Rob Sand makes a virtual visit to Franklin County

State Auditor Rob Sand virtually visited Franklin County last week as part of his 2020 variant on the Iowa 99 County Tour.

Arranging an open Zoom meeting on Wednesday, December 2, Sand visited with a handful of Franklin County residents about what his office has been doing this year.

Sand started off by answering a question from Carol Sulaiha, who asked what the state auditor would like to see at the county level to improve transparency and accountability.

The primary thing that Sand is encouraging is use of the new Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) program. The program is broken down into three parts that double as bad jokes, beginning with the PIE chart, a checklist of basic money saving practices.

"What we do with the program is we want everybody to fill that PIE chart out once a year," said Sand. "So hopefully we see the number of boxes that they're checking 'yes' increase."

This leads into the second aspect, which is the PIE contest. This allows cities and counties to look at their neighbors to see how they compare and recognize local officials that are doing a good job.

Finally, that leads into the PIE recipes. As cost saving measures are developed, good strategies can be shared so that everybody can apply best practices.

"If somebody in Franklin County was walking their dog and said, 'Hey wait a minute, why don't we do this?' and they did it and it saved money, we would like to hear about it," said Sand. "We will add it to the PIE chart so we can spread it around the state."

The cities of Sheffield and Alexander have both already reported their PIE charts to the state auditor, but Sand noted that he hasn't received any information from the county government yet.

"We'd love to see the county participate," said Sand.

As far as work in Sand's own office goes, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a lot of changes in the way his staff has done their jobs.

"We've had everybody essentially working at home since March," said Sand. "That has been okay."

Roughly 20% of the office was permitted to return in June, but the majority of the staff remains remote. Coincidentally, the pandemic somewhat facilitates a goal that Sand has had since taking office, which is spreading auditors across the state rather than consolidating employees in Des Moines.

"We work in all 99 counties so we should let our employees live in all 99 counties too," said Sand. "It's more important to have those jobs in rural areas. They mean more in rural areas."

A former prosecutor for the state Attorney General, Sand has also added two law enforcement professionals to his staff.

"What they do is that they make sure the investigations that we're working on that will end up in court will work in a courtroom," said Sand. "Prior to that, we've seen mistakes on occasion that hurt our ability to hold folks accountable."

Two examples of this include securing a guilty plea from Jeff Dworek, the former Metro Waste Authority executive who embezzled more than a million dollars into his own shell companies, and from Sherry Jelinek, who embezzled nearly half a million dollars out of an Iowa City area economic development fund.

Both Dworek and Jelinek are facing federal prison time, something that Sand is pushing to make sure happens to others that embezzle from the state.

"We want to see people who embezzle large amounts of taxpayer dollars go to prison," said Sand. "They don't have to have a long sentence, but right now in Iowa there's no requirement at any point, no matter how much you steal, that you have to serve a day. That's messed up. I'd like to see the legislature change that."

As with everything, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of the work that the auditor's office does.

"Back in June we issued what I think was the country's first audit related to the pandemic in finding that the reporting system for TestIowa was illegal," said Sand, who summarized the issue as the reporting of results going through a private company in Utah rather than going directly the Department of Public Health as required. "We pointed out that wasn't compliant with the law and that it was risky. Everybody knows the more links you have in a chain, the more places it can break. When you're talking about medical records in a public health catastrophe, you should not be adding risk to the equation."

More recently, Sand also issued a report that the state had improperly used $21 million of CARES Act funds towards purchasing an HR and accounting program.

"The governor is appealing that decision, but we anticipate that it will stand," said Sand.

Whether it's state level or local, Sand encourages people to actively watch how public entities are handling public money and to contact the auditor's office if they have any concerns about improper activities.

"We would rather people report the possible misuse of public money than not report it," said Sand. "The vast majority of our investigations come because of tips and if we don't get tips we don't know where to look."