UpLift to continue despite new law banning local government funding

Although Iowa has a new law preventing local governments from funding guaranteed income programs, the UpLift program in Iowa plans to continue through outside support.

Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 2319 into law Wednesday. The measure prevents cities and counties from implementing programs that support supplemental incomes to residents with no work requirements or restrictions on how the funds are spent. The new law gives the state attorney general’s office the ability to send cease-and-desist letters to local governments that attempt to violate the ban.

The new law will largely affect funding for the UpLift pilot program currently underway in central Iowa. The 24-month study provides 110 people — individuals in Polk, Dallas and Warren counties with household incomes at or below 60% the area median income and with at least one dependent in their household — with $500 per month.

The program, led by the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement, was launched as a research project evaluating the impact of guaranteed income on participants’ health, quality of life and financial security. The Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania and Des Moines University’s public health team is leading research on the results.

Currently, the cities of Des Moines, Urbandale and Windsor Heights, and Polk County are partially funding the program, in collaboration with private partners including Wells Fargo, Principal  and Mid-Iowa Health foundations and groups like the United Way of Central Iowa.

Under the new law, UpLift will no longer be able to receive funding through the cities and counties the program is currently working with beginning Jan. 1, 2025. The program, launched in May 2023, is set to conclude in May 2025 — meaning there will be at least five months when UpLift planned to receive local government funding that will no longer be available.

However, Ashley Ezzio and Michael Berger, project coordinators with UpLift, said in a statement that the team behind the program plans to continue the project and publish results on the original schedule.

While the UpLift program is continuing on its original schedule, supporters of the program have decried the new law for preventing local governments from researching and investing in different ways to address issues like poverty in their own communities. Matthew Reed, executive director of The Harkin Institute, called the new law a mistake.

“We supported UpLift – The Central Basic Income Pilot to find out if a basic income program would work in Iowa,” Reed said in a statement after the law was signed. “To judge the program before seeing results from the research study is a mistake.”

During debate on the bill, Democrats argued the measure overrides local control. Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, said local governments should have the authority to test methods like guaranteed income programs, especially as no state funding is being used by local governments to finance initiatives like UpLift.

“This is the province of local government — to experiment, to see what works, to run pilot programs,” Weiner said. “If it doesn’t work, if people don’t like them, they won’t be elected the next time. It’s the place for these sorts of of experiments.”

However, Republicans argued that guaranteed income programs have been researched and tested elsewhere in both America and abroad — and said results have shown government incomes do not help alleviate poverty. In the House, floor manager Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison, cited studies that suggest guaranteed income programs effectively subsidize employers paying low wages and offering inconsistent work, as well as citing research on guaranteed income from the the 1960s and 1970s finding that people who receive such benefits work fewer hours than people who do not.

Holt has also called guaranteed income programs “socialism on steroids” and an “attack on American values.” He said problems with these benefit programs mean state action was necessary.

“In this case, the importance of protecting our work ethic and preventing an increase in government dependence trumps the local control argument,” Holt said. “Just as we do not allow cities and counties to have differing laws on murder, we’re not going to allow cities and counties to murder our work ethic.”