and it’s provided a really valuable public service for Iowa producers who want to diversify, who want get new markets, who want to reduce their costs and who want to compete economically,” Hogg said.
He said he had heard GOP lawmakers make the same claim about the Iowa Flood Center, which was zeroed out in the original budget proposal. The House Appropriations Committee restored most of the $1.5 million budget last week but left a $300,000 cut.
“It was never intended to be temporary,” Hogg said of the flood center. He also lamented that most of the money to restore the flood center came from the University of Iowa’s general appropriation. So lawmakers put back some of the money they snatched from one UI pocket, only to lift it out of another pocket.
Three former lawmakers who co-authored the 1987 bill to create the Leopold Center — Paul Johnson, David Osterberg and Ralph Rosenberg, also say they never intended for it to be supported by industry. On the contrary, the Leopold Center “was created in part out of a reaction against the growing influence of industry in our research institutions,” Johnson said in an email.
Farmers, environmental advocates and others at Monday’s public hearing argued the Leopold Center’s research and assistance is vital to their work. They said the need for the center is by no means completed, as some GOP lawmakers had claimed in defense of the cut.
“Why is it when we have a budget crisis that we use that as an opportunity to treat conservation and quality of life like the crumbs, and then we move those aside and they are the last to be regarded,” Joe McGovern of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation said during the hearing.
Angie Carter of Davenport, an Iowa State University alumna, objected to the lack of transparency involved in the decision to cut the Leopold Center’s funding. “This is a non-partisan center that is being put on the chopping block through partisan politicking,” she said.
Republicans apparently also plan to close the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) at the University of Iowa in four years. Lawmakers say that is part of the Iowa Energy Center’s move from ISU to the Iowa Department of Economic Development. The proposal hasn’t gotten much attention, perhaps because the ax will fall in 2022 instead of this summer.
The center supports $225,000 in environmental research grants to Iowa universities and colleges throughout the state each year and brings in about $20 million in new external research grants, according to CGRER’s website.
The consolidation of these university research centers into the state’s economic development agency no doubt pleases industry. In fact, the only person at the two-hour budget hearing who spoke in favor of any part of the budget was from rural electric cooperatives, praising the Energy Center move.
Universities can and should seek knowledge that doesn’t directly benefit business. Researchers might raise pesky concerns about the environmental impact of industry operations. It doesn’t make sense to expect an organization like the Leopold Center to be 100 percent privately funded by industry. And the state economic development department’s mission isn’t to foster that sort of research on energy. Lawmakers seem to be making sure nobody else will, either.
It’s all about priorities, and remaining a national leader in independent environmental research apparently isn’t one of them.