The 2010 legislative session will be dominated by budget cuts, government consolidation, and reorganization when state lawmakers return in January with what some say is a $1-billion shortfall and a midterm election just 10 months away.

Rather than a 100-day session, lawmakers will aim to have an 80-day session to do their part to cut spending. Shortening the session will save about $40,000 a day.

During a recent IowaPolitics.com legislative forum, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs) warned that it will be a painful session as lawmakers work to realign state government with revenues. House and Senate Democratic leaders have vowed not to increase taxes in 2010 but have repeated that everything is on the table for cuts.

Governor Chet Culver used a speech before the Iowa Taxpayers Association to unveil 90 cost-saving recommendations proposed by consultant Public Works of Philadelphia that he said have the potential to save $341 million in the first year, and nearly $1.7 billion in the next five years.

Many of the proposals call for consolidation. They include consolidating the state's 223 data centers, 23 e-mail systems, and $2 million in wireless-equipment contracts now purchased from seven vendors. They also call for consolidating mailrooms, Department of Natural Resources offices in Des Moines, and administrative functions at Department of Human Services institutions.

The report also calls for reducing the state's car fleet, consolidating property management, and selling surplus properties, including 5 to 10 percent of the 8,000 acres of state-owned prison farms that are no longer mission-critical.

And it calls for reducing human-resource staff in departments, using state master contracts for commonly purchased goods, negotiating Medicaid durable-medical-equipment prices, increasing efforts to collect debt, and making it easier to collect unpaid taxes.

Iowa must look toward consolidating state agencies, school districts, and counties as a way to help balance the state budget, a key legislator said at a recent IowaPolitics.com forum in Davenport.

"What we're going to have to do is consolidate," said Representative David Jacoby (D-Coralville), chair of the economic-development budget subcommittee. "We're going to look at consolidation, streamlining, and at the same time improving services."

Jacoby said legislators are working to consolidate the Department of Economic Development, Iowa Workforce Development, and the Department of Cultural Affairs. "It makes sense to me that we move these three agencies together under the same roof," he said. "It saves an administrative cost and it saves in rent that we're paying. That is a big leap I think we'll take at the state level."

Four years ago during the last Republican gubernatorial primary, dairy magnate Jim Oberweis was sharply and widely criticized for running fake newspaper headlines in his TV ads. Now, it's happening again with a different wealthy gubernatorial hopeful.

Republican Andy McKenna's latest TV ad stays with his original theme of former Governor Rod Blagojevich's hair. The spot begins the same as his first ad, with a visual of a Blagojevich-like wig on top of the Statehouse and a Blagojevich look-alike walking into the shot. McKenna's first TV ad placed the wig on several previous governors, including George Ryan and Dan Walker, as well as on a baby. The hair is supposed to be a metaphor for the state's history of corruption.

The McKenna ad's announcer then claims the state faces an $11-billion deficit while "Governor Quinn hides the truth." The accompanying visual is the phrase: "Quinn hides the truth," and a reference to a November 18 Chicago Tribune article.

Trouble is, the Tribune published no such article with that headline. The article itself is about a contentious public debate between Quinn and his Democratic primary rival Dan Hynes, but nowhere in the article does Hynes accuse Quinn of "hiding" anything.