Out in Greene County, Iowa

Our Hayden Fry is now a Nevadan! Iowa's high taxes have chased him to the desert, a candidate says

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
September 26, 2002
STORM LAKE, IA.

I about fell off my chair this week reading a Carroll Daily Times Herald interview with Matt Whitaker, a former University of Iowa football player who is the Republican candidate for state treasurer.

Reporter Douglas Burns asked Whitaker if he has the support of his former Hawkeye coach, the legendary Hayden Fry, now 73, who retired after the 1998 season.

Whitaker said Fry has given him advice and has appeared on the campaign trail with him, but he went on to explain he won’t get Fry’s vote in the November general election.

“Coach Fry is no longer a citizen of the state of Iowa,” Whitaker told Burns, for a story that became page two news in Carroll. “He can’t vote in the state of Iowa, because he now lives in Nevada, where his tax bill just dropped 50 percent.”

Who knew?

Steve Roe, of the U of I sports information department, said he hasn’t seen or heard that published or aired anywhere.

Where has the Iowa media been on this story? One of our state’s best-known personalities, in retirement, has officially moved away to the desert, at least partially in a fuss over taxes, and it’s not news?

And does anybody think this makes him a tax dodger?

Hayden and Shirley Fry, it turns out, still maintain a home outside North Liberty, Iowa, but they have moved their official residence to Mesquite, Nevada, which the Internet portrays as a planned golf-community of about 15,000 people located 80 miles north of Las Vegas.

The Frys have had a home there for at least two years. It’s been their official residence since at least last November.

“Yes, Hayden Fry is a resident of Mesquite,” said Bill McClure, editor of the weekly Desert Valley Times in Mesquite. “He maintains a low profile and quietly supports good causes in town. We respect that.”

And most Iowans respect that the Frys still are much involved in Iowa life, even if they’re not officially Iowa citizens any longer.

Two weeks ago, it was announced that Fry, a cancer survivor, would chair a $10 million campaign for a prostate cancer research center at University Hospitals in Iowa City. He has also been one of the most successful fundraisers for the university in general. And he has occasionally made appearances for Republican political candidates.

Fry has made it into the news a few times in Nevada, but in no big way.

According to a story last December in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, there was some controversy in the Mesquite area over opening 12 square miles of desert northwest of town to development of additional homes and businesses.

Some current residents were opposed, saying the development company hadn’t been able to keep up with landscaping and maintenance on the homes and golf courses it had already built. But the story ended with Hayden Fry saying that he and Shirley have no complaints.

“We love it here,” Hayden told the Review-Journal’s Michael Weissenstein. “We think it’s the greatest place in the world.”

Even better than Iowa City or his native west Texas?

If I’d heard Fry had opted for retirement – and official residence – in Texas, I wouldn’t have been nearly as surprised. But Mesquite, Nevada?

He was unavailable for comment on Wednesday. Rita Foley, his former secretary in the U of I athletic department, who still handles calls for him, said she would relay an interview request. She said the Frys were driving to Nevada after several weeks in the Iowa City area.

She confirmed the former coach has moved his official residence. When I said I was surprised, Foley said, “I think it’s the Nevada tax rules.”

Whitaker, 32, the Republican running against 20-year incumbent State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, said on Wednesday that his old coach publicly repeated as recently as a week ago that Iowa’s tax structure pushed him into becoming a Nevada resident.

“He was just in Des Moines last Thursday for my campaign, and he said it again in front of that group,” said Whitaker, an Ankeny native who is now a lawyer in the capital city. “He told them that he regretted he can’t vote for me because he’s now a resident of Nevada, and that one of the reasons is that the tax climate is better out there.”

Whitaker said that Fry, in that speech, said his taxes in Nevada “are 15 percent less in Nevada” than they’d be in Iowa, “so maybe I misunderstood earlier when I thought he said 50 percent,” the candidate said.

“But whether it’s 15 percent or 50 percent, you’re talking real money.”

Whitaker said the state of Iowa “taxes pension income and Social Security, where Florida and Nevada and some other sun-type states don’t. And Nevada has no income tax at all. So we’re seeing more and more of this, where fairly well-to-do people decide to retire away from Iowa. They might still have a home in Iowa, but they spend at least six months and one day living in another place to qualify for residency there.”

Does that offend Whitaker -- that wealthy people who have been leaders in Iowa decide to move away from Iowa to avoid taxes?

“I am a firm believer that economic decisions should not have to be based on tax policy,” he said. “We shouldn’t be driving companies or seniors out of Iowa because of tax policy – that offends me.”

He said “it is a big issue. More and more I hear about it during the campaign. I meet people, just like Coach and Shirley, who come to Republican events here but they say, ‘Well, sorry, but I can’t vote for you – we’ve moved away because of the taxes in Iowa.’

“A real downside of that is that these are people who’ve accumulated a life-time of wealth and are leaving us. They go to places like Florida or Nevada, where not only the weather is better, so are the tax policies. They are people who could do good things in our communities, who could be purchasing goods and services here, who could really be contributing to help our state grow again.”

Whitaker said other states may have higher property taxes, or higher license fees, or depend even more than Iowa does on gambling revenue. “But when you put all the taxes together that people have to pay, Iowa still winds up very high on the list in terms of total tax burden,” he said.

All true, I guess, but so is this: When well-to-do Iowans retire away from us to avoid our supposedly higher taxes, the load just gets heavier on those of us still here.