The Taxpayers’ Watchdog: Rob Sand
August 25th, 2022
“Our job is promoting transparency”
Rob Sand is Iowa’s State Auditor, which is the taxpayers’ watchdog in the state. He’s the first Democrat to beat an incumbent Republican in Iowa in 50 years. We discuss putting public service above politics, delivering good governance, and how to get stuff done even when you are part of a political minority.
The auditor’s job is to promote transparency, uncover wrongdoing, and report their findings to the public. Their work is key in holding powerful people in positions of trust accountable. Questions about whether government should be smaller or bigger miss the mark because the goal is to have better government that meets people where they are. Good governance is the bedrock of a self-governing society.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Rob Sand
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Rob Sand Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. For a free 14-day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features, go to Shopify.com/Hopeful.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:23] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. This show is at its best, I think, when we strike a balance between talking about the big ideas and talking to the change makers who pick up the ideas and run with them, highlighting the people who are doing the sometimes quiet work of renewing our democracy in their communities, of building alliances and engaging with civic life step by step. Today's guest is an example of this. Rob Sand is Iowa State auditor. He's the taxpayer's watchdog. In New York State, we call it the comptroller, trying to make sure tax dollars are well spent and advocating for better public services. Rob Sand is also the first Democrat to beat an incumbent Republican in Iowa in 50 years. Rob, welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Rob Sand: [00:01:31] Yeah, thanks for having me, Mila. I'm excited to be here. And I think the concept in what you guys do on this program kind of hits the nail on the head for where we need to be. So thanks for doing what you're doing.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:40] Thank you. So I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm guessing most kids, probably not even you say, "When I grow up, I want to be state auditor."
Rob Sand: [00:01:52] Correct.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:53] But I've heard you talk about this job with such passion. What
made you think "that's a job I want?"
Rob Sand: [00:01:59] It's a really good question. There can always be the short answer or the long answer. I'll try to go medium length. I grew up in a family that was not so much politically active, but very civically active. My parents volunteered for different
organizations. They certainly voted, but they were much more involved on the civic side than the political side. And I think of both of those things as being public service. But I really found kind of a passion for public service as almost like a vocational sense. When I was a junior and senior in high school and I spent two years getting a skatepark built in my little hometown. I'm from Decorah, Iowa. It's about 8,000 people. You have to drive an hour to get anywhere bigger. And after two years of advocacy, they poured concrete. And it took a long time. But it really was an awakening to me that you could work together. Right. Citizens and our government can work together to actually solve problems. I didn't necessarily go from there to wanting to be in elected office. The guy that I was working with was like, you know, if if, you know Parks and Rec, he was the Leslie Knope maybe of Decorah, Iowa, the Parks and Rec director. He wasn't an elected position, just appointed. But it kind of woke me up to the idea, you know, that we can solve problems together. My interest specifically in the state auditor's office developed only when I was one of the assistant attorneys general in Iowa, working mostly on prosecuting financial crime and public corruption. And so this was work where I would work with the state auditor's office in Iowa. They conduct most of Iowa's public corruption investigations. Their investigations would come to my desk and then I would be tasked with deciding whether or not we were going to be prosecuting someone. I like the people I worked with. I like the work that we did. And frankly, I saw the state auditor's office as something that was very much consistent with both my work at the attorney general's office and also just a general viewpoint that I have that we need a lot more accountability for people in positions of trust and power in our society that we oftentimes find it very easy to pick on the lowly those who are relatively defenseless. Oftentimes, we leave alone those who are powerful and have powerful allies and can afford powerful protection. And it just, it's unjust. And I think it's contrary to our system of government. Everything that we do at the end of the day is based on this crazy idea that we don't need a king or a queen to tell us what to do. And if we want to be serious about self-governance, we really have to take the idea of good governance seriously. Because otherwise we lose trust in the idea that we can take care of ourselves.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:34] Right. So since you just mentioned that you were an assistant attorney general, how has your experience as a prosecutor informed your work as auditor?
