Legislators have apparently made at least one decision on creation of a huge fund to boost the state’s economy. Governor Tom Vilsack in January proposed a $500 MILLION economic development fund that’d be used to help build research facilities and lure high tech businesses to locate or expand in Iowa. Just over a month ago, the Iowa Farm Bureau outlined a plan that would create a $2 BILLION fund. Now, House Speaker Christopher Rants, a republican from Sioux City, says lawmakers have settled on a fund that’s “just shy” of a BILLION dollars. The next step is deciding how to finance the deal. Rants says having the Governor back in town from his trip to Germany is helpful. Lawmakers plan to bounce a few financing ideas off the Governor, and if he agrees with their plan, Rants says it could be revealed publicly sometime later this week. Rants says they’ve ruled out refinancing state debt in this time of low interest rates and using the savings to back the fund Rants says some state debt has already been refinanced, and some of the state debt is set in stone and cannot be refinanced. Rants says it was an idea worth pursuing, it just didn’t “pan out.” Rants expects to use a variety of sources, from the state tax on gambling profits to cigarette taxes, to finance the economic development fund. Rants says when you start pulling things together, you can be a “fairly sizable chunk of change.”
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