“I probably can’t begin without saying if we build it they will come,” Bowman said. He went on to explain that the tax break would boost the rural economy by helping investors preserve the movie site and add a youth sport complex for traveling teams.

He says it’s estimated the expanded site would generate $272-million in revenues over 10 years with 95% of that money coming from out of state. Bowman said the project would get a sales tax rebate on sales that would never have happened without the expansion, so the state has no skin in the game.

But Senator Jack Whitver, a Republican from Ankeny, did not sign on. “It’s just I don’t want to be in the middle of deciding who wins and who loses in government,” Whitver said. In other words giving a tax break to the Field of Dreams project, but not for some other youth sports complex.

“At this time I’m just not comfortable saying we like you we’re going to let you succeed and not you in Ankeny or Sioux City or Council Bluffs,” Whitver said.

“Go the Distance Baseball” is seeking investors to underwrite the $38-million facility. Spokesman David Adelman says the tax break is important to the project.

“It significantly affects our ability to go towards investors, saying that the state is not interested in participating,” Adelman said. Under the bill, the project dubbed “Allstar Ballpark Heaven” would get a sales tax rebate for 10 years or up to 16-million-dollars once they’re up and running.

A similar tax break helped create the Iowa Speedway in Newton. The bill advances to the Senate Economic Growth Committee.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett.

Mayors from Iowa’s 10 largest cities say they “need more, not less” tax revenue to remain the key hubs for jobs in the state.

 The newly-formed “Iowa Metropolitan Coalition” touts an Iowa State University study indicating 62 percent of the jobs in Iowa’s 10 largest cities are filled by people who live in adjacent suburban or rural areas.

Waterloo Mayor Buck Clark is among the mayors and other big-city officials who gathered outdoors for a news conference today on the statehouse stops.

“To specifically point out the importance our core cities have on the entire vitality and financial success on whole regions in the state,” Clark said, in explaining the event. “Our cities provide jobs and quality of life to our own residents, but they also fuel the economy of our counties and of our neighboring communities.”

Republican Governor Terry Branstad and legislators have been debating the idea of reducing the amount of commercial property taxes cities may collect. Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie argued city governments are running bare-bone budgets today and can’t afford more reductions.

“Cities need more dollars for economic development. We need more dollars for infrastructure. We need more dollars for flood (control and mitigation),” Cownie said. “We need more dollars, not less.”

Cities used to get money from bank franchise fees and from property taxes on machinery and equipment, but Cownie said state officials in the past shut down those sources of taxes, too.

“We have an ever shrinking source of revenues,” Cownie said. “I think we have a lot of ideas about what we could do, but certainly the solution for the future of Iowa is not to shrink the revenue sources to the place where this state and job opportunity is growing.”

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett said the economies of Iowa’s largest cities are “equally as strong” as the state’s robust ag economy. 

“Cities oftentimes are on the front lines when it comes job creation,” Corbett said. “We work hand-in-hand individually, and our staffs do, with businesses that are looking to locate and expand in our community.”

According to the analysis from Iowa State University economist David Swenson, 29 percent of Iowans live in the state’s 10 largest cities and those cities generate 39 percent of the state’s gross domestic product.

AUDIO of today’s news conference.

Logo for the Cedar Rapids app.

The City of Cedar Rapids recently introduced an application for smartphones, allowing followers to gain unique access city services. But, the “app” is drawing attention for another reason.

The icon for the application on the city’s webpage features the letters C-R App — or as some are pronouncing it “CRAPP.” Cassie Willis, a spokesperson for the city, says she welcomes the publicity.

“You know what? Anybody who is willing to go take a look at the website and download the app is welcome to do so,” Willis said. “If this gets us more people who are willing to download and use the app, that would be fabulous.”

The abbreviation of Cedar Rapids to “C-R” is nothing new.

Willis believes the city is “lucky” to have initials with a sort of double-meaning.  ”We use the initials CR in all kinds of things. We have an e-newsletter called the CR City Source. We have a website called CR Progress, where you can learn more about all the progress we’re making on our flood recovery. We use CR in a new initiative to clean up our community called CleanUpCR. So, this is nothing new for us,” Willis said of CR App.

“But, hey, if it gets us more publicity and more people are willing to go take a look at the app, we’re willing to welcome them.” Once downloaded to a smartphone, the mobile application appears as “Cedar Rapids,” not “CR App.” Willis believes it’s been a successful venture.

Mug from the Sioux City airport.

She said the city has recorded 1,000 downloads of the mobile application since it was launched two months ago.