Rob Sand: [00:04:43] Very closely. I mean, one of the reasons that I ran in 2018 was I felt that the office needed a little bit more of a law enforcement experience, a law enforcement perspective because we do, in the state auditor's office, also financial statement audits. We're doing standard financial audits. And so we have lots of accountants, lots of CPAs. But I felt that we needed for the corruption investigations a little bit more of a balance with some law enforcement perspective to make sure that everything we were doing was going to work in court. And that has turned out well. We've created a new position in the office for people who have law enforcement experience. But the other piece of that, I think, is keeping in mind checks and balances. I think it's helped the office because it gives us a little bit more independence to do our work, which is really paramount to getting good work done. And what I mean by that is this: if we're looking at a question of legal compliance, normally the state auditor's lawyer is the attorney general. Well, the attorney general is also the lawyer for whatever state agency we're auditing. And they certainly can do that independently. They can, you know, put a wall up between two parts of the office to have us be advised independently. But it's also good. I think it adds to our independence to have someone who has a legal background and some background in litigation to be able to say, I think to represent the interests of this office better, this office and thus taxpayers. We disagree with that interpretation of that statute and think we need to go a different direction.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:14] Right. Right. Well, it's really interesting what you're saying about law enforcement and auditing. We recently aired an interview with Professor Jennifer Taub about white collar crime. And I think it's such an overlooked area in terms of real impact on people's lives, you know, because when we think about corruption or quote unquote, white collar crime fraud, that these are victimless crimes, but they're really not, you know, and like it really affects everyday people, whether that's bottom- line wise with our taxes or even, you know, when we think about the Sackler Purdue Pharma debacle, you know, those are real lives. But so when you were assistant AG, you were involved in a very high profile case about a lottery scam, and you actually wrote a book about it, The Winning Ticket. Can you tell us about what happened?
Rob Sand: [00:07:05] Sure. It's a crazy story. We would not have gotten the book published if there wasn't enough of it to fill a book. But there is. Long story short, I worked on a case over a long period of time, including a trial and subsequent
investigation. After the trial where we learned a lot more, we uncovered and prosecuted the largest lottery rigging scheme in American history, and it involved rigged jackpots, I think, in five states. But not only that, there was a fireworks dealer that was a key character, an FBI agent who was motivated after having been fooled earlier in the story. And Bigfoot hunters. So like literal actual people who think that Bigfoot is real and spend time in the woods looking for Bigfoot. This story, as I was leading the investigation, as I was continuing, the prosecution continually blew my mind. Like I could not believe that this was real life. It's kind of one of those things where you're like, You almost can't believe it's true. Like, you couldn't make it up. So it almost has to be. But all of it is. And it's, I think, it's a really interesting story because the other piece of it, in addition to being a great, true crime story, a great courtroom drama when we had the trial, it's also about two guys, myself and Eddie Tipton, who was the mastermind of it, who are from out of the way places in rural, in rural America. Me from Decorah, Iowa, him from Flatonia, Texas. And the fact that it seemed like on a lot of things, we kind of saw eye to eye, built a good rapport with him. I felt over the course of the prosecution, at least compared to everyone else I ever prosecuted in my nearly decade of time at the attorney general's office.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:44] So what are the big cases in government waste and fraud and abuse? And what about also the small and perhaps unseen cases, but are nonetheless important for everyday people?
Rob Sand: [00:08:57] You know, I think the small ones sometimes bother people just as much because like you're saying, they're not really victimless crimes. At the end of the day, when someone in a position of public trust violates that trust. What suffers is our belief in self-governance. Our belief that we actually can have a system that works. And I don't know that we do enough to lift up good public servants--who are all over the place, by the way. And I also don't know that we do enough to hold people accountable who are bad ones. One of the things that I push for in Iowa is if someone's a public employee and they violate that position of trust and steal large amount of money, that they should serve time in prison. Right now in Iowa, there's literally no limit to the amount of money that you can steal and not have to go to prison. And so a lot of cases end up almost as invitations for people to steal as opposed to deterring people from doing it, because it becomes like, "oh, hey, I'm out of money and I have a terrible credit score and I hate filling out paperwork to get a loan. So I'll just start taking the money
that's here in front of me. And if I get caught, I'll have to pay back the amount that I'm caught for stealing. But very slowly, over amount of time, where like I'm not even going to have it paid back before I die." Like that doesn't deter people from stealing money. And so we consistently undermine it and we consistently build up this impression that the insiders are protecting insiders so that the judge won't punish so-and-so, who's the town clerk; I wonder how they know each other, that sort of thing. And think that at the end of the day, we end up in a society where we trust each other less and we trust less our ability to solve our problems together. And those are really big problems if you want to genuinely live in a democratic republic.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:35] Right. Right. Well, so tell us a little bit about how as an auditor, you actually hold people accountable. I mean, I know that you said that you also work with the attorney general's office, but then they're also representing the other side. So how does it work technically?
