Republicans on the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee have issued a report blasting the court system for concealing its misdirection of 25 million dollars’ worth of court fees and fines. It also criticizes State Auditor Rob Sand for failing to investigate the problem.
Representative Charley Thomson, a Republican from Charles City who wrote the report, said court officials failed to fix a computer glitch that distributed the money incorrectly. “When the judicial branch discovered a massive problem with public funds, they made a choice,” Thomson said. “They chose silence over transparency. They chose consultants who couldn’t audit over auditors who could. They chose three years of quiet fumbling over one honest phone call to this legislature.”
The report recommends hiring a private firm to take over distributing court debt to more than a dozen entities, including cities, sheriffs’ departments and victim service organizations. Thomson, who is an attorney, said the court system has proven it cannot handle the job. “The judicial branch holds Iowa attorneys to exacting standards, which they should. Handle client money wrong, you lose you license…Make excuses about how complicated it is, the courts don’t really want to hear,” Thomson said, “but when it’s their money, their systems, their mistake suddenly the rules are too complicated…Suddenly it’s somebody else’s fault. That’s not accountability. That’s arrogance.”
Thomson’s report also said the State Auditor’s Office was notified about the court system errors in the fall of 2022 and failed to take action. “They deferred to the judicial branch to fix its own mess,” Thomson said. “…When we asked Auditor Sand about this he told us it was ‘fundamentally not an audit issue.’ $25 million send to the wrong accounts and the state auditor says it’s not an audit issue. If it’s not an audit issue, I don’t know what is.”
The report recommends hiring a private auditing firm to trace every dollar of court fees and fines over the three year period to identity when the errors started and when they were fixed. Thomson, who is chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, said he’s not sure the problem has been completely solved. “I have no reason to think that there’s a particular malicious person who stole the money, but until we have traceability on the funds, I’m concerned about it,” Thomson said. “We’re going to keep chasing it.”
The six Republicans on the House Oversight Committee approved Thomson’s “Majority Report.” The four Democrats on the panel voted against it, citing a concern about hiring a private company to start handling court fees and fines. This afternoon, Democrats indicated they will issue a “Minority Report” on the issues tomorrow.
Steve Davis, a spokesman for the Iowa Judicial Branch, issued a written statement this afternoon. “The judicial branch takes full responsibility for the misallocation and is committed to continuing to collaborate with the other two branches of government and other effected stakeholders to resolve this issue and to develop a path forward to improve and simplify court debt distribution,” Davis said. “While we have not had an opportunity to fully review the report and comment on the recommendations, we appreciate that the report acknowledged there was no criminal intent or personal enrichment.”
State Auditor Rob Sand issues the following statement: “No money was lost, and no services were delayed. This is like the bank putting money meant for your checking account into your savings account. That is what the Judiciary did. The Judicial Branch has taken full responsibility for its error. This report rehashes old, debunked lies in an election year and is the same politics that Iowans hate.”