Managers representing Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds are negotiating new contracts with four unions that represent state employees. The Republican governor’s administration has just offered the union representing about 24-hundred social workers and scientists in state government a one percent raise in each of the next two years. Reynolds isn’t sending any public signals about the negotiations.

Reynolds says “a lot of preliminary work” has been done on her proposed state spending plan for the budget year that begins July 1st. A missing piece of the puzzle was revealed last week. A panel of financial experts set the official estimate of state tax revenue growth during the period at one-point-eight percent.

Reynolds will deliver her policy agenda and proposed state budget to legislators on Tuesday, January 15th. Reynolds will be inaugurated to a full, four-year term on Friday, January 18th.