Rob Sand: [00:10:51] So we have two powers. And when I say powers, what I mean is this, right. We always talk about checks and balances. One of the fundamental ideas that we all learn K through 12, is checks and balances and separation of powers. And this is a little bit different. Like you noted in New York, you've got the comptroller and there are different positions in different states. But our job, at the end of the day, we have two powers. They are to investigate and then to report. So we are able to see pretty much not everything but anything that we might need to see in order to have the truth, in order to have accountability what's going on in government and we can enforce that power. We had a case not too long ago with the University of Iowa where they didn't want to give us documents that we asked for. It was related to the single largest transaction in state of Iowa's history. And they didn't want to give us documents. So we were able to take them to court and get a decision from the Iowa Supreme Court that they had to provide those documents and then we were able to get those documents. And so that is a good example of us using our power. We can investigate. And if someone doesn't want to, we have the power to force them to hand those things over so that we can be an independent eye on things, to have oversight and assure people what's going on. Then the second power is to report so we can step into confidential information. We can review confidential information, which is great, because if we couldn't, you know, everyone would just say whenever we ask for something they don't want to give us, "oh, that's confidential." We'd say, "Oh, darn, well, shoot. I guess it's
one other thing we'll just never know what happened, right?" We wouldn't be a very powerful auditor. Like why would we be here if we couldn't do that? And so the second then, after we do that, we have the ability to report. So if we step into confidential information and we're looking at it and we see that there is serious wrongdoing here, we don't have to say, "oh, no, this is confidential information. I guess we can't put it in the report." We have the ability to share that information and make it public, which also is, again, crucial to our job. Our job is promoting transparency and understanding as to what's going on and uncovering wrongdoing. And so really, the only way to do that in a way that's effective is to allow us to see everything. And then if we uncover wrongdoing, we have to be able to tell people about it. And that's sort of where our power is and we can do those things. But then we're not able to force people to take our recommendations.
Rob Sand: [00:13:10] We do not have the ability to indict people if we think there's criminal conduct. And in Iowa, that's the way the system is set up for us. We have 99 counties in Iowa. I do 100 town halls every year, one in each county. And one of the most common questions I get is, "you know, what's the state auditor do?" But if you think about it, that's sort of a normal question in a democratic republic. Like, the idea here is not that all of us need to have all of the answers on all of the issues or know what everyone's job is. It's that we're going to try to elect people and send them to go figure out what to do. And so people vote for someone that they think, you know, "you seem like if you went and did all this stuff, that you would probably do stuff similar to what I would do. But I don't want to do it. I want to, you know, go to my kids football games and do my job and hang out with my friends. So I'm going to send you." I get paid $103,000 a year. That is good pay. That is a full time job. I see it as my job to help people, you know, remember, learn, and then also remember what it is that we are doing for them and what service we provide in our system of self government in Iowa.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:14] Oh, I like how transparent you are about this. I have a question a little bit about how you connect with people since you just said that you do these town halls and people ask you about what you do. We spoke to Amanda Renteria of Code for America earlier this summer and yeah, she's awesome. And she was talking about how in order to get governance right, you really have to meet people where they are that so many of the problems with delivering services to citizens stems from a failure to understand people's lives. So do you see that in your work, too?
Rob Sand: [00:14:49] Absolutely. Yeah. And we've actually made pushes. I think it's a really interesting issue in rural areas specifically. And when I was in Taylor County this year, which is a very rural county in south, southern, southwest-ish Iowa, made a great point, which is they use the word "pioneer." And I understand that people in Des Moines--even people in Des Moines, let alone people in bigger cities on the coast--you know, we think that the pioneer days are over. But if you go to Taylor County, if you go to rural Iowa, if you go to rural America, you will see people who are in ways are living pioneer-style lives. They are having to make do with what they have in front of them. And it is not the same as the things that people have in front of them who live in Des Moines or Chicago or New York City or Washington, D.C.. And I have really tried to move the state auditor's office in Iowa in a direction that is more cognizant of those realities and actually more more appreciative of them and just trying to, again, meet them where they are and have our responses and our answers to their issues be things that are actually helpful. So let me illustrate this for you. The Iowa Constitution says you can't make donations to private entities, so you can't take tax dollars and just donate them to a nonprofit or a for profit. It's against the Iowa Constitution. Now you go to rural Iowa. There might only be one food bank in a six county area. There might only be one domestic violence shelter in a four county area. And you'll see cities and counties, you know, writing a check, making a donation to that food bank or to that domestic violence shelter. Why do they do it? Well, because they recognize that it's a good thing to have. They do it because not one of the counties wants to bring it in and make it a part of their county government, where then they're fully responsible for the cost, 100% of it, and the other counties end up possibly free riding on that. And so they sort of just work together and they say, "well, look, it's the food bank, you know, let's all donate. We want to have a place where people can go when they're really struggling." So our office historically would look at those checks to that nonprofit, whether it's a food bank or whatever else could be a volunteer fire department is another very common one where you don't have the money to have full time firefighters. So you get people who are volunteers, you get them some training. And other than that, they're out there as a volunteer firefighter running into buildings to protect and help save people in their community. And so you'll see checks go out to these nonprofits. Well, our office historically would just say, "don't do that. That's against the Constitution. Don't do that." And as you can imagine, Mila, kind of everybody would just say, "great, thanks for the tip. Super helpful. We're going to keep doing what we're doing because. Hi, we live where we need that. Sorry, we're not
as big as Des Moines. We can't have a professional firefighters on staff." And so our response to it was just sort of completely recognizing the reality of living in rural America. And so what we started doing fairly recently, since since I got elected, is actually advising people instead to enter a contract. I realize this seems like a simple change and really not a big deal, but it is important in a couple of ways because primarily is the recognition of meeting them where they are meeting them in their reality. Their reality is they need this nonprofit to exist. So what are we going to do? Well, let's find a way for them to do what they're doing in a way that's legally appropriate and actually adds accountability for taxpayers. So if you enter a contract with the food bank, we're giving you this amount of money and in exchange you're making this amount of food available, then you're not running afoul of the Iowa Constitution. In addition to that, you then have some accountability, expectations for those taxpayer dollars that you can say, okay, you know, we agreed in the contract that you're going to give us your financial information every year. So please send over your bank accounts and then you don't end up with kind of turf battles that I've seen both in this job as an assistant attorney general, where you kind of have people squabbling about whether or not they're doing it right. So if you just set out the expectations ahead of time in a contract, you really can protect taxpayers, help them understand what's going on with their money and at the same time not have us just sort of telling you you're violating the Constitution on a regular basis. So, yeah, you do. You have to recognize the reality that people are living in and try to find a way to make your work actually impactful for them as opposed to just sort of saying like, well, that's not the way to do that. It's like, "Oh, okay, well, maybe you should try living here and you know, then tell me it's not the way to do that."
