Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

As a father, my top priority is protecting my kids. When a child is placed in foster care, their safety and well-being become the state’s responsibility. Tragically, the state of Iowa failed to protect Sabrina Ray, killed by her adoptive parents in 2017, and her siblings from abuse and torture.

Because of that failure, the state paid $10 million in 2023 to settle lawsuits brought by Sabrina’s two surviving sisters. I voted on those settlements because, as auditor, I am a statutory member of the board that makes these decisions. I supported those settlements not just to help those children and their families, but because I believed it would lead to real, meaningful reform to Iowa’s foster care and adoption system.

A key part of that settlement – and a key reason I supported it – was the creation of a child welfare task force. Its mission: to examine what went wrong, make recommendations on how to improve the system, and most importantly, prevent future tragedies. Its members included professionals directly involved in Sabrina’s case — a police officer, a paramedic, a prosecutor — as well as the families who adopted Sabrina’s sisters.

But that’s not what happened.

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

Recently, an argument has been going around that goes like this: private schools are accredited to teach students, therefore they’re accountable to taxpayers. This claim ignores that being accredited as an academic institution has nothing to do with how an entity spends money. Accredited private schools taking vouchers still have no rules for how they spend tax dollars, and no audits either.

The authors of the governor’s school voucher bill knew accreditation doesn’t impact oversight of spending. In fact, they wanted it that way.

When I noticed that the bill had just one restriction on the use of taxpayer funds once those dollars are turned over to the private schools (rebates to parents aren’t allowed)—I was sure there was some kind of mistake. No, the bill’s advocate told me at the time. That’s the point: “We do not want public oversight of private schools” were his exact words. I would guess most taxpayers agree with me that we want public oversight of public dollars, though.

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

Lots of topics get swept under the rug because they’re not comfortable for us to confront. Sometimes we’d rather pretend the problems don’t exist or couldn’t happen in a place like Iowa. But they do, and it can happen anywhere—even in our great state. It is our obligation to confront them in order to solve them.

I’ve always spoken out on behalf of victims of sexual violence. From my time as a prosecutor putting or keeping rapists and pedophiles behind bars, to voting against taxpayer-funded settlements that bail out perpetrators of egregious sexual harassment in my role as a member of the State Appeal Board now that I’m state auditor.

Rob Sand is Iowa’s state auditor.

As Iowa’s taxpayer watchdog, I hear from Iowans just about every day with concerns about state and local government. Oftentimes, there are steps my office can take to address those concerns; other times, the next step is as simple as directing folks to the best channel in state government to address their question. Sometimes, it’s easy to also confuse misplaced priorities for misspent money—one requires a change in leadership, and the other requires an audit investigation.

Randy Evans, the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, recently raised questions about the state auditor’s responsibility to investigate secret government settlements. Evans wrote in his column that the situation “should have State Auditor Rob Sand knocking on the doors at City Hall” and “asking questions on behalf of the tax-paying people of Davenport.”

What many people don’t know, however, is that the state auditor needs some kind of request to conduct a review at the local level.