State Sen. Julian Garrett (R-Warren) knows as a legislator he can’t everything done that he’d like in a session, but there are plenty of things he’d sure like to address.
“One always is the budget,” he said. “I’ve been on Appropriations for 10 years now. One of the reasons I ran was to try to get some responsible budgeting principles in place and I think we’ve done that now. We’ve been running surpluses here lately and, in spite of the tax cuts and the doom-and-gloom the Democrats were predicting, we’ve done really well. We’re running surpluses and the rainy day fund is full.”
He predicted another successful session as far as budgeting goes, noting they’ve been successful with it the last couple years.
Garrett also chairs the budget subcommittee that handles the justice system.
“For me, that’s a really important subcommittee because if you don’t have public safety, then you don’t have a civilization,” he said. “That’s just bedrock critical. So, I’m really glad to be able to work on that.”
Rep. Gary Worthan (R-Storm Lake) is the House chair, and he was chair when Garrett served on the committee in the House with Worthan.
“We get along real well and work together well,” Garrett said. “We’ll have another good budget this year.”
Garrett noted there are a lot of important things happening with the courts and the prisons. Some counties have experimented with specialty courts, he said.
For example, drug court would be for a kid who gets into the justice system because of drug use and, instead of sending them to jail, they’ll give them an option to get treatment.
“If they can do it successfully, then they don’t get a criminal record,” he said. “They’re family type courts. I think a county or two has a mental health court for people who have mental issues. Different ones are experimenting with different ideas. And I’m paying attention to see how those work out because those are good trials to have with different counties having certain judges specializing in certain areas like that.”