Mila Atmos: [00:19:24] Yeah.
Rob Sand: [00:19:25] There's there's a degree of humility to it.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:30] We are going to take a brief pause to hear from our sponsors. But when we come back, Rob is going to talk about the challenges that come with being in the political minority. But we're also going to look for some silver linings. But first. Oh, that sound makes me smile. That's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify believes in liberating commerce for all because entrepreneurship has the power to drive communities forward, and commerce can be a force for good. Supercharge Your
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Danielle Moodie: [00:21:33] Woke AF Daily is your much needed wake up call in a weary world. Get woke with my bevy of special guests from the worlds of news and politics, arts, entertainment, and spirituality. Where else can you start the conversation on the latest headlines and end on the importance of rest and mindfulness? Where else can you hear a sitting member of Congress one day and a practicing yogi the next? Where else can you take in the world? Filter through the powerful voice of a black queer woman. Where else? But Woke AF daily with me, Danielle Moodie.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:04] And now let's return to my conversation with Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand. I wanted to mainly focus on your passion for public service, but it's time to turn to politics. I noticed that you have been described in a way reminiscent of endangered species at the zoo, you know, quote, "the only elected Democrat in Iowa," unquote. But I've heard you emphasize that while you may be an elected Democrat, you have not really historically been a card carrying party guy. Can you talk about where you land politically?
Rob Sand: [00:22:42] Sure. And I do have to, as an auditor, audit your statement there. There are two other statewide elected Democrats in Iowa. So we've got Tom Miller, our attorney general, who's the longest serving attorney general in American history. And
then we've also got Mike Fitzgerald, our treasurer, who's the longest serving treasurer in American history, I believe. So...
Mila Atmos: [00:23:00] All the Democrats in the accountability business.
Rob Sand: [00:23:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go. And we've got Cynthia Axne in Congress. Recently, had a couple of other Democrats in Congress, too. Dave Loebsack and Abby Finkenauer. And then, of course, Rita Hart just missed getting elected by six votes last time around. So Iowa has gone Republican lately, but not entirely. We are still here. But that said, honestly, I can't stand partisanship. Like the idea that anybody would deserve deference for me based on political affiliation or would deserve more aggression from me. Based on a contrary, political affiliation is a disservice to the public. When I first registered to vote, I registered as an Independent. I don't like the idea of parties. I mean, you go back to the founders, every one of them, one way or another said watch out for partisanship. And I think it's one of the biggest problems that we have in this country is people who are not willing to do the right thing because doing the right thing might be beneficial to the other political party. It drives me crazy. That said, I'm an Iowan, I'm Midwestern. I'm pragmatic because that's what we are. So, you know, I was quite a bit younger. I think I was probably in college in order to be able to vote in a primary registered as a Democrat. Iowa has closed primaries, and this is like most states and this is so wrong. We tell independent voters, "Oh, sorry, your opinion doesn't count as much. You're not allowed to participate." The country that celebrates Independence Day as one of our leading holidays tells independent voters, "sorry, you don't get to participate as much as partisan voters." Of course, we end up with more partisanship. But so I registered as Democrat. I picked my poison, but I haven't forgotten that it's poison. And I think it's important for people to remember that. So my senior leadership in the office, we have a Democrat, an Independent, and a Republican in the most senior positions in the office. We recently had some promotions. That might be two Republicans. I'm actually not sure right now, but it's also people who the Independent and the Republicans, people who made campaign contributions to my opponent in 2018. They supported her campaign financially, my predecessor. I don't care. I'm not interested in retribution. I'm not interested in politics. I want to do public service. And I think if you're going to do that, you have to show people that you're serious about it by doing things like that. I want this office to be an office that everyone in the state can trust. I can go there no matter how I vote, no matter who I am, and I can
complain about someone powerful no matter how they vote, no matter how they're registered. And I can expect that my complaints are going to get taken seriously.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:27] So since you are so committed, how has that worked out for you to have people working with you who have contributed to your opponent's campaign? Has it actually, on a daily basis, worked out?
