Iowa water quality bills likely dead at Statehouse

Hope is fading that the Iowa Legislature can agree on funding statewide water quality programs in the final days before the 2016 session adjourns.   An Iowa Senate subcommittee approved a bill raising the state sales tax by three-eighths of 1 cent, which would generate about $180 million starting next year. About 60 percent of that revenue would be directed to cleaning up Iowa's polluted waters.  But Democratic and Republican Senate leaders soon after said that a tax hike has virtually no chance of winning approval this year.