Funding Sources

The Commission's FY 94 total amount of funding was $1,592,915. The dollars came from the Iowa General Fund, as appropriated by the legislature, from contracts and grants from federal agencies, and from reimbursements for copying and miscellaneous costs.

From the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Commission received $409,048 under its contract for the investigation of cross-filed employment complaints.

The Commission received a total of $73,360 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for two different programs. The contributions, incentive and training program included $38,519 for the investigation of cross-filed housing complaints and for staff training. Fair Housing Initiative Program (FHIP) funds of $34,841 were expended for the development and provision of fair housing materials.


Case Processing Advances

This year the Commission received 2,038 newly-filed complaints. This was a record number, an increase of 1 1% over last year. Is discrimination increasing? We don't know for sure,. But we do believe that individuals are becoming more aware of their rights and that they have recourse when they believe they've been treated unfairly.

Employment complaints remain our largest category of complaints, but dropped by over 3%. There were slight increases in the number of complaints in public accommodations and housing.

Complaints based on physical and mental disability increased from 30.3% in the last fiscal year, to 36% in this fiscal year. This is due to the increased public knowledge of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Complaints based on sex dropped slightly, with a nearly 3% increase in complaints based on race. Complaints based on age remained constant at nearly 18%.

Discharge or termination remained the top alleged discriminatory incident, but general harassment rose from 13.4% to 19%. Failure to accommodate increased from 5.4% to 7.9%. This would be in accordance with the increase in complaints based on disability. The number of sexual harassment complaints dropped, which may be due to our extensive educational efforts on this topic.