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 an innovation zone or 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 education, health, and human services programs provided to the public. The board shall also make recommendations to the governor and general assembly as appropriate for increasing coordination between these bodies, for eliminating bureaucratic duplication, for consolidation where appropriate, and for integration of functions to achieve improved results.
5. Assist with the linkage of child welfare and juvenile justice decategorization projects with community empowerment areas.
6. Integrate the duties relating to innovation zones in the place of the innovation zone board created in section 8A.2, Code 1997, until the Iowa board determines the innovation zones have been replaced with community empowerment areas.
7. Coordinate and respond to any requests from a community board relating to any of the following:
a. Waiver of existing rules, federal regulation, or amendment of state law, or removal of other barriers.
b. Pooling and redirecting of existing federal, state, or other public or private funds.
c. Seeking of federal waivers.
d. Consolidating community-level committees, planning groups, and other bodies with common memberships formed in response to state requirements.
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.
8. Provide for maximum flexibility and creativity in the designation and administration of the responsibilities and authority of community empowerment areas.
9. 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. Performance indicators for community empowerment areas, community boards, and the services provided under the auspices of the community boards. The performance indicators shall be developed with input from community boards and shall build upon the core indicators of performance 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 home visitation, parent support, and preschool services provided under a school ready children grant.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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 through the funding streams listed under this paragraph "d" to communities. It is the intent of the general assembly that the community empowerment area boards and the administrators of the programs located within the community empowerment areas that are supported by the listed funding streams shall fully cooperate with one another on or before the indicated fiscal years, 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 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. The funding streams shall include all of the following:
(1) Moneys for the healthy families Iowa program under section 135.106 by the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2000, and ending June 30, 2001.
(2) Moneys for parent education appropriated in section 279.51 and distributed through the child development coordinating council, by the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2000, and ending June 30, 2001.
(3) Moneys for the preschool children at-risk program appropriated in section 279.51 and distributed through the child development coordinating council, by the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2001, and ending June 30, 2002.
(4) Moneys for home visitation and parent support annually appropriated to the department of human services and distributed or expended through child abuse prevention grants and the family preservation program, by the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2000, and ending June 30, 2001.
e. It is the intent of the general assembly to convene a summit meeting under the auspices of the legislative council during the 2001 legislative interim to consider the issues described in this paragraph. In addition to members of the general assembly, those invited to participate in the meeting may include members of the Iowa empowerment board and community empowerment area boards, representatives of the governor, persons participating in community empowerment initiative services, representatives of programs offered through the funding streams enumerated in paragraph "d", and other persons involved in efforts to achieve the desired results identified for the community empowerment initiative. It is anticipated that those participating in the summit meeting will produce a report with findings and recommendations for consideration during the 2002 legislative session. The issues for consideration at the summit meeting may include but are not limited to the following:
(1) Assessing the status of the efforts to achieve full cooperation between the programs offered through the funding streams identified in paragraph "d" and community empowerment area boards in order to avoid duplication, enhance efforts, combine planning, and take other steps to best utilize public funding to meet the needs of the families in the areas. In addition, the summit participants shall make recommendations as to removing barriers or other steps that may be taken so that the programs and community empowerment area board efforts may be more fully integrated.
(2) Implementing an approach to move toward a statewide equalization of the public funding provided for community empowerment initiative programs and other state funding streams directed to similar purposes.
(3) Identifying other age groups or result areas that may be incorporated within or supported by the community empowerment initiative. In addition, consideration may be given to opportunities identified by the governor for expanding the role of the community empowerment initiative as part of the governor's efforts to reorganize and redirect state government.
(4) Considering other issues, concerns, and opportunities for the community empowerment initiative identified at the local and state levels.
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
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