State Auditor Rob Sand commented on his recent report of the Governor’s Offices’ misuse of federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds during a “Rally the Vote” event in Stuart earlier this week.

Sand’s report showed that Governor Reynolds chose to spend $21 million of the state’s CARES Act funds on Workday, an accounting computer system. The state contracted with Workday in 2019, and Sand stated that this expenditure is not due to the public health emergency. The Governor also spent almost $500,000 in relief funds on salaries for her staff, which the report said these salaries may only qualify when the staff’s work that is directly related to the pandemic is tracked separately from their ordinary work, and is supported with documentation. Sand comments on the findings, “The federal government gave Iowa $1.25 billion to use to help alleviate the effects of the pandemic. And look, both our office and the federal government said that spending money on new software for state government ain’t that. We’ve got medical professionals that are out there reusing their PPE (personal protective equipment). We are 38th in the country in per-person testing capacity. We have some real needs to respond to the pandemic in a way that protects people’s jobs and protects their health, and again, software for the state ain’t it.”

The audit report stipulates that CARES Act funds are only to be used for necessary expenditures incurred due to the public health emergency, costs that were not accounted for in the most recent budget, and were incurred during the period of March 1st to December 30th of this year.