In recent years, Iowa residents are hearing more reports of misappropriated public funds from the small rural communities. Iowa State Auditor, Rob Sand, says there is a simple reason for that.
Sand says it is tough to say exactly what percentage of the items they are identifying during these examinations comes from honest errors and how many are actual embezzlements.
What is really troubling for Sand is that they are continuing to see more and more of the latter—the thefts. He has spent a decade now in roles that bear the responsibility of ferreting out and punishing those who break these laws.
Sand has drafted proposed legislation that will address these issues. First, he is asking for stiffer penalties for those who steal from the taxpayers.
He does not propose any minimums. He wants to leave that decision up to the Board of Parole. And, obviously, the more severe the offense the more jail time that should be assessed. There is no real uniformity at this time, Sand says. He has seen people embezzle amounts in the six figures and get a slap on the wrist and then placed on a repayment plan. The ridiculous part, he says, is that it generally never brings the city back to whole as that plan could take hundreds of years to complete. Sand also says he wants to do away with deferred judgments, which allows the felony conviction to be removed from a person’s record if they complete their probationary sentence.
This would also reduce the ability of that person to move to another position of trust where they can repeat this criminal pattern. Sand says communities and public entities will often fire the offender, but not press charges because of negative publicity or the cost of litigation. This emboldens the criminal to repeat the behavior. These, Sand says, can be facts nearly impossible to get in front of a judge because they were not prosecuted. Sand’s office issues about 350 reports a year, but there are several other CPA firms that handle reports and audits as well. His office employs around 100 people and they are extremely busy with annual county and city audits for those communities over 1,000 in population. Communities with less than 1,000 residents are reviewed in an eight-year rotation.
