Mayor Corbett didn’t need a name tag at Statehouse

CEDAR RAPIDS - Mayor Ron Corbett didn't need a name tag this week at the Iowa Statehouse.

That was so even though only 37 of the current 150 representatives and senators there were in office back in 1999 when Corbett, then a seven-term state representative, resigned as speaker of the Iowa House to take the job of president/CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.

“Oh yeah, I think most people knew who he was,” state Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, assured on Wednesday after Corbett's visit to the state capitol on Monday and Tuesday to seek state funding to help pay for the city's $375-million flood-protection system.

“I think he has a lot of good relationships down there,” Hogg said. “And clearly, I thought his presentation was just fabulous. … I thought he was appropriately grateful for the past support the state has provided. He did a good job of conveying the necessity of the state being a partner in this project. … It was one of the best presentations I've seen in my nine years down there.”

Back in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday, Corbett said the trip to the Statehouse was not about him, but about the city of Cedar Rapids' flood-protection plan that the current and former Cedar Rapids City Council have been united in support of.

Even so, Corbett looked down the list of 37 current lawmakers that were in office back when he last was in 1999, and he noted, first name by first name, each of the 30 or so that he had personally talked to on Monday and Tuesday.

“We exchanged some war stories and got caught up on how families were doing,” the mayor said. “But there's no chips for me to cash in. I've been gone since 1999. It's been over a decade.”

Corbett spoke to a joint meeting of the Senate and House committees on local government and to the Senate Appropriations Committee as he said he worked to make the case that flood protection for Cedar Rapids, where 20 percent of the state's corn crop is processed, is as important to rural Iowa and all of Iowa as it is to Cedar Rapids.

Corbett and others in the Cedar Rapids delegation returned home with what Corbett on Wednesday was calling a “major victory.”

The mayor said the leaders of both parties in the House and Senate have agreed to create a bipartisan working group, which is not commonly done, to allow eight to 12 lawmakers, half from each party and half from each house, to sort through Cedar Rapids' request for flood protection.

“The working group allows them to take their partisan guns and put them on the table and thoughtfully go through this challenge that Cedar Rapids has in building its flood protection system,” the mayor said. “To get all four leaders committed to putting together a bipartisan effort is a major victory.”

Corbett noted that he had a parking space right next to the Capitol in his days as speaker of the house whereas on Monday and Tuesday he had to park what seemed like a mile from the building.

He said he joked with the Senate Appropriations Committee that senators never intimidated him during his time as a state representative.

“But I got to tell you, today, I'm intimidated and a little nervous,” he said he told the committee.

He said one senator asked him if Interstate 380 had been built to be above floodwaters, and Corbett said it had been, adding, “It also was built to go 55 mph,” a reference to the city's speed enforcement cameras that have drawn some notice this session among the lawmakers.

At noon on Wednesday, Corbett spoke to more than 100 Cedar Rapids area Realtors, telling them that Iowa lawmakers aren't apt to help the city fund its flood-protection system unless city residents are willing to put some local dollars into the pot. Federal dollars for the system also will require local dollars, he said.

The City Council has called for a May 3 referendum to ask voters to extend the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for 20 years to provide the local funds for flood protection and funds to fix the city's streets.

Corbett called it an “urban legend” the suggestion that the council hasn't used the existing local sales tax for flood recovery as voters had wanted when they put the tax in place two years ago.