Rob Sand: [00:25:39] Yeah, it's never been an issue. There are people who had worked in the office. Keep in mind, I beat an incumbent, right? So they were working with my predecessor. They donated to her, they knew her, they didn't know me. I just get over it. People sometimes ask, you know, why is this position elected anyway? Because it is a little bit closer to sort of a law enforcement position than it is necessarily to an electoral one. The reason fundamentally is for independence. Like we want this position to be accountable to voters and not depend on someone in a position of power to keep the job right. I just think people are professionals if you're approaching the job at a professional way. I knew I would be, day in, day out. I assume that these people would have no problem working with me and it's actually been great. I think a little intellectual diversity is a real value. You know, it's not that different from the old piece of wisdom about the three blind men, you know, feeling different parts of the elephant and only being able to figure out itself because they're actually listening to each other's perspective on what they're feeling. And I think that's true in a lot of things. You want to have people think differently when you're making decisions because then you're thinking about it from every angle. And I think that leads to a better decision overall usually.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:42] Yeah, well-said. So I have a question about open primaries. And you just mentioned that independents can't vote in closed primary systems. And in fact, this has been something that has come up a few times on the show. So would you like to see open primaries in Iowa?
Rob Sand: [00:27:00] Oh, oh, yes. Yesterday, please. Any time. Yes. I really like Alaska's new system. And if anybody who is listening, by the way, wants to educate themselves. And why this is a truly crucial issue for being able to solve problems in America. Read the book The Politics Industry by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter. Great book. Yeah. What Alaska is doing is they have... Round one is just a wide open
primary. Everyone from every affiliation can vote and everyone from every affiliation is on the ballot. And then they take the top four or five vote getters and they put them in the general election. And then in that election you can rank your choices from first preference to bottom preference, which means that you actually get to express some complexity of thought as a voter. It also means the incentives are very different for the candidates, right. Look, if there's only McDonald's and Burger King in the world, all they have to do is convince you that the other person's food is less healthy or more full of rat poison. And then you will have to choose their restaurant by default. That would be terrible. And yet that's the way we function politically. We should give people more options. We should give candidates more incentives to actually emphasize their similarities, too. And so what you see in places that have ranked choice voting or review voting or anything like that is you lie less, as a candidate. Your incentives are not to lie because you want the person who you are trying to beat in the election, you want their supporters to like you more so that they rank you more highly. You have an incentive to emphasize areas of agreement because you want the people who are voting for someone else to know that you agree with them. On some issues. It can really take a lot of the bile and a lot of the toxicity and a lot of the fear that we all feel like is being pressed upon us by our political leaders every day out of the political system. I'm a big believer in it, and I think that if we could do that, we could start electing people who are actually responding to the real incentive to solve problems as opposed to letting them fester so that they can keep campaigning on them.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:01] Yes, 100%. Well, Alaska, who knew? But yes, they have open primaries and ranked choice voting, which is amazing. And we've covered both on the show and in fact, of course, we're super interested in how to fix our broken politics. And these reforms seem to offer some opportunities, and achieving them through ballot initiatives also is another democracy boosting way of going about it, like they do in Michigan. So you're talking Future Hindsight's love language here. You're an elected Democrat in Iowa. So definitely a rare bird. And I'm wondering, what are the positive things you have found or learned from being in the political minority?
Rob Sand: [00:29:40] Boy, that's an interesting question. No one has ever asked me that before. The positive. I mean, I have negative things, you know, ideas that I propose that I have yet to hear anyone say, "oh, that's a terrible idea." And yet they won't enact them because they don't want to make a Democrat look good. And I and I should
emphasize, too, I mean, although I'm obviously an elected position because I'm not directly involved in the legislative process, there might be folks who have a better perspective on that who would be there. I think some of the times, some of the things they say is certainly the pressure is off when you are not in power. You know, if you're in the political minority, you're not the one who--under our current system, right--has the obligation to get things done. But but that to me is such a dysfunctional conclusion. It's reached because, again, you know, we have the system where you vote for people, you send them to the legislature, but then they're immediately divided into their partisan caucus, which isn't a question of law. Right. And then they elect a leader in their partisan caucus. And so then nothing gets a vote unless the leader of the partisan caucus decides they want it to get a vote. So you can have an issue that 90% of the people elected agree on and would like to see happen. But if the leader of the caucus doesn't want to bring it up for a vote, it won't happen. I mean, so to say I'm in the minority, the pressure's off is actually only a function of a dysfunctional system as opposed to an actual feature of it.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:07] Mm hmm. It's a mixed bag. It's difficult to find silver linings in here.
