The Iowa Legislature reconvened last week, and will begin budget discussions for FY2021 starting today. State Senator Julian Garrett tells KNIA News this will be one of the most difficult budgets to put together because no one can tell what the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be.

“My personal recommendation will be we be very conservative and cautious in our appropriations. We know from experience it is a lot easier to add more revenue if it turns out we got more than we might have thought, it is a lot easier to add than to take away an appropriation and take away. I hope we will be very cautious, and we have been anyway, but even more so under these conditions. We have to be careful what we appropriate to not raise people’s expectations and then have to back off from it.”

Garrett also said projecting the long term impacts of the budget will be the most difficult discussions to have while trying to form the budget.