State auditor Rob Sand makes a stop in Washington

WASHINGTON - State Auditor Rob Sand held a town hall meeting in Washington Thursday afternoon to let the public know what his office has been working on.

A small crowd gathered up stairs at the Washington Public Library on Thursday, Oct. 17, as Sand, who was elected as the state auditor during the 2018 election, described the three main initiatives his office has been working on.

The first item was creating a new position called the auditor investigator, which brought in two members of law enforcement to fill the position. He said each new hire has extensive experience in law enforcement as well as health and human services.

The second initiative his office worked on was efficiency recommendations, otherwise known as the PIE (public, innovation, efficiency) initiative.

The program has three key components. The first is check list called the PIE chart, which is a five-page list with recommendations on how to save tax payer money. The chart will be sent out to local government agencies before the end of the calendar year and the answers will be put online for the public to view.

Sand said this will allow for the second component, a PIE contest, to happen next year. The contest will showcase which counties and cities are doing well and in what areas.

'We should be holding up examples of people doing good. There is too little recognition of it even though there's a lot of it going on,” he said.

This will feed into the third component of PIE recipes. The recipes are positive actions counties or cities have taken that have helped out their individual entity. This information will be collected, added to the PIE chart and visible on the auditor's office website for the public to see.

He said an example of a PIE recipe would be the recycling program in Scott County. Two years ago, the county switched to single stream recycling which resulted in a $2.5 million savings over eight years and the creation of 11 new jobs.

By putting this and the contact information for the person who initiated the program out in the public, he said it would help spread the idea around the state and be a valuable resource for other state entities that are interested in the idea.

Sand said the PIE initiative still is a work in progress, but will be available to the public soon.

Sand said he was excited to get started on this because he felt it was a way his office could make a positive impact on the state. 'What's really exciting about this to me is I think it's going to result in a lot of savings for tax payers at every level of government,” he said.

The third initiative is creating state wide jobs for those who work in the auditor's office.

'The idea behind that is we do statewide work so we should have statewide jobs,” he said.

He said everyone who works in the auditor's office in Des Moines lives and works in the city. When they have to complete audits throughout the state, they have to travel and stay in hotels. With this new plan, employees would have the option to choose where in the state they want to live.

'Somebody who grows up in Washington and goes to (The University of) Iowa and wants to do accounting work and would love to live in Washington but doesn't see a job here, might come and work at the state auditor's office. Once they've been there a year and have been trained a little bit, they can come back and live in Washington,” he said. Those who choose to participate in this will have all of their assignments focused within a 60 mile radius, he said.

Sand said this will help cut down on the 25 percent turnover rate in his office, cut down on expenses for clients who have to pay for the hotel rooms when the employees travel and for the employees who want the freedom to live wherever they choose.