Rob Sand: [00:31:11] Yeah. Sorry.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:13] You are campaigning for re-election right now. How is that
going?
Rob Sand: [00:31:17] I think pretty good. I think we have a really good record. Honestly, we created this government efficiency program. And you want to talk about like trying to lift up good public servants. We have this new program we called PIE. Anyone who's listening, please get your state to jump on board with this. If you want to save taxpayer money, you should love PIE. It stands for public innovations and efficiencies. It's a very basic common sense program that helps us save money by spreading good ideas to save money around the state quickly. We call them pie recipes, right? And then we have a pie contest where we recognize the best performing cities, counties and school districts all over the state for actually implementing more efficiency practices. The program is so good that the state auditor of Mississippi, who's a
Republican, has copied it, which I think says a lot. You have a pretty good idea for someone to stoop so low as to take it from the other party.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:07] Right. That's great. So give us one example of a pie recipe.
Rob Sand: [00:32:12] Sure. Well, so we did a report on publicly owned solar installations for solar energy. They save three quarters of $1,000,000 for your local government entity over the course of the installation. Another really interesting example basically played on arbitrage between the difference in price of electricity at night versus during the day. So electricity during the day, very expensive. Electricity at night, cheap. Air conditioning uses all of its electricity in the hot temperatures during the daytime. Right. What they did is this county in northwest Iowa, they built what we call a courthouse chiller, dug a big hole in the ground next to the courthouse, effectively, I think built like basically an ice machine in there and connected it to the courthouse with a couple of tubes. And then what it does is it builds ice. It creates ice at night so that during the daytime with expensive electricity, the only thing it has to do is click a fan on and blow that cold air into the courthouse. So this machine is going to have an eight year payback to where they are, have covered their costs, and then it should operate for 30 or 40 years after that where they're just saving money.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:17] Oh, wow. So it's like DIY geo tubes.
Rob Sand: [00:33:20] Yes. It's like a yeah. DIY geothermal or heat pump. You could build that with any city hall, any school, basically any publicly owned building. You could do something like that right next door under the ground and save a lot of money.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:33] Awesome. So, well, what do you hope to accomplish in your next term?
Rob Sand: [00:33:37] I want to see the program continue to expand and grow until Iowans are familiar with it and sort of expect that their city or their county is participating. I think that's really important because, again, a lot of this goes back to the idea of self governance, like we have to find a way to trust that we can govern ourselves. And the best way for us to do that is to lift up examples of good governance. So we lift up Dickinson County. You know, we say, hey, congratulations, good job, like well done.
You came up with this great idea. We lift up city councils where they have implemented a lot of these efficiency practices. I think that's so important because again, so much of the conversation constantly is this political, ideological, frankly, crap about, "oh, I want bigger government; you want smaller government." And the question at the end of the day should just be it should be better government. Whatever we agree that it's doing, we should want it to do it really, really well and very efficiently. And if we could do that, we would be in a much better place. And I think if we if we can move the conversation in that direction instead of just an ideological battle, we could actually see more collaboration and again and more trust in ourselves, in our ability to solve problems.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:51] So speaking of elections, the drumbeat of the presidential contest in 2024 can, I'm guessing, already be heard in Iowa? I'm kind of fascinated by your state's unique position on the road to the White House. Like how many prospective presidential candidates have you shaken hands with over the years?
Rob Sand: [00:35:10] Oh, yeah. Well, just by the privilege of being in Iowa and I've met I can't tell you how many, both the Democrats and Republicans. I got to meet many of them in person in 2020 as a statewide elected official on the Democratic side. But I mean, back in oh, it would have been like 2007. I remember meeting Mike Huckabee in the back of a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Decorah, in my hometown. He talked to a group of not quite 20 people. Got to ask him a question. And, you know, it's just something you're able to do as an Iowan, which I think really has developed a culture here that I think we would lose if Iowa loses its place as an early state. I've even talked to national reporters who say I follow the campaign trail throughout all the early states. Obviously, New Hampshire has been an early state for a long time. There is still no comparison to the quality of the questions that candidates get from people in Iowa. And the other thing that I want to emphasize is because we are relatively rural, it's a relatively cheap state to advertise in. And that's also because, by the way, we don't have massive media markets right next to us. New Hampshire is not cheap because it's Boston. You're paying for a lot of eyeballs in Boston. But Iowa allows candidates who may not be the best funded to sort of make a name for themselves and emerge and sort of really get a shot. Right. I mean, Barack Obama was taking on the Clinton machine in 2008. Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the Iowa caucuses in the seventies. There are lots of examples through the years of people who were relatively well known, but Iowans got to know him and said, "Hey, so-and-so over here is a serious candidate, and I kind of like
him." And then all of a sudden they're able to take that success in Iowa and translate it into more success elsewhere. But that's only because we had a good culture here in a state that was more accessible to candidates with less money.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:01] Well, it's so funny that you totally confirmed my suspicions, you know, that there's a candidate in every grocery store line, and they're three deep at the counter in the diner. Seriously, though, you kind of preemptively defended your state. But let's go there. Why Iowa? Iowa's first-in-the nation status feels like another way this country's structural privileging of minority rule shows up and lends disproportionate power and influence to folks who no longer represent most or even many Americans. You know, when we think about rural Americans, they're not the majority of Americans today. But, you know, tell me what I'm missing.
