State Auditor

A rundown of important news from this week, including an audit of DMPS, the latest on the carbon pipeline saga and what you should know about voting early in local elections.

State Auditor Rob Sand said he will audit the Des Moines school district because he received a qualifying request from someone in the district. The special audit follows the arrest of former Superintendent Ian Roberts for immigration and gun violations.

Iowa County Supervisor Abigail Maas is seeking the Republican nomination for state auditor in 2026. Maas runs a flooring company and farms corn and soybeans in South Amana. Between trips across the state, she said she's running her campaign from her barn.

Republican Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer is running to be Iowa’s next state auditor in 2026, she announced Tuesday.

State Auditor Rob Sand said the Iowa Department of Education denied him access to information about the state’s education savings accounts. Gov. Kim Reynolds said Sand used the wrong process to seek information and accused him of trying to score political points.

State Auditor Rob Sand released an audit report Tuesday that says the Iowa Judicial Branch distributed $27.6 million of court debt collections to the wrong state fund over four years, shorting other state and local funds in the process.

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.