(Spirit Lake)– State Auditor Rob Sand made several stops in the area today (Tues.), including one in Spirit Lake. Sand sounded off on a new state law that puts limits on the investigations his office can do, especially when those involve other state agencies…
“People I think are frustrated with the fact that the legislature has passed and the Governor has signed a bill allowing people to hide documents from the Auditor’s Office along with state government, that is. Not people, but state government, to hide documents from the Auditor’s Office. Nobody’s audit works that way. If you’re getting audited, the government should have the same obligations to show the truth: open up the books and if there’s a problem, let’s talk about it, but hiding isn’t going to help anything.”
Sand says he feels it’s going to further erode government…
“We all know where this is going to go. It’s going to go towards an increase in waste, fraud and abuse because people don’t want to be held accountable when problems happen on their watch.”
Sand also promoted a program launched through the State Auditor’s Office that promotes accountability among governmental agencies…
“PIE is all about public innovations and efficiencies. It’s finding ways to save tax dollars and this program that we started in my first term has been good enough to do that, it’s been copied in two other states and has about 500 participating entities from all 99 counties every single year. Pretty good for a program that’s just getting to be about five years old.”
Sand continues to urge anyone with information into financial wrongdoings or corruption to contact his office…
“We work very hard to protect whistleblowers to our office. If you’ve ever heard of the Auditor’s Office or myself getting sued, our name’s getting dragged through the mud because we refuse to hand over documents that if we’d handed them over would have made it easier to identify whistleblowers. The bottom line is you can always reach out and contact us, info@aos.iowa.gov is one place to do that. If you just go to our website you should see a button that says provide a confidential tip. We are going to protect your identity no matter what.”
In addition to Spirit Lake, Sand also made stops today (Tues.) in Estherville, Emmetsburg and Spencer. He’ll be in Storm Lake this (Tues.) evening. The townhalls were originally scheduled for June but were postponed to now due to the flooding.
