28.3 - IOWA EMPOWERMENT BOARD CREATED. - Iowa Statutes

28.3 IOWA EMPOWERMENT BOARD CREATED. 1. An Iowa empowerment board is created to facilitate state and community efforts involving community empowerment areas, including strategic planning, funding identification, and guidance, and to promote collaboration among state and local early care, education, health, and human services programs. 2. The Iowa board shall consist of twenty-two voting members with sixteen citizen members and six state agency members. The six state agency members shall be the directors of the following departments: economic development, education, human rights, human services, public health, and workforce development. The sixteen citizen members shall be appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by the senate. The governor's appointments of citizen members shall be made in a manner so that each of the state's congressional districts is represented by at least two citizen members and so that all the appointments as a whole reflect the ethnic, cultural, social, and economic diversity of the state. The governor's appointees shall be selected from individuals nominated by community empowerment area boards. The nominations shall reflect the range of interests represented on the community boards so that the governor is able to appoint one or more members each for early care, education, health, human services, business, faith, and public interests. At least one of the citizen members shall be a service consumer or the parent of a service consumer. Terms of office of all citizen members are three years. A vacancy on the board shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment for the balance of the unexpired term. 3. Citizen members shall be reimbursed for actual and necessary expenses incurred in performance of their duties. Members shall be paid a per diem as specified in section 7E.6. 4. In addition to the voting members, the Iowa board shall include four members of the general assembly with not more than one member from each chamber being from the same political party. The two senators shall be appointed one each by the majority leader of the senate after consultation with the president of the senate, and by the minority leader of the senate. The two representatives shall be appointed one each by the speaker of the house of representatives after consultation with the majority leader of the house of representatives, and by the minority leader of the house of representatives. Legislative members shall serve in an ex officio, nonvoting capacity. A legislative member is eligible for per diem and expenses as provided in section 2.10. 5. A community empowerment assistance team or teams of state agency representatives shall be designated to provide technical assistance and other support to community empowerment areas and for the board's efforts to address early care, education, health, and human services. A technical assistance system shall be developed using local representatives of the state agencies represented on the Iowa board and other state agencies and individuals involved with local early care, education, health, and human services. 6. a. Staffing services to the Iowa board shall be provided by the state agencies which are represented on the Iowa board and by other state agencies making staffing available to the Iowa board. b. In addition, a community empowerment office is established as a division of the department of management to provide a center for facilitation, communication, and coordination for community empowerment activities and funding and for improvement of the early care, education, health, and human services systems. Staffing for the community empowerment office shall be provided by a facilitator appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by the senate, and who serves at the pleasure of the governor. A deputy and support staff may be designated, subject to appropriation made for this purpose. The facilitator shall submit reports to the governor, the Iowa board, and the general assembly. The facilitator shall provide primary staffing to the board, coordinate state technical assistance activities and implementation of the technical assistance system, and other communication and coordination functions to move authority and decision-making responsibility from the state to communities and individuals. 7. The director of the department of management shall designate early care staff, as part of the community empowerment initiative, to provide coordination and other support to the state's early care system. The early care staff shall work with the state and local components of the community empowerment initiative, shared visions programs funded under chapter 256A, and other public and private efforts to improve the early care system. The early care staff duties shall include but are not limited to the following: a. Providing support to the public and private stakeholders who are involved with the early care system, acting to strengthen the early care system, and developing accountability measures for early care efforts. b. Developing and disseminating accountability measures for assessing the outcomes produced by the department of education, the community empowerment initiative, and other publicly funded efforts to improve early care of young children, including but not limited to shared visions and other programs provided under the auspices of the child development coordinating council, high-quality preschool programs, head start programs, and school ready children grant programs. The initial measures utilized shall be the individual growth and development indicators developed by the early childhood research institute on measuring growth and development or other measures of high quality to be authorized by law. c. Collecting, interpreting, and redisseminating data collected from the measures for assessing outcomes under paragraph "b". Factors subject to interpretation may include area demographics, relative expenditures, collaboration between programs in an area, and other factors impacting the outcomes produced by an individual program. d. Annually providing information to the governor and general assembly regarding the outcomes produced by individual programs. The information shall be included in the Iowa empowerment board's annual report. 8. The Iowa board may designate an advisory council consisting of representatives from community empowerment area boards. 9. The Iowa board shall elect a chairperson from among the citizen board members and may select other officers from among the citizen board members as determined to be necessary by the board. The board shall meet regularly as determined by the board, upon the call of the board's chairperson, or upon the call of a majority of voting members.          Section History: Recent Form 98 Acts, ch 1206, §3, 20 C99, §7I.2 99 Acts, ch 190, §3--6, 19, 20 CS99, §28.3 2000 Acts, ch 1223, §17; 2004 Acts, ch 1175, §221; 2005 Acts, ch 148, §3--6; 2005 Acts, ch 179, §109; 2006 Acts, ch 1030, §6; 2006 Acts, ch 1157, §4; 2008 Acts, ch 1156, §20, 58 Referred to in § 28.1, 28.4, 237A.30, 279.60 Confirmation; §2.32