A bill extending the portion of sales tax to school districts in Iowa may get extended this session.

State Senator Ken Rozenboom says now that K-12 education funding has been sorted, the SAVE (Secure an Advanced Vision for Education) tax will likely be addressed. Senate File 74, which has passed from the Education to the Ways and Means Committee, would continue the one-cent sales tax for school infrastructure to 2049. Rozenboom says this version places tighter restrictions on how the SAVE dollars can be spent after concerns raised in other Senate districts.

“There’s long been concerns expressed about how that money was spent in some cases, for what some people call ‘Taj Mahal facilities,’ or over-the-top athletics facilities,” he says. “That’s not been my experience in my district, but it did leave a bad taste in the mouth of some legislators.”

“So we have put some, I’ll call them some sideboards on it, there are some restrictions on how that money can be spent without going to the people for a vote.”

The issue has been brought up in recent sessions, but ultimately unaddressed in the past few years, with school boards and administrators saying it needs to be extended to better borrow for infrastructure projects.