Rob Sand: [00:37:38] Look, there is no state that represents every other state, right? So if we're going to have state by state contests, then somebody's got to go first. And I have often felt, you know, some of the people who really work the hardest, who have done the most to establish the Iowa caucuses as what they are, were like Mary Campos, a Latina woman who is a lifelong Iowan, Wayne Ford, a black Iowan, a man who worked really hard at this and to look at Iowa and say, like, oh, because you don't have enough non-white residents, the non-white residents that you do have don't matter is kind of offensive.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:19] Fair enough.
Rob Sand: [00:38:20] You know, like, yeah, okay, we aren't as diverse, but that doesn't mean that people here who aren't white somehow aren't contributing. They are. And they're leaders here, too. And I think that they also have perspectives that can be offered to the rest of the country if the rest of the country wants to listen on what it is to be an Iowan in a way that the stereotypical, you know, coverage of a white couple in a diner is, you know, oftentimes true, but not the whole truth either.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:45] Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I think a lot of times--I've said this a lot of times because my husband is white and so my children are biracial. But it's the kind of thing where I say all the time that a proper multiracial coalition includes white people.
And I think when people say multiracial, often people think it's everybody but whites. And I think that just can't be true. It isn't. It isn't true.
Rob Sand: [00:39:07] Correct! I think that's exactly right. And I think it's important, too, that, like, it's so tiring no matter no matter who you are, to be assumed that you are just like other people like you.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:16] Hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Rob Sand: [00:39:17] We shouldn't do that to anybody.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:18] Yeah, well, putting public service over politics is an admirable goal, but when the rubber hits the road, it can be challenging, right? You said that. Politics is the water that government swims in. You kind of alluded to that already, right? When we were struggling about what the upside is of being in the minority. So how do you keep yourself honest from that point of view?
Rob Sand: [00:39:38] You know, I think that's one of the benefits of surrounding myself with people who vote differently, who are registered differently. I don't put myself in a situation where my people who are working in this public office with me are thinking of my politics. They're not thinking of, quote unquote, our party, like their concern is a professional concern of doing their job. I remember growing up, you know again, small town. Lots of people growing up in Decorah didn't lock their doors at night. My buddy Handy, his dad would leave his his truck in the driveway with the keys in the ignition unlocked. And the family I grew up in, we locked our doors and, you know, like locked the car. And I remember once asking my dad, "dad, dad, why do you always lock everything?" And he just said, "Well, I don't want to tempt people." You don't want to tempt people, right? And for whatever reason, like that stuck with me. Because the truth is that all of us face different temptations in our life about different issues. And to me, if I structure my official office in a way where I know that the advice that I'm going to be getting is going to be focused on doing the right thing and focused on getting to the truth of the matter, as opposed to people having concerns about the party's electoral chances or whether I can win again. Then I'm less likely to be put in a situation where I'm even tempted to do anything differently at all. So it's like I'm structuring my own environment
in a way that encourages honesty and sort of makes it harder to come to a point of temptation. I want to toot my own horn on something else, too.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:12] Go for it.
Rob Sand: [00:41:13] Because I also think that there is an unappreciated appreciation of non-partisanship. In Iowa, we were the first state in the country to create a non- partisan redistricting commission. So instead of having gerrymandering where politicians pick their voters, we have a system that is very exacting and demanding on what districts look like, so you can't really gerrymander by party. Now, of course, the great sort, people living in areas that are more like them in terms of politics is a different issue, but that's not gerrymandering. And so we prevented effectively, as long as we use the system which we have so far, we've prevented gerrymandering in Iowa. We also have the crown jewel of the country's judicial nominating systems. We have a partisan judicial nominating system so that our judges flow through this non partisan, merit oriented system. And then only a handful of names are actually given to the governor. And then the governor has to choose from within those names for who's going to be nominated to the bench. I see Iowa as a place that really that that story doesn't get told very often. A lot of people are like, oh, you went for Trump twice. You're so Republican. I remind them Trump was the biggest outsider that was ever nominated to run for president. And Democrats in the meantime, both in 16 and in 20 nominated consummate insiders. Right. And Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. And say what you will about any of their other merits. If you're in a state that doesn't like politics and doesn't like sort of the way politics is usual, then a lot of people are going to be inclined to pick an outsider in that situation.
