Iowa Supervisor Says State Lawmakers Block Local Cash Aid Tests

A local elected official in Iowa is criticizing state lawmakers after they blocked cities and counties from testing direct cash payments to residents. She claims local governments are being handcuffed by state-level ideological wars. Mandi Remington serves as a Democratic county supervisor in Johnson County, Iowa. She told Fox News Digital that she wanted to test whether giving cash to low-income residents could serve as a feasible poverty-alleviation policy. The effort was shut down before it could launch.

We are supposedly a home rule state, but that's not what it seems like in practice, Remington said in an interview with Fox News Digital. I live in a blue dot in a red state and, essentially, anything that we try to do in these pockets that is not being done in other parts of the state automatically gets pushed back against. Her comments follow an op-ed she wrote arguing that guaranteed income programs help everyday Iowans. She noted the Johnson County Board of Supervisors attempted to bring a guaranteed income initiative to their community, championed by Supervisor V Fixmer-Oraiz.

The local push was inspired by similar pilots across the country, including the UpLift trial in central Iowa. That program provided 110 families with $500 per month for two years. Remington argued the policy would build on successes seen in other jurisdictions. Those plans were derailed when Iowa Republicans passed legislation prohibiting local governments from creating or maintaining guaranteed income programs. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 2319 into law on May 1, 2024. Proponents of the ban, including GOP lawmakers, argued that government cash handouts undermine the American work ethic, subsidize low wages, and foster government dependency.

There's no room for doing research. There's no room for evaluating evidence. There's no interest in even hearing about evidence that has been found in other places, Remington told Fox News Digital. I have not been present on the universal income matter specifically at the Capitol, but I have testified in legislative hearings here and watched as legislators didn't even pretend to listen to the people speaking to them. Because in their minds, whether they want to call it socialist or leftist or whatever term they throw at it, they have just lumped it into a certain ideological category because of where it's coming from.

In her published letter, Remington argued that restricting local control hurts working families. Unfortunately, some of our state leaders are more interested in controlling local government and waging ideological wars than they are in passing policies that help everyday Iowans, she wrote. The state's ban on guaranteed income isn't good policy, and it doesn't help hard-working Iowans get by. It's simply obstructionism without evidence. Seven Republican legislators understood this and joined Democrats in voting against the ban. Gov. Reynolds' office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

Iowa is far from the only state where Republicans have pushed back against cash-handout initiatives. GOP lawmakers across the country have raised legal, budgetary and philosophical concerns regarding guaranteed basic income. In Michigan, House Republicans demanded a rigorous inspection of a taxpayer-funded cash assistance program for new mothers. They questioned its benefits and scrutinized how millions in public funds were spent. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Harris County over its guaranteed income program. This legal action led the Texas Supreme Court to freeze the trial. Meanwhile, in Arizona, Democratic Gov...

Katie Hobbs used her veto power to block a Republican bill that would have stopped local governments from running guaranteed income programs. Now Michigan lawmakers are trying to shut down what they call guardrail-free cash handouts for new mothers. Progressive groups are pushing back hard against these state-level restrictions right now. Adriane Brown, who serves as the senior communications director for the Economic Security Project, stepped forward to defend these trials. The advocacy organization was founded in 2016 specifically to promote direct cash transfer policies across the nation.

Brown told Fox News Digital that banning guaranteed income does not serve anyone at all. She pointed out how Mandi Remingtons letter speaks directly to the emotional and financial precarity of leaving an abusive relationship. Fortunately, several guaranteed income pilots are already running across the country to build on what we know about cash offering stability during difficult transitions. The Economic Security Project helped create more than 100 such pilots throughout the United States so far. In Iowa specifically, Brown noted that not all lawmakers fell along strict partisan lines during the vote.

If elected officials truly want families safe and secure, then guaranteed income pilots should be allowed to exist without interference. Lawmakers who voted to ban these programs amid a cost of living crisis are simply out of touch with real family struggles. Beyond political opposition, many guaranteed income programs face an impending funding cliff that threatens their survival. Dozens of cities launched cash transfer pilots using federal pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act back in 2021. Federal rules required those ARPA allocations to be legally obligated by the end of 2024 and fully spent by December 31, 2026 at the latest.

As federal relief funds dry up rapidly, local leaders are scrambling to find alternative funding streams for their struggling communities. Cook County in Illinois moved to set up ongoing municipal funding following its initial 2022 pilot as an example of success. Most other local jurisdictions simply lack the budget to sustain direct cash transfers without private philanthropy or federal aid. The UpLift program was able to find a way to sustain itself through non-government money sources alone according to Remington. Unfortunately we are now in a position where all nonprofit agencies and mutual aid organizations face their own financial crises as well. Funding has become a problem across the board for government entities, private citizens, and community agencies everywhere.