Washington County completes SEIL agreements

Washington County has signed onto the cost-sharing agreements with the rest of the Southeast Iowa Link (SEIL) Mental Health and Disability Service required to keep the group in operation under recent state reforms.

“The plan is to discuss this tomorrow at our governing board meeting, to complete the process and submit the proper paperwork to the state,” said Bobbie Wulf, Washington County Mental Health and Disability Service director. “The state is now the sole funder of MHDS expenses … we do have a subfund that has been set up, and our salaries will go through the sub fund, as well as the telephone expenses if we have those.”

While the motions to sign those agreements were unanimous, they came after some back-and-forth on the subject.

County Supervisor and SEIL Vice Chair Jack Seward Jr. said the agreement was the best path forward for the SEIL region, despite bureaucratic complexities.

“We’re all doing the same thing the same way, it’s fair to each county across the region,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on, and in order to keep the region operating and providing the services that are needed by the Mental Health and Disability Service population, this is the way that the region has developed, and it works for us.”

Rather than being funded by the involved counties, every MHDS region in Iowa is required to draw from centralized state funding through a series of 28E agreements by the start of the next fiscal year.

Some of its employees have shifted from county staff to region staff as a result of those agreements, a move Seward said justified raises to state pay rates.

“They took the taxing authority away from the counties and gave it to the state,” he said. “Now that the County Disability Service (directors) are essentially state employees, we went to the state employment organization and looked for the equivalent job title, job description, and what state employees get paid.”

Other supervisors said constituents still had complaints.

“It’s still tax money, and I couldn’t argue that point with them, because the state gets that tax money from us,” Board of Supervisors Chair Richard Young said. “It’s just a rob Peter to pay Paul kind of thing.”

Seward said he agreed with the concern, but that the region and counties were not to blame.

“If they would have let us stay involved with our tax money and continue the way we had been doing it, we probably wouldn’t be seeing some of this,” he said. “But the state wants to do it and the state is going to pay for it.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com