After a year of bumpy roads filled with budget cuts, Iowa’s legislators have mixed feelings about the year’s accomplishments.

Many of the legislators agreed the highlight of this year’s sessions was a progressive tax cut on the state utility tax.

“The best thing to come out of this session was the tax break on utilities, phased out over five years,” said Rep. Joe Seng, D-Davenport. “It is a regressive tax on gas and electricity. It was a positive thing that needed to be done.”

Sen. Johnie Hammond, D-Ames, said if anything good came out of the Legislature, it was the tax cut on utilities.

“There wasn’t much good that came out of the Legislature this session,” Hammond said.

Sen. John Jensen, R-Plainfield, said he has high hopes for the special session on June 19.

“The best thing is yet to come out the Legislature. Hopefully, if we can get more power plants built,” he said, “that will save us from being another California.”

Legislative members had different opinions on issues they thought were not handled very well this session.

Hammond said there were many things this session that could have been handled differently, like the energy policy, among other things.

“It was really bad that when there was a slow down in our economy the Republicans cut Work Force Development Program,” Hammond said. “The program has nothing to due with state revenue. It is paid by a surcharge on employers, but it was the Republicans’ chance to downsize government.”

The budget crisis was another issue this year’s legislative session was forced to tackle. “We cut more than we should have, especially from Iowa, Iowa State, UNI and community colleges that could have been buffered with the emergency fund,” Seng said.

He said that the Republicans were fiscally responsible in the handling of the budget.

Hammond said the budget could have been handled in a better manner.

“We needed to cut and reduce the budget, but it was not done in a systematic way by protecting education, optimizing federal dollars and put criteria in place, which was not done except with K-12 education,” she said. “This caused higher education to take disproportionate hits.”

Republicans saw the budget situation from another view.

“We handled the budget situation as good as possible with the money available and the lack of revenue,” Jensen said.

He said education and human resources make up about 85 percent of where the revenue generated by the Legislature goes.

“With education getting so much of the revenue, if you have to cut, than education has to accept the cuts and that is the way it had to be,” Jensen said.

Rep. Barbara Finch, R-Ames, said the Legislature looked at areas where federal money was available in deciding the budget cuts. “Every part of the Legislature tried to propitiate the cuts the best they could,” she said.

A more controversial issue was the “woman’s right to know” bill, which would require abortion clinics to give clients informational brochures about alternatives to having an abortion.

“The `woman’s right to know’ bill can make people stop and think before they do something serious, and that was the intent of the bill,” Jensen said.

Finch said that the information should be given to women because not everyone has all the information on alternatives.

Hammond disagreed.

“The woman’s right to know bill was not necessary; it showed a complete disregard for intelligence of women or the competence of the physician,” she said.

She said that women do look at alternatives before deciding on abortion.

RU-486 was another issue that received attention this year, especially whether the pill would be allowed at the ISU Student Health Center.

“I honestly believe that student health centers are not appropriate for RU-486; there are other areas where women can receive abortions,” Finch said.

Hammond said health centers may still carry the pill, but it may cost them.

“The student health service gets very little money from the state, so if they want to sell RU-486 they could, but they would lose state money and student fees would rise,” Hammond said.

An issue that gained significant coverage this year was the “English as the official language of Iowa” bill.

“There was a lot more made about the `English-only’ bill than there really was; the bill would not have changed anything,” Jensen said.

Seng said that the “English-only” bill was detrimental.

“This national organization that wants the state to adopt some form of `English-only’ bill and again it does not do anything meaningful, but it does hurt people who’s first language is not English,” he said.