Shortly after Senator Tom Harkin announced he intends to retire in 2014, Rep. Bruce Braley put his hat in to the ring to replace him. That will leave Braley’s congressional seat vacant.

Having previously signaled interest, Iowa senator, Steve Sodders, a Democrat from State Center, announced Sunday he will not be one of those campaigning for the vacancy, stating: “Despite encouragement and the appeal of serving more Iowans in the U.S. Congress, my family and I have decided that I will not run for the U.S. House in 2014.”

Local schools could cut teachers jobs or programs if state lawmakers don’t agree on funding soon. State law requires that allowable growth, which is the increase in state funding that districts could see, be set within the first 30-days of the legislative session.

In this case democrats are pushing for a 4-percent increase. But even though Governor Branstad signed that requirement into law, he’s urging legislators to let the deadline pass and focus on education reform instead.

“Here’s what I find peculiar is that Governor Branstad signed the allowable growth restriction in 1995 to make sure that we would do this in a certain number of days so that the school districts wouldn’t be left hanging.” says Senator Liz Mathis (D) Marion.

Iowa school districts are required to have their budgets certified by April 15th.

Gov. Terry Branstad has made another push to cut taxes for families and businesses in Iowa.

At his weekly news conference Monday, Branstad said better than expected state revenues give lawmakers the opportunity to reduce income and property taxes to spur economic growth.

He said more revenue shouldn’t let legislators believe they should raise spending by large amounts.

“There will be no return to the bad budgeting practices of the past, wherein, we spent everything we took in, built an unsustainable budget and took a meat axe to the budget when the economy went south,” said Branstad.

The governor said he can’t release details of his tax cutting ideas until the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference makes its December forecast of revenues for the year ahead.