State Auditor Rob Sand spoke to a handful of people Wednesday morning at Jefferson City Hall.

It was part of Sand’s 99-county tour and he told Raccoon Valley Radio there are principle and practical reasons why he is visiting all 99 Iowa counties.

“The principle reason is people in Greene County and every county in this state had the opportunity to pick who their state auditor was. That means their state auditor ought to come out and let them ask questions. I think that’s a good thing to improve accountability in state government and responsiveness to people because I got to hear what people’s questions were. The practical reason is we do audits in all 99 counties. So a lot of times we’re coming out and talking to local officials about new programs that are going to affect the way our office works with their office and as long as we’re doing that we may as well make that a public meeting that anyone else can hear about too, because it’s the public’s business.”

Sand talked about establishing a Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) program. It consists of a PIE chart with a survey for local and county governments and school districts to fill out about money saving strategies. The public would then see the answers. The second part, the PIE contest, would be a yearly follow-up survey of the same questions and celebrate successes. The final step is PIE recipes, or sharing those successes with other entities.

Sand said in addition to the 100 people in his office, they also have state-employed auditors who live and work within their own communities. He finished by talking about drafting a bill for the upcoming legislative session to require public individuals that commit felony-level embezzlement to be sentenced to state prison for a length of time.