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Greetings!
This update is similar to last week's update - not a lot to report. The House and Senate met very briefly this week and passed a couple of bills. The Senate passed SF 533 or otherwise known as the standings bill (a catch all bill). This is usually a sure sign of adjournment but not this time. Some items in the bill you might be interested in:
- increases EITC from 7% to 10% of federal
- provides for a 2% increase in allowable growth (includes funding for current preschool program)
- cuts AEAs by $10 million
- provides funding for Shared Visions at FY 11 level
The legislature is slow in adjourning this year because of multiple issues and one issue most recently is that the Governor and the House Republicans changed their targets for spending on the 114th day and now there is a $147 million difference between the House and Senate budgets. This is huge because it will mean further cuts in programs and services for children and families.
The two year budget, property taxes, allowable growth and preschool are also all issues they are still far apart on. We hear that it could be anywhere from 1 week to 1 month before all of this is resolved.
Mental Health reform received some attention also this week. SF 525 is in the Iowa House. A bipartisan group of House and Senate members have been working over the past 3 weeks to craft a framework for a new mental health system. Both houses finally agreed to an amendment that should be taken up sometime next week. The bill is designed to put in place a statewide system, regionally administered and locally delivered by July 1, 2013. The amendment directs the Department of Human Services to immediately convene five work groups of stakeholders to address various parts of a new system. I guess I did have more to report than I thought! Just wish it was the last update of the session!
Have a nice weekend!
Stay in touch ~ Sheila |
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Federal Budget
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Bills of Interest
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SF 525 - Reorganizing the state mental health system in Human Services Committee. -passed Senate on 4/20.
SF 404 - -An act relating to health information technology. Passed Senate March 15th.
SF 295 - An Act relating to donation of newborn umbilical cord blood. Subcommittee, Bolkcom, Boettger, and Jochum. Passed Senate on March 14th.
SF 31 - An Act increasing the amount of the earned income tax credit and including retroactive applicability provisions. Passed out of subcommittee on 2/10.
SF 113 - pay day loan institutions - reducing interest rate to 36%. Passed Subcommittee 2/24. On to full Committee
SF 508 - An Act relating to state and local financial matters by revising certain appropriations and appropriating federal funds made available from federal block grants and other non state sources, allocating portions of federal block -passed both Houses
HF 645 - An Act relating to the funding of, the operation of, and appropriation of moneys to the college student aid commission, the department for the blind, the department of education.
HF 649 - An Act relating to and making appropriations for health and human services and including other related provisions and appropriations, and including effective, retroactive, and applicability date provisions
NEW:
HF 626 - An Act relating to county and state responsibilities for mental health, mental retardation, and developmental disabilities services for adults and children, making appropriations, and including effective date provisions.
 Bills Signed By Governor:
HF 562 - an act relating to the child abuse registry. 4/6/11
HF 45 - An Act relating to public funding and regulatory matters and making, reducing, and transferring appropriations and revising fund amounts and including effective, retroactive, and other applicability date provision. 3/1/11. SF 209 - increases the state earned income tax credit, creates a new tax relief fund, coupling and bonus depreciation language. Governor vetoed portions of bill. 4/21. SF 482 - makes proposed technical changes. Includes provisions on child care resource and referral agencies. 4/28 |
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"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
Dr. Seuss
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Child Health Update
by Carrie Fitzgerald
I have more good news for you from the the Commonwealth fund! In a new issue brief released today, Iowa ranked in the top list of states for overall health system performance nationally.
You can read the
issue brief that describes what works and why along with the appendix tables that show how the rankings were determined. An interesting area of the report discusses what the top-ranking states do that the low-ranking states don't do. From that section comes this quote: "In all of the high-performing states, state government played an active role convening stakeholders, designing policy solutions, enacting and implementing reforms, and organizing to sustain and build on reforms over time. In contrast, there is a prevailing sentiment in most of the low-performing states that health care is not a major priority or an appropriate role for state government."
Once again, I commend all of you who helped create, fund, implement and monitor the Iowa policies that keep us moving forward and promote health care coverage and services in Iowa.
Carrie
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