This current legislative session finalized the merger between two state departments. 

A big change this year was the combination of the Iowa Department of Public Health and the Department of Human Services into the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. Governor Kim Reynolds described the idea as a chance to leverage resources for Iowans. Senator for District 14 Sarah Trone-Garriott believes that there are some benefits in the merger but she is pushing for an increase in funding for the newer, merged department. She says that budgets have stayed flat for the last couple of years which has caused problems. 

“So you end up having reports of child abuse that don’t get investigated. For a very long time, we’ve seen some really horrific incidents where children have died because we haven’t been able to attend to those issues in a timely manner. We’ve seen people on Medicaid not getting the services they need because there’s just not enough people to adequately run those departments. The folks at the Department of Health and Human Services and all those different entities work really hard.”

Governor Reynolds has also announced that the Iowa Veterans Home and the Department of Veteran Affairs will be merging which is a part of the governor’s plan to merge 37 state departments into 16.