Do They Know What They Are Doing?
Over the past month, Iowa Auditor of State’s office has put out two “reports” that can be more accurately characterized as political statements. Even a cursory reading of these reports leaves many Iowans asking themselves two questions:
Is the State Auditor using his taxpayer funded office to do work for his campaign for governor? Furthermore, do these people know what they are doing?
On June 10, the State Auditor issued a report on “Pharmacy Benefit Manager practices related to Iowa Medicaid”. In the exhaustive one and a quarter page report, it is alleged that the PBM’s used by Iowa’s Managed Care Organization’s (MCO’s) used a pricing model in other states that allowed the PBM to use a practice known as “spread pricing” and get more money from the MCO’s than what they are entitled. Because these companies were found to be using this practice in other states, the Auditor assumes it may be happening in Iowa.
There is one problem with the Auditor’s assumption. This practice is already prohibited by Iowa’s Medicaid program. One would think the Auditor would know this, since they state that fact in their press release:
“This recalculation has been shown in other states to result in ‘spread pricing’, a practice prohibited by Iowa Medicaid.”.
If Iowa Medicaid had already banned the practice, a fact that Sand explicitly acknowledges, then why would he believe this was going on? Did the report uncover evidence that it is happening in Iowa? No, the report does not cite any evidence that this is happening in Iowa. The report only cites reports from other states where this was found. But even those reports are dated.
A week later, the Auditor of State’s office put out another dubious report. This time, the focus was one of Sand’s favorite targets – Educational Savings Accounts. In this “report” the claim is made that taxpayers are paying over $37,000 for each student who supposedly switched from public schools to private schools. It must be purely coincidental that the official taxpayer funded Office of the State Auditor releases a “report” that just so happens to support Sand’s positions in his run for governor.
About the actual content of the Auditor’s political statement/report, the conclusion regarding the $37,000 number is not possible when you consider that the law creating the ESA’s provides that the ESA is equal to regular state cost per pupil that the state pays to public schools – $8,148 in the next school year.
The report seems to contend that ESA’s should only be for those people who were not going to a private school at the time it passed. It’s not clear how that form of discrimination would be legal.
The report goes further, claiming that there has been a great increase in the number of private schools. It even lists the schools which it claims are new since the ESA bill was passed. But of the 69 schools they identify, over one-third of the list were actually open prior to 2023. This includes St Albert Elementary School in Council Bluffs, whose history goes back to the early 1970’s.
Both reports raise questions about the work being done in the Auditor of State’s office. How much is official and how much is campaign work. While there was time to generate these, the Auditor’s office still has not completed any audit of the Judicial Branch’s court debt collection process and the millions of dollars that was misallocated since 2020. It has been nearly 600 days since the Judicial Branch entered into an agreement allowing an audit.
There also is the growing financial crisis within the Iowa City Community School District. While the district’s audits are woefully delayed and residents of the district are clamoring for action, there is silence from the Auditor’s office. The fact that the Iowa City Schools failed to submit an audit should have been a warning sign, but that apparently was ignored.
Iowans are starting to wonder if the Auditor of State’s office is fulfilling it’s role as the taxpayer’s watch dog. Or is that watchdog asleep?
