State Auditor Wants To Help Save Taxpayers Money

State Auditor Rob Sand was in Oskaloosa this past week talking about his PIE initiative.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – State Auditor Rob Sand was in Oskaloosa on Thursday, and he’s looking to help municipalities save money.

Sand is looking for the best PIE recipes, and he wants to make them available to other municipalities to help them save money.

PIE is an acronym for Public Innovations and Efficiencies and is an initiative designed to help the local, county, and state government cut costs.

Sand had been with the attorney generals office doing criminal prosecution work prior to being elected.

“And so I knew that the auditor’s office did audits and I knew they did public corruption investigations because, for the most part, I was working with those investigations when they were finished,” said Sand.

Sand campaigned on his work as a prosecutor, and that the auditor’s office lacked anyone with such a background. “Because those investigations were conducted without people in law enforcement background. Sometimes things got missed or think that in a way that you just wouldn’t do if you’re thinking about a courtroom setting.”

Since then, Sand has hired two auditor investigators. Those individuals have law enforcement backgrounds.

“Criminal prosecution fundamentally is really dark. Even when your winning it’s not like you’re having a good day,” said Sand. “You’re still just dealing in darkness, and kind of the best thing you can do is mitigating something bad, as opposed to actually doing something good.

So, I was reading chapter 11 in the Iowa Code. That’s what describes the auditor’s office and what it does. I saw that it had the ability to make efficiency recommendations,” Sand said.

“That actually got me really excited, because I had noticed in my time at the office that I had gone from a happy and optimistic person to something less than a happy and optimistic person. The idea to me of getting up every day and getting to work on issues related to efficiency and innovation and putting the system in place that didn’t previously exist. That actually makes things better as opposed to just mitigating bad things. Sounds like fun. I got excited about it,” explained Sand.

“So PIE, Public Innovations and Efficiencies is the result,” Sand explained. “There are a lot of really small towns around Iowa. They don’t have a city manager. Your clerk might be someone who’s got great common sense and a good intelligent mind but only has an 11th-grade education. So every single item on there is written in a very basic straightforward way so that everybody can understand it no matter who’s reading it, and it tells you what it is and what to do, actually to do it,” Sand said of the process.

Sand said basic things like using LED lights or having furniture away from HVAC vents as ways of saving money.

Municipalities would then check the box for those items, and Iowa Auditors office will make that information available to the public “so that everyone else can see what kind of a job we’re doing on that”.

Those entities that are doing a good job of saving money according to the PIE chart will then be recognized for the work they have done to improve efficiency.

Other innovative ways of saving money will then be shared on the PIE Chart, and municipalities will be able to contact the innovator to learn more about the process, to learn how or if it can be applied to them.

Sand then took a question and answer session from the public before departing for his next stop in Sigourney.