Mila Atmos: [00:42:48] Interesting. That's an interesting perspective that I had not considered.
Rob Sand: [00:42:51] That's what I'm here for.
Mila Atmos: [00:42:54] Well, this show is about civic engagement, as you know. And we always ask each guest, what are two things an everyday person and everyday citizen can do to advance your issue, in this case, good governance or maybe helping the auditor's office? What do you say?
Rob Sand: [00:43:08] I think something that we are not nearly doing enough of is asking questions of other people. With a genuine interest in the answer, and then using that information to reflect upon what we do and ask ourselves, "Am I trying to advance things in the right way?" This goes back actually to your question, meeting people where they are, right? If you want to go out and advocate for a particular issue and you assume like, "oh, I should advocate for it this way." How many times have you just gone to one of your neighbors that you've never talked politics with and said, "Hey, I literally don't have anything that I want to push you on? Can I just ask you some questions to sort of get your perspective on things?" People feel appreciated. They feel listened to, and typically they will open up and they will answer your questions. I find personally, if you do this often enough, you can learn a lot about people and learn about how your own advocacy, at least in some circumstances, can be improved simply by having had conversations in the past about how people view not just that issue, but all kinds of things. So it could be a neighbor two doors down, not your next door neighbor, but, you know, a little further down. And you're like, "hey, I'm literally only here to just learn. I don't want to push you on anything. I'm just super curious." You know, don't go straight to who did you vote for? But maybe, you know, "hey, did you hear about this issue? What did you think about that? Where do you get your news from? Do you like getting your news there?" Have you ever wondered, like, should you look somewhere else too, you know, just all kinds of questions you can ask people that really help us learn about the world that we live in and then how we impact that world. So I'd be the first one ask questions with no agenda other than learning that learning will make you more effective in your advocacy later on. Hmm. Second item. Be kind.
Mila Atmos: [00:44:57] That's good advice.
Rob Sand: [00:44:58] Please tell me. Please. The last time somebody convinced you that you were wrong by screaming at you or calling you names or treating you dismissively. Once you have done that for someone, that is a really hard bridge to repair. And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be honest with people. You know, I've in my job, had situations where I've... You know taxpayers watchdog investigate report. I've had to criticize people. I've also oftentimes defended the same people, our governor being an example of that. But sometimes it's a candidate, but it's like, well, look, you know, I gave you this idea that would have saved the taxpayers money as a legislator,
and you didn't do it. And if you're not going to do things that save us money, I feel like my job is to tell people that. And so you can get upset about it. But, you know, I'm not I'm not flame throwing. I'm not putting people on blast. You truly do win more friends with honey than vinegar, as they say. And I do think if we're going to get out of where we are right now, we have to do it through kindness. MLK, right. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. I'm a big believer in that and it feels counterintuitive, but I do think it's true.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:11] Mm hmm. Yes. Hear, hear. I agree with you. So as we are rounding out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Rob Sand: [00:46:22] I have talked to a lot of young folks who just are so ready to make things work. That is something that has really made me hopeful. I hear from older folks on occasion, well, it's up to you. We screwed it all up. You've got to fix this. I typically say you're not dead yet, like, you know, come on. But there is, I think, a lack of cynicism in a real passion to have things work better in younger generations. I turn 40 tomorrow.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:52] Happy Birthday!
Rob Sand: [00:46:52] And so I don't know where I am. I don't. Thanks. I don't feel 40. I don't know what that means to feel 40 because I've never been there. But you know, I guess I think of myself as relatively young and yet I'm talking about people substantially younger than me. I found a lot of them who seem to be connected to the difficulty of making change in the world and yet not being willing to give up on it. And that's pretty crucial.
Mila Atmos: [00:47:13] Mm hmm. Yes, I agree. Well, thank you very much for being on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show and share your insight and wisdom.
Rob Sand: [00:47:24] Yeah, thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Great conversation.
Mila Atmos: [00:47:27] Rob Sand is Iowa state auditor. Next week on Future Hindsight, we are tackling the vital issue of how Americans find ways to get along, or at least stop yelling at each other so we can work together on the big challenges we face. We are joined by Christopher Beem, who's managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, co-host of the Democracy Works podcast, and the author of The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do To Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy.
Christopher Beem: [00:48:04] Over the past year, we've had to duct tape people to airplane seats because of their behavior. And when things are that bad, it is just insufficient to be talking about procedure. We have to be talking about what kind of behaviors we can expect from each other as citizens, as people who occupy the same geographic space, and as people who both ostensibly love our country.
Mila Atmos: [00:48:33] That's next time on Future Hindsight. This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:48:51] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.