State Auditor

The Iowa Judicial Branch said it is fixing computer programming errors that led to more than $26 million in court debt collections being sent to the wrong funds.

House Speaker Pat Grassley and Iowa Department of Management Director Kraig Paulsen wrote to State Auditor Rob Sand urging him to investigate the judicial branch’s misallocation of court debt collections dating back to 2021.

A lawsuit alleging that State Auditor Rob Sand violated Iowa’s public records law can continue after the Iowa Supreme Court issued an opinion Friday directing a lower court to hold further proceedings to determine if the auditor’s office illegally withheld some emails.

Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand said it's unclear why Attorney General Brenna Bird has not released results of an internal investigation on her policy that paused reimbursements for rape victims' emergency contraception.

Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand said Thursday a law passed last year to limit his authority has allowed a state agency to keep him from viewing key documents, and he warned that a new bill advanced this week by Republicans in the Iowa Senate would further hamstring his ability to root out government waste, fraud and abuse.

The head of a conservative law firm argued before the Iowa Supreme Court Thursday that the Democratic state auditor violated the public records law by refusing to release certain emails.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law Thursday that restricts the Iowa state auditor’s access to certain state information.

The people who spent this spring covering the Iowa Statehouse discuss an eventful session for the Republican-controlled legislature.

Also, Auditor Rob Sand said a bill limiting his office, the only statewide office held by a Democrat in Iowa, is the “greatest pro-corruption bill … and the worst perversion of checks and balances in Iowa’s history."

Here's what happened last week as lawmakers near the end of the 2023 legislative session