Legislators of both parties have decided the state should assemble a two billion dollar pot of money to lure biotech and life science companies to Iowa. That’s four times what Governor Vilsack originally suggested. Senator Jeff Lamberti, a republican from Ankeny, says legislators want the state to make a big splash. Lamberti says they want to start at a place that’s big and bold, and “extremely large.”Lamberti says they haven’t decided how they’d raise the money yet — the Farm Bureau has suggested a statewide property tax that’d leverage the two billion. Nor have legislators decided how the two billion would be spent. This would be a departure from the idea of the state being a “pay-as-you-go” operation.Lamberti says he’s never one to say all debt is bad, especially if money can be borrowed in a “financially responsible way.”