City leaders in Sioux City can probably relate to the struggles people in Cedar Rapids might have with “C-R App.” The three letter designation for the Sioux Gateway Airport is “SUX,” which some people pronounce “sucks.”

 Airport officials lobbied the F.A.A. for several years to change to code. Federal officials basically refused, so the airport decided to essentially embrace the designation by featuring the “SUX” code on t-shirts, hats, postcards and coffee mugs sold in the airport’s gift shop.

I.S.U. engineering career fair.

Engineers are in high demand in Iowa right now and today in Ames, more than 200 companies will be meeting with thousands of young people hoping to enter that line of work.

Brian Larson is director of Engineering Career Services at Iowa State University.

“I think the economy is just really picking up and we’re living in a much more technological world, so there’s a big demand for engineers right at the moment,” Larson said.

 He’s helped organize the I.S.U. College of Engineering Spring Career Fair. The event runs from 12 to 6 p.m. at Hilton Coliseum and the Scheman Building.

Many of the fair attendees could end up with a job by the end of the week. “In the days following the career fair, we’ll have upwards of 1,200 interviews happening and many students will be walking away with full-time positions or intern/coop positions,” Larson said. Good job prospects and high salaries are among the reasons Iowa State and other universities are experiencing record engineering enrollments.

Larson notes the average starting salary for an engineer is just over $58,000 a year. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal stated seven of the top 10 highest-paying college majors are engineering degrees.

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The algae is then used in animal feed. BioProcess C.E.O., Tim Burns, says a successful trial last summer of the algae’s use in other products led to the expansion of the Shenandoah facility. “So we’re working with companies now for fish meal replacements and omega oils that are higher-value oils that we’ll be putting out from the farm,” Burns says.

BioProcess plans to begin selling the product made at the new plant in the third quarter of this year. “We are working across the whole platform with companies from the fuel industry to the feed and food industries,” Burns explains. He says their product has shown a lot of versatility.

“Algae has opportunities, has different strengths that can be taken advantage of and grown that can be plugged in to those markets,” Burns says. Construction on the BioProcess facility is expected to be complete in June.

Lottery C.E.O. Terry Rich and A.B.D. administrator Stephen Larson (L-R) in front of truck touting the veterans lottery ticket.

The state agency that handles liquor sales has teamed up with the Iowa Lottery to create a couple of rolling lottery advertisements.

The Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division (ABD) has used space on the sides of its delivery trucks for several years to promote tourism through the “Iowa Great Places” program.

A.B.D. spokesperson, Tonya Dusold, says this expands that program to another area. “This is the first time we’ve partnered with another state agency beyond the Great Places program,” Dusold says.

 The Iowa Lottery has two trucks in the program, one promotes the veterans tickets that raise funds for the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund, and the other truck promotes the “It’s Your Dream Anything Can Happen” game.

Dusold says the trucks travel some 800 to 1,000 miles each week, delivering the alcohol purchased by retailers across the state. She says the trucks are a good way to spread the word about the lottery products.

“The spirit of state government right now is what can we do to help each other out and use the least amount of resources and not do double duty. And so the idea of this came kind of between our administrator Stephen Larson and the Lottery C.E.O. Terry Rich on how we can partner and get their message out for very little to no cost to either agency,” Dusold says.

Dusold says the Iowa Lottery paid for the advertising wraps that go on the trucks. She says those wraps can cost between $2,000 and $5,000. Dusold says it made sense to fill in the blank sides of the trucks as they were already out on the road and the sides were blank.

ABD truck featuring Decorah.

She says A.B.D. is reaching out to other agencies who might be able to take advantage of the rolling advertising on their trucks.

The latest truck in the Great Places program just hit the road and features the city of Decorah. Dusold says there are now 13 semi trailers that feature Iowa Great Places on their sides.

There are plans in the works to add Appanoose County, Council Bluffs and Perry images on the A.B.D. trucks in the coming months. Dusold says it’s estimated trucks provide $60,000 in advertising each year to the Iowa Great Places areas featured on their sides.

“You have the low value of the dollar which is supporting U-S agricultural exports overseas, you have stronger growing incomes in global markets, especially developing countries,like China,” Henderson says. “At the same time you have historically low interest rates which are turning record high farm incomes into record high farm values. So there are all of these similarities underpinning the agricultural economy.”

One of the primary differences though between now and the 1970′s, is the level of debt. “In the 1970′s U.S. agriculture leveraged themselves up, quite a bit, and increased the accumulated debt over that decade, and that’s one thing that we haven’t seen yet at this stage in terms of the agricultural boom of today,” Henderson says.

