Opinion: Is Iowa still a good place to live? P-C editorial board to answer this question in 2023.

When we wrote our previous end-of-year piece, we had hopes for 2022. While some things did improve, there’s a general feeling among the Press-Citizen editorial board that many of the issues we were concerned about (and some new ones) have not improved or have gotten worse. Here we’re going to outline the current issues in Iowa as we see it, then talk about the issues we hope to address in 2023.

Internally, what is most concerning to us as the Iowa City Press-Citizen editorial board is the recent actions of Gannett, which have led to fewer and fewer staff (and an increase in staff turnover) at the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Des Moines Register over the years. We should all be concerned that when local news organizations are taken over by companies who only care about the bottom line, the journalism inevitably suffers. That’s where we are now. While we commend the reporters still valiantly trying to report on the issues important to our community (and we miss the many excellent reporters and editors we were privileged to work with), their job gets harder and harder. These issues are not specific to Gannett or Iowa City — local news is being decimated across the country, and many communities now live in news deserts. This has influenced not just the reporting but the operation of the board as well. However, we believe an independent voice representing the community is necessary, and we will continue to fight to engage with the community to be that voice for as long as we can.

Another area of concern is the move in Iowa from a moderate, purple state that chose President Barack Obama to a deep red state that supports former President Donald Trump and his politics of grievance. We are a state governed by a party that is increasingly focused on fighting culture wars vs. governing for all Iowans, and the Iowa Democratic Party does not seem up to mounting any sort of strong defense. Given the issues we’ve outlined over the year, we’ve started to ask ourselves: What impact has this had on our state? Is Iowa still a good place to live? Where do we stand with issues like the state of K-12 education and higher education, the environment, health care, the economy, protection of individual rights and underrepresented groups, and the state of local news and politics?

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Here we will outline our general sense about these issues, which we hope to explore more in depth over the course of 2023 to examine whether our instincts prove to be true and if so, what our leaders can do to address such issues.

Education

Our concerns with education are far-ranging. We’ve seen a massive disinvestment in both K-12 and higher education by our state Legislature. We’ve seen attacks on the academic freedom of teachers and students making Iowa a less attractive place to teach and learn. Our public school national rankings have dropped, and Republican governments are making it harder for teachers to teach the full history of the United States. Overall, it seems as though Iowa is increasingly becoming hostile to public education at all levels and more interested in diverting public funds to private schools, often religious schools. Iowa historically has been known for two things: education and agriculture. A state of decline in either is unconscionable.

Environment

As a state heavily dependent on agriculture, environmental issues will always be important to Iowans, particularly issues related to water quality and climate change. We consistently rank low in water quality issues. What does that mean for our most important industry? Our waterways are also important for recreation, such as fishing, swimming, and other water sports, which are affected by issues such as harmful algal blooms that are especially dangerous for children and animals. The quality of our waterways also affects the quality of our drinking water, whether you are on a municipal or well system. Climate change, whether related to fluctuations in temperature, changing patterns of precipitation, or increased severe weather events, also will have far-reaching effects not only for agriculture, but also for emergency management coordinators across the state. What are we doing to ensure our communities are resilient in the face of these changes in climate?

A view of the downtown skyline past the fifth floor terrace event space is seen from the sixth floor, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, at Hotel Chauncey in Iowa City, Iowa.

Health care

Over the past year we’ve seen issues related to the administration of Medicaid in Iowa, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, continued burnout for medical professionals, and a need to focus on access to mental health treatment. With the University of Iowa Healthcare systems a major driver of the economy here in Iowa City, it’s important that we pay attention to these issues and continue to improve health care access and costs.

Economic development

Where does Iowa’s economy stand in comparison to our neighbors? We should be doing everything we can to attract talent to our state, yet we seem to be losing our young people and college graduates to other areas where they perceive there to be more opportunity. We should be doing everything we can to retain these Iowans, and we need to make sure we are friendly to businesses while balancing the needs of our communities.  Many companies are moving from more expensive areas and we should be actively courting these opportunities.

Culture wars

As we have highlighted in past opinions, we have become increasingly concerned that our leaders want to govern only for specific groups of Iowans. Whether making it harder to enact commonsense gun legislation, to attacking transgender students, to censuring Republican leaders who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, state and local Republican leaders seem intent on fighting culture wars through legislation. This should concern all Iowans, but especially those in underrepresented or vulnerable groups.

We look forward to engaging with community members on these and other issues in the coming year. Every member of the board remains a proud Iowan, but we want to ask some hard questions about what we might have lost over the past few decades. Are we still the Iowa of Bob Ray, Jim Leach, or Tom Harkin? Or are we moving in a different direction, one that may be discouraging for many of our citizens? Questioning our leaders is a hallmark of a functioning democracy, and we hope to encourage our state leaders to work for all Iowans to ensure we can continue to be proud to be from the Hawkeye State!

The Iowa City Press-Citizen Editorial Board is a volunteer group of readers who meet weekly. They are Venise Berry, Dave Bright, Shams Ghoneim, Robert Goodfellow, Kylah Hedding and John Macatee. The editorial board is separate from newsroom editors and reporters, and its views do not influence the decisions they make about news coverage.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Opinion: Is Iowa still a good place to live? We’ll explore this.