T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand speaks with a crowd of almost 30 people at his town hall at Elks Park on Wednesday. Sand answered a variety of questions from attendees during the hour-long event.

Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand spoke to a crowd of close to 30 people at his annual town hall, which was held at Elks Park on Wednesday.

Sand, who showed up eating a Flying Elbow cheeseburger, opened the field to a variety of questions from the audience. One of the first was one he hears a lot, about whether he would run for governor. His answer was, “Next question.”

Another audience member asked Sand about the new law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in June which restricts the auditor’s office from accessing certain personal documents. The law prevents Sand from taking elected officials, boards, commissions, departments and the executive agency to court to subpoena for those documents. Rather, inquiries of the auditor about other state agencies will be decided by a three-person panel. He made it clear he was not a fan of the law and added he could not access records he was curious about.

“They’ve said this is important to protect privacy — privacy of waste, fraud and abuse,” Sand said. “The law is dumb. I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. People ought to know about it.”

He said if the auditor’s office is denied records, people will also know about that. Sand added that his office has not been denied records yet, but the law has only been in effect for two weeks. Iowa is the only state in the country in which the auditor cannot obtain certain documents.

“Our job is to investigate and report,” he said. “We sniff around. We see what we can find and let people know what we found. Sometimes it’s critical of the governor. Sometimes it defends the governor.”

A big subject at the town hall was the school voucher program providing Education Savings Accounts, which gives parents state funding would previously go to the public school district, and the program now allows that funding to go to the parents’ chosen private school. Sand described the program as a black hole and a mess. He asked the attendees to think of anything that could be done with money that is not illegal.

“The only thing that you can imagine on God’s green earth that private schools can’t do is provide a rebate to parents,” he said. “That’s it. That’s the only thing they are not allowed to do.”

For example, Sand said the state funding can be pocketed by the private school principal, or a house could be purchased.

“There’s nothing in this law that requires private schools to spend your money on educating children,” he said. “I don’t know if I can state it any more clearly than that.”

Sand further said it will be difficult for people to find out how those schools are spending the public dollars. They do not have to follow requirements for public records and meetings and do not have to make an audit public. He said the common argument of parents knowing how the money is spent is flawed.

“There’s nothing in the law that gives parents the right to go to meetings, look at emails or look at an audit,” Sand said.

He said the people have the right to see how their public money is spent. By the third year of the program, Sand said, there are no income restrictions, so parents in higher income households will have their child’s tuition paid for by public dollars.

Mayor Joel Greer was in attendance and asked Sand what he thought about the new judicial nominating system. Previously, Sand said the system was a crown jewel for the state as it was nonpartisan. During the last five years, he said the legislature tinkered with the system to make it more political.

Sand made it known he is not a fan of partisan politics and described the political system as broken. He said if people think the only problem is the wrong party is in charge of the state, they need to go to another state where the other party is in control. There will be problems there as well.

“We are human beings,” Sand said. “What we get when we have a one-party system is a system that serves that party, not a system that serves the people. That’s what we’ve seen talking about policy after policy tonight.”

He also spoke about what he sees as flaws in the voting system that usually only provides voters with two candidates. Sand, who was a registered independent before picking Democrat to vote in the primary elections, suggested some different ballot methods of voting, such as approval in which the people can vote for all of the candidates of whom they approve.

“Every one of the founders told us to watch out for partisanship,” he said. “Washington’s farewell address was look out for foreign influence and look out for, they called it factionalism at the time. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said, ‘The only thing that can destroy this country is division within.’ I like John Adams quote, ‘The greatest evil possible in this country is two great parties united only in their hatred of each other.’ Ta-da. Here we are.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.