28.4 - IOWA EMPOWERMENT BOARD DUTIES.
28.4 IOWA EMPOWERMENT BOARD DUTIES.
The Iowa board shall perform the following duties:
1. Perform duties relating to community empowerment areas.
2. Manage and coordinate the provision of grant funding and other
moneys made available to community empowerment areas by combining all
or portions of appropriations or other revenues as authorized by law.
3. Develop advanced community empowerment area arrangements for
those community empowerment areas which were formed in transition
from a decategorization governance board or which otherwise provide
evidence of extensive successful experience in managing services and
funding with high levels of community support and input.
4. Identify boards, commissions, committees, and other bodies in
state government with overlapping and similar purposes which
contribute to redundancy and fragmentation in early care, education,
health, and human services programs provided to the public. The
board shall also make recommendations and provide an annually updated
strategic plan to the governor and general assembly as appropriate
for increasing coordination between these bodies, for eliminating
bureaucratic duplication, for consolidation where appropriate, for
improving the efficiency of working with federally mandated bodies,
for integration of services and service quality functions to achieve
improved results, and for integration of state-administered funding
streams directed to community empowerment areas and other
community-based efforts for providing early care, education, health,
and human services.
5. Assist with the linkage of child welfare and juvenile justice
decategorization projects with community empowerment areas.
6. a. Coordinate and respond to any requests from a community
board relating to any of the following:
(1) Waiver of existing rules, federal regulation, or amendment of
state law, or removal of other barriers.
(2) Pooling and redirecting of existing federal, state, or other
public or private funds.
(3) Seeking of federal waivers.
(4) Consolidating community-level committees, planning groups,
and other bodies with common memberships formed in response to state
requirements.
b. In coordinating and responding to the requests, the Iowa
board shall work with state agencies and submit proposals to the
governor and general assembly as necessary to fulfill requests deemed
appropriate by the Iowa board.
7. Provide for maximum flexibility and creativity in the
designation and administration of the responsibilities and authority
of community empowerment areas.
8. Adopt rules pursuant to chapter 17A as necessary for the
designation, governance, and oversight of community empowerment areas
and the administration of this chapter. The Iowa board shall provide
for community board input in the rules adoption process. The rules
shall include but are not limited to the following:
a. Indicators of the effectiveness of community empowerment
areas, community boards, and the services provided under the auspices
of the community boards. The indicators shall be developed with
input from community boards and shall build upon the core indicators
of effectiveness for the school ready grant program, as described in
section 28.8.
b. Minimum standards to further the provision of equal access
to services subject to the authority of community boards.
c. Core functions for family support services, parent
education programs, and preschool services provided under a school
ready children grant.
9. Implement a process for community empowerment areas to
identify desired results for improving the quality of life in this
state. The process shall allow for consideration of updates,
additions, and deletions on a regular basis. The identified desired
results shall be submitted to the governor and general assembly.
10. Develop guidelines for recommended coverage and take other
actions to assist community empowerment area boards in acquiring
necessary insurance or other liability coverage at a reasonable cost.
Moneys expended by a community empowerment area board to acquire
necessary insurance or other liability coverage shall be considered
an administrative cost and implementation expense.
11. a. With extensive community involvement, develop and
annually update a five-year plan for consolidating, blending, and
redistributing state-administered funding streams for children from
birth through age five made available to community empowerment area
boards.
b. With extensive community involvement, develop and annually
update a ten-year plan for consolidating, blending, and
redistributing state-administered funding streams for other age
groups made available to community empowerment area boards. The
focus for the early years of the initial ten-year plan shall be on
the efforts of the Iowa board and affected state agencies to
facilitate implementation of individual community empowerment area
board requests for pooling, consolidating, blending, and
redistributing state-administered funding streams for other age
groups.
c. Submit plans and plan updates developed under paragraphs
"a" and "b" to the community empowerment areas, the governor,
and the general assembly annually in December.
d. The Iowa empowerment board shall regularly make
information available identifying community empowerment funding and
funding distributed for purposes of the early care system. It is the
intent of the general assembly that the community empowerment area
boards and the administrators of the early care programs located
within the community empowerment areas that are supported by public
funding shall fully cooperate with one another in order to avoid
duplication, enhance efforts, combine planning, and take other steps
to best utilize the funding to meet the needs of the families in the
areas. The community empowerment area boards and the program
administrators shall annually submit a report concerning such efforts
to the community empowerment office. If a community empowerment area
is receiving a school ready children grant, this report shall be an
addendum to the annual report required under section 28.8. The state
community empowerment facilitator shall compile and summarize the
reports which shall be submitted to the governor, general assembly,
and Iowa board.
12. Integrate statewide quality standards and results indicators
adopted by other boards and commissions into the Iowa empowerment
board's funding requirements for investments in early care,
education, health, and human services.
13. With the assistance of the state departments represented on
the Iowa empowerment board and the community empowerment office,
develop and implement requirements for community empowerment areas
and the state administrators of programs providing early care or
early care services to annually report to the public and the early
care staff designated pursuant to section 28.3 regarding the results
produced by the community empowerment initiative and by the programs.
Source data shall also be made available to the early care staff. Section History: Recent Form
98 Acts, ch 1206, §4, 20
C99, §7I.3
99 Acts, ch 190, §7--9, 19, 20
CS99, §28.4
2001 Acts, ch 106, §1, 4; 2003 Acts, ch 44, §19; 2004 Acts, ch
1086, §11; 2005 Acts, ch 148, §7--9; 2005 Acts, ch 179, §110; 2006
Acts, ch 1010, §15; 2006 Acts, ch 1030, §7; 2006 Acts, ch 1157,
§5--7; 2008 Acts, ch 1032, §201