FORT MADISON – Iowa Auditor Rob Sand stopped by to visit with some Fort Madison residents on the steps of the Lee County Courthouse Wednesday.
With a cup of McDonald’s coffee in hand he talked about what’s going on in the state auditor’s office and to answer any questions about his office.
Fort Madison resident Mike Parks immediately pressed Sand about the new law limiting his capacity to inspect documents, one of the few states in the nation to have such a law.
The law has been in place for about three weeks now, since July 1, so Sand said he really doesn’t have a good idea of the impact the new law has.
The law takes away the auditor’s office's ability to go to the courts with an independent judge, and in turn takes issues to a three-person panel. The issue goes to the panel that consists of one person from the auditor’s office, one person appointed by the governor, and one person from the agency being audited.
“You don’t need to be the state auditor to figure out the math on that one,” Sand said.
“I think this law is pro-corruption and pro-waste. You’re going to see more corruption and you’re going to see more waste, in part, because now it’s just harder for us to find it.”
He said the limited ability to review documents is, therefore, a limited ability to ward people off wasting tax dollars.
“We’re going to be the only state in the country, the whole government agency in the country that I’m aware of, that has an entire broad categories of documents that are off limits to auditors,” he said.
“Historically, we’ve been able to effectively look at any document we wanted to look at. The only exception was your personal taxes. There’s not a long list of categories of things that we aren’t able to look at.”
Sand also talked about Educational Savings Accounts and how taxpayers are being left out of the equation in the investigation into how those funds are being spent. Sand said the bulk of that money goes to tuition and books, but there is no oversight in how the schools spend that money.
“We can see how the money is being spent by the parent for qualified educational expenses, but tuition is the really big one and you're actually required to put it first towards education. Once you pay tuition, poof!” he said.
“I pointed this out to them and they said 'Well, we don’t want public oversight in private schools'. Well, I think you want public oversight of public money.”
Sand said he was told that the parents will figure out if something is going wrong and will move their kids to a different school. But he said nothing in the law gives parents the right to see what’s going on financially at private schools.
“Is it a good idea to have the people who benefit the most from spending your tax dollars, also be in charge of overseeing it? I don’t think so. There’s a conflict of interest there,” he said.
“Nothing about this makes sense.”
He said those that believe in the ESA program should want transparency.
“You’re just throwing this money into a black hole.”
The bill creates education savings accounts for those that apply and qualify to use toward offsetting costs of private and charter schools including tuition, books, and other qualified education expenses. Those other expenses are items that would be purchased through a single company called Odyssey, who's under contract with the state to administer the ESA accounts. Sand said that’s another part of the law that’s inconsistent with good accounting practices.
He also talked about some recent votes he’s had as a member of the State Appeal Board, which he said is a check on the power of the attorney general and the administration to settle suits against the state.
He said the board provides oversight as to how the suits are settled.
He voted against what he called the Gary Barta bailout. He said the state has had to settle four suits of discrimination against the University of Iowa Athletic Department during Barta’s leadership.
“Please show me someone in the private sector that’s been sued four times for the same thing and still has their job,” Sand said. “I don’t think you can show me that and that lack of accountability in the public sector is one of the things that drives people nuts about what happens with their tax dollars.”
Sand said he wasn’t voting to pay half the $4 million settlement unless Barta was out of a job.
The appeals board voted to pay half that settlement out of the taxpayer-supported general fund. But Sands said he credited University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson for paying what would have been a public expense, out of the athletic department’s budget fully.
Sand was pressed by a member of the group as to whether he was planning to run for Governor.
“That’s in four years,” Sand said.
After the discussion, Sand said he wasn’t interested at this point in the Governor’s office.
“No. I just ran for re-election. That’s 2026. This is my job."
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