28.4 - IOWA EMPOWERMENT BOARD DUTIES. - Iowa Statutes

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