The board may buy, lease, improve, sell, contract, charge fees, locate offices, and adopt rules for educational telecommunications, but it must apply for needed authorizations and approve the division’s budget requests.
1. The board may purchase, lease, and improve property, equipment, and services for educational telecommunications including the broadcast and narrowcast systems, and may dispose of property and equipment when not necessary for its purposes. 2. The board shall apply for channels, frequencies, licenses, permits, and other authorizations as necessary for the performance of the board’s duties. 3. This section does not prohibit institutions under the state board of regents and community colleges under the department of education from owning, operating, improving, maintaining, and restructuring educational radio and television stations and transmitters now in existence or other educational narrowcast telecommunications systems and services. The institutions and schools may enter into agreements with the board for the lease or purchase of equipment and facilities. 4. The board may locate its administrative offices and production facilities outside the city of Des Moines. 5. The board shall establish guidelines for and may impose and collect fees and charges for services. Fees and charges collected by the board for services shall be deposited to the credit of the division. Any interest earned on these receipts, and revenues generated under subsection 6, shall be retained and may be expended by the division subject to the approval of the board. 6. The board may make and execute agreements, contracts, and other instruments with any public or private entity and may retain revenues generated from these contracts. State departments and agencies, other public agencies, and governmental subdivisions and private entities including but not limited to institutions of higher education and nonpublic schools may enter into contracts and otherwise cooperate with the board. 7. The board may contract with engineers, attorneys, accountants, financial experts, and other advisors upon the recommendation of the administrator. The board may enter into contracts or agreements for such services with local, state, or federal governmental agencies. 8. To preserve the integrity of its editorial processes, the board may select programming, content partners, and other authorized contractual services without using a competitive selection process or performance measures that may otherwise be required by law for such services. For purposes of this subsection, authorized contractual services are those services related, directly or indirectly, to the development of program production and instructional and educational media. Authorized contractual services include but are not limited to on-air performers, producers or directors, field producers, writers, production assistants, manual laborers, mobile unit services, closed captioning services, duplication of tape services, and satellite services. 9. The board shall approve for submission the annual budget request and any supplementary budget request for the public broadcasting division of the department of education. 10. The board may adopt rules to implement and administer the programs of the division. 11. The decision of the board is final agency action under chapter 17A. 93 Acts, ch 48, §41; 2006 Acts, ch 1185, §26 – 28; 2023 Acts, ch 66, §46