State Auditor visits Washington

WASHINGTON — Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand held a town hall in Washington Thursday afternoon, part of his annual tour of the state.

Sand said the annual trip through every county was informative to his office.

“Probably one in every 10 meetings, or one in every five, I’ll hear someone bring up an issue with state government … or about local government that they think we should be aware of,” he said. “So it’s been good for us to keep our ears and eyes open as to what’s going on.”

The town hall was attended by roughly two dozen people, many of whom brought questions for the auditor.

Municipal budget audits came up early. Sand said his office — as well as its private sector counterparts — were sometimes stretched too thin for routine city reviews. While the auditors office has held a steady number of staff for years, the industry as a whole has not.

“We have about 100 people, and that hasn’t changed, but some of the firms around Iowa that do this work have disappeared,” he said. “We haven’t ended doing all municipal audits, we’re still doing some, but we had to make tough decisions about where we could keep our folks.”

For smaller cities, Sand said full audits were often off the table.

"If they don’t spend over a million and they have under 2,000 people, they only get a periodic exam,“ Sand said. ”It’s not a full blown audit, but we go in, we do the regular stuff, and then we issue a report that tells them what they need to change. Then somewhere in the next eight-year period, they will have a repeat examination.“

One example is the city of Brighton, where municipal officials requested extensive auditing from the state early this year in response to accusations surrounding the fire department budget, but were instead granted only a periodic examination.

In cases like that, Sand said there was no bright line for the office to take action, but a series of factors to consider.

“For places like Brighton, if they haven’t had their review yet in that eight-year cycle, we’ll say, ‘OK, we’ll do your review this year,’” Sand said. “If they already have, then it’s a question of how serious the allegations are, … that can be a factor. Our workload, again, that can be a huge factor.”

Private school vouchers also came up. Sand said he opposed efforts by the Reynolds administration to support private schools, which he said were less accountable.

“One of the reasons I’m concerned about it is, that’s a lot of money that’s then going to a place that’s less transparent,” he said. “You should be able to see what’s going on with your tax dollars. If it’s going to an entity that doesn’t have the same reporting obligations to the public, you simply don’t have the same opportunities.”

Sand joined some at the meeting in criticizing statewide initiatives that have consolidated decision-making authority in Des Moines, rather than at county and city levels.

With the issue in the hands of the state legislature, the auditor said he favored less polarizing electoral systems like ranked choice voting and open primaries as an indirect solution to the erosion of home rule.

“We’ve had six years of one-party rule in Iowa,” Sand said. “Six years of rule by any party becomes insiders versus outsiders, rather than Democrats versus Republicans … this is stupid. I can’t stand it. One thing I think we should do that would be helpful is give independent voters the same right to participate as partisan voters.”

Sand said the Auditor’s department took efforts to be non-partisan. While he’s running for re-election in November as a Democrat, he said he did so begrudgingly.

“Everywhere we go, I talk about the fact that we have a Democrat, a Republican and an independent in senior leadership, that I promoted people who made contributions to my opponent,” he said. “I registered as a Democrat for the same stupid reason that independents don’t have a right to participate in primaries. I wanted to enfranchise myself, and so I picked my poison. I haven’t forgotten that it’s poison.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com