House Declares March Disability Awareness Month | |
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Read the resolution here.
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Watch the House pass the bill here.
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See the Senate welcome advocates here (forward to time marker 9:05:40).
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Check out our Capitol Snapshot on the event here.
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Go to the Iowa DD Council website for Disability Awareness Month activities.
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Read Emma's flyer for more ideas on celebrating Disability Awareness Month!
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Get the Iowa DD Council's Seat at the Table flyer distributed to legislators.
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Budgeting Begins
Legislators are only allowed to spend 99% of the money collected by the state for that year, so they have to guess how much money they will have to spend. There is a group of three experts that meets four times a year to make these estimates so the state does not overspend. Iowa law also requires legislators to base their budgets on the lowest of two estimates – December and March.
The estimating group (called the Revenue Estimating Conference, or REC) met on Friday (March 10) and things are looking good. They believe the state will actually take in more money than they estimated in December.
That means legislators have the green light to build their budget for next year using the December estimates. That means legislators have about $9.6 billion to divide among the ten budget bills. The Governor's budget recommendation was below the top spending level, coming it at $8.5 billion. The state also has $854.4 million in unspent funds from the current year budget (they call this a "surplus" or "carry-forward").
The bottom line: legislators have plenty of money to spend on things that will help people access the home and community based services they need, and help improve wages for direct support professionals.
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New Capitol Chat
This week we feature the Disability Awareness Month resolution. Watch legislators and advocates take part in this special day in the House and Senate.
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Sign Up for Capitol Chats
You can watch our Capitol Chats here.
Sign up for our Chats:
Mar. 31
Apr. 28
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Shout Out this week to Emma Bouza of Hawarden who requested the Disabilities Month resolution and to Representative Art Staed for making it happen in the House of Representatives! Emma also worked with her own legislators, Representative Tom Jeneary and Senator Jeff Taylor to get bipartisan support in both the House and Senate for the resolutions.
Also Shout Out to George Thompson of Des Moines for getting bipartisan support in the Senate by reaching out to his Senator Izaah Knox who sponsored the resolution in the Senate. Thank you to these advocates and legislators!
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Iowa legislators still take time out of their weekends home to go to public forums or town halls. It's their time to meet the people they represent, share what they are doing at the State Capitol, and hear what people think that work.
You can find these on our calendar, and you can download the list for the next two weeks here.
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infoNET is the disability policy project of the Iowa Developmental Disabilities Council and its network of Iowans with Disabilities in Action. | |
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This project is supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $774,176 with 100 percent funding by ACL/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS, or the U.S. Government. | | | | |