Iowa Legislative Session begins Monday

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - Monday morning Iowa lawmakers will gather in Des Moines to gavel-in the 2025 Legislative Session.

Governor Kim Reynolds is expected to make her priorities for the session clear during Tuesday night’s Condition of the State address.

With a republican supermajority in Iowa and across the nation, KCRG-TV9’s political analyst Megan Goldberg expects tax and budget cuts to be a big priority. This year the focus could shift to cutting property taxes by limiting how much a community can charge; this has some city governments concerned as property taxes fund many essential services. Democrats are expected to fight to prevent those cuts.

“Democrats trying to figure out, even though their numbers are quite small, what can they do to minimize those cuts on programs that are really important to them?” Goldberg said.

Another thing she expects could have an impact this session is the return of Donald Trump to the White House next week.

”A lot of times Republicans in Iowa were responding to changes that the Biden administration was making that they were unhappy with,” Goldberg said.

There is also the potential for another moratorium on new casinos in Iowa which could throw a wrench at the push to bring a casino to Cedar Rapids.