Iowa Auditor Rob Sand is calling his new program that creates better use of governmental resources a success this year.

The Public Innovations and Efficiencies (PIE) program has city and county governments and school districts fill out a checklist, which are then submitted to the state auditor’s office to collect data to help find better ways to utilize taxpayer dollars. Sand says over 350 entities participated this year, including the cities of Churdan and Grand Junction in Greene County. He explains the overall goal of the PIE program.

“The program’s pretty straightforward. We are going to be saving, in the long-run for taxpayers across the state of Iowa, hundreds of millions of dollars through this program because we are going to help locally-elected officials like those Churdan and Grand Junction unlock lots of savings by putting into place efficiency measures.”

Sand points out this is a base-line year of the PIE program, which means the program is still in an infancy and there’s no measure of cost savings until those areas for efficiencies are put in place by those who participated. He describes another positive aspect by gathering other PIE recipes.

“So if there’s an entity that came up with something, they invented an idea on their own that’s going to save a bunch of money, we ask them to tell us about it. If they tell us about it and we can add it to the list that way we’re able to spread that new idea across the state just in the space of a year.”   

Conversely, during the Greene County Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, County Attorney Thomas Laehn advised the Supervisors to not participate in Sand’s PIE program because Laehn felt it will cost the county taxpayers more money to implement the changes than it would to save the county money in the long-run. The Board agreed and chose to not participate. 

Sand says PIE is a voluntary program and any governmental entity that wants to learn more about can contact his office at www.auditor.iowa.gov/.