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State auditor visits Fairfield, Washington
Rob Sand talks about PIE program, property tax study and ‘paper ceiling’
FAIRFIELD — Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand made a stop in Fairfield on Tuesday, Sept. 10, part of his 99-county tour of the state.
Sand met with residents’ in the town’s Central Park. He gave an update on the activities of his office, which includes its Public Innovations & Efficiencies (or PIE) program. Local governments are invited to submit examples of common-sense, money-saving innovations in their operations to the state, and are sometimes rewarded with pies hand-delivered by the auditor’s office. Sand said it has attracted 500 entries each of the last two years.
The state auditor said one of his priorities is creating a path for people to do public service, even if they don’t have a four-year college degree. However, he said a lot of state jobs require a four-year degree when they really don’t need to.
Sand said that, even though he is a Democrat and Gov. Kim Reynolds is a Republican, he praised her work on this issue to help remove the “paper ceiling” as he called it. He said Reynolds has eliminated some of the four-year degree requirements for some jobs, and his office found there were hundreds more across the state that could be added to the list.
“Back in 2022, we started hiring people with a two-year degree in our office,” Sand said.
The auditor went on to highlight a recent report which found Iowans in rural areas paying considerably higher property taxes than those in urban areas, despite those rural areas being lower-income.
Sand spoke about his displeasure with a recent developing involving a fertilizer plant built in Wever (Lee County) in 2017. The plant, Iowa Fertilizer Company, is one of the world’s largest fertilizer plants, and was built with state tax incentives in an effort to spur competition. Sand said one of farmers’ chief complaints is that their input costs, like fertilizer, are too high, so the hope was that greater competition in the industry would drive those costs down.
However, Sand said that Koch Ag & Energy Solutions acquired the Iowa Fertilizer Company in December. He didn’t like this because it would mean further consolidation in the industry, the very thing the state was trying to prevent.
On Sept. 5, Sand met with residents in Washington’s Central Park, where he spoke about many of the same subjects that he did in Fairfield on Sept. 10, while also fielding questions from the audience. While speaking about the disparity in property taxes paid by rural and urban residents, Sand said some of that disparity stems from government’s inherent overhead costs, split among fewer people than in urban communities. At the same time, Sand blamed “unfunded mandates” from Iowa’s Republican-controlled legislature for much of the gap.
“The state government (is) continually telling local government, ‘Hey, you have to do this and we’re not going to give you the money to do it,’” he said. “There’s a rule against that, which you’d think people who support small government would support … part of the problem is you have all these directives of the state telling local government what to do while also limiting their ability to have any revenue.”
With his prepared remarks out of the way, Sand entertained a handful of questions from the group on a variety of topics for about a half-hour, before departing. He quickly shot down a question asking him about a run for governor in 2026, saying his 99-county tour was state-sponsored, and not a campaign stop.
Responding to other remarks, he took aim at some Republican lawmakers’ efforts to gradually roll back and eventually eliminate the state’s income tax.
“One of the core budgeting principals that I have always pointed to, and that all my Republican predecessors have always pointed to in this office, is you don’t use one-time money for ongoing expenses,” he said. “That’s what they’re doing. They had all this federal money come in, so they’re effectively socking it away, using it to keep the state afloat a few more years.”
Sand also took questions about Gov. Kim Reynolds’ rejection of an estimated $29 million in federal funding for EBT — a USDA-run food assistance program for children in poverty — instead using state dollars to pursue a food box program that more children qualify for, but provides families with preselected items, rather than spending vouchers to use on products of their choice.
Sand said the governor’s roughly $900,000 proposal was needlessly expensive for Iowa taxpayers, replaced dollars that would otherwise boost local economies, and denied recipients agency over their diets.
“Iowans pay federal taxes, and if the federal government says, ‘Hey, Iowa’s doing their share, we should send them $30 million to feed their kids,’ we should take it,” Sand said. “Do you know who has the power in the $30 million that comes from the feds? Parents: you just get the card, and you buy the food … in a competitive grant program, do you know who has the power then? The governor.”