Henderson says the general economy will probably remain stagnant for a while until unemployment goes down. He says the agricultural economy has given some support to the general economy, particularly in the midwest, where there has been the strongest employment growth, lowest unemployment rates, and the strongest income gains of any region of the country.

“I think going forward what you are going to see its going to be more agriculture in terms of its size of the economy will provide some support going forward, and we’ll need to have some stronger growth in terms of the overall broader economy to help stimulate that agricultural demand domestically, and support of our liberties on our debt and that of what we have been accumulating here recently,” Henderson says.

Henderson says government regulations may play a significant role in determining how fast the general economy may rebound. The Federal Reserve Official says he doesn’t see the Board of Governors making many drastic changes to interest rates in the near future.

By Dennis Morrice, KLEM, Le Mars

Ernie Goss

After a less-than-stellar holiday season, a survey finds Iowa’s economy rebounded in a big way during January.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss says the monthly survey of business leaders in Iowa and eight other Midwestern states is pointing to growth over the next three to six months.

In particular, Goss says Iowa manufacturers are expanding at the strongest pace in the region. “Our survey of supply managers for the month of January was very good,” Goss says.

“(We’re) seeing some good strong numbers, biggest one-month jump that we’ve recorded since October of 2009. The leading economic indicator from the January survey was very strong.”

About one in five supply managers surveyed said farm income growth is contributing to their companies’ expansion. While the December numbers are often the best of the year, Goss says the December 2011 figures were tepid, much lower than expected.

“It looks now, in retrospect, like what happened in December was really just a supply disruption, a hiccup, as you might say,” Goss says. “That supply disruption from Thailand because of the flooding is what brought the overall number down for December.”

For the first time since July, the employment index climbed into positive territory. Surveys over the past several months indicated job growth in the region had slowed significantly, but he says January’s reading is clearly good news on the employment front.

“We’re likely to see continuing employment growth,” Goss says. “In fact, the employment number was very good for the month. It’s still going to take us another 18 months to two years to get back to pre-recession levels for the entire region.”

As Iowa companies expand, both durable and nondurable goods manufacturers reported strong business conditions for the month. He says Iowa firms linked to agriculture and international markets continue to experience very healthy growth.

“We are really at this juncture seeing no significant changes. We’re kind of stuck in an area where there may be efforts underway and we are making some progress, but relative to all the states, were not seeing to consider ourselves out ahead of the curve in most respects,” Smith explained.

The index looks at: economic growth, education and workforce readiness, governance and fiscal matters, health and well being, and workforce demographics and diversity. While there’s not much movement in the index, Smith says it’s not an indictment of the total system.

He says there are some good things in workforce education and readiness in terms of A-C-T scores and the percentage of the population that’s getting a high school degree. “But on the other hand the percentage of our population that’s getting bachelor’s degree is quite low,” Smith says. “And those are the sort of things that employers are concerned about.”

While the index shows things aren’t changing, there are efforts underway to try and make some changes — such as the governor’s education reform plan. “We’re supportive of the efforts by the governor and the legislature to make progress in that area, it seems as though that’s always just a very hard area to affect any significant change,” Smith says.

He says the IBC is hopeful the effort to improve the reading ability of third graders succeeds along with the effort to get more students more proficient in science and math. “That’s going to be critical,” he says. Smith says the IBC wants to keep the focus on the need to improve.

“We’ve identified some of the problems, there are some initiatives out there which have just sort of launched and we’re anxious to see how early results go, the healthiest states initiative being one of those,” Smith says. “It’s good to just try and create an awareness right now.”

You can see the complete index on the IBC website at: www.iowabusinesscouncil.org.

The Iowa Business Council’s 24 members are the top executives of 20 of the largest businesses in the state, the three state university presidents, and Iowa’s largest banking association.

He says it’s now hard to weed out people who report a lower price to pay a lower registration fee. “Maybe the value is substantially lower than the true value of what the vehicle is. We have an investigative unit department that does at times follow leads up on those issues, they do take time,” Trombino says.

He says the state should be relying on a database of vehicle values that is standard for everyone. “If there’s at least some sort of a value-based for that it would reduce a lot of effort from our perspective of kind of chasing these investigations as they come up, and would have a kind of set level that everyone agrees to, just as they do in the second year or beyond as the for the value of that vehicle,” Trombino explains.

Trombino says relying on a database, along with some other changes, could save the state as much as eight-million-dollars each year.

The D.O.T. is trying to find $50-million in “savings” in the agency’s budget this year. Governor Branstad directed the D.O.T. to come up with that amount to be redirected at road construction, rather than raise the state gas tax.