(Radio Iowa) – State Auditor Rob Sand, the only Iowa Democrat who holds a statewide office, says the state-funded Education Savings Accounts for private school students is a big worry for Iowans. During a town hall meeting in Delaware County this week, Sand told residents he’s carefully following the program’s progress, what Republican Governor Kim Reynolds calls one of her greatest achievements. “The vouchers program really is a very consistent concern for people, and that makes sense. We are sending all of this money, hundreds of millions of dollars, to these private schools with no audit obligation, no rules, really, for how they spend it,” Sand says. “There’s only one thing they can’t do. They can’t give a rebate to parents, but anything else on God’s green earth that they want to do with that money, they can do with it.”

As he travels the state on his 100 Town Hall Tour, Sand says this is a topic he’s hearing about frequently, related to his role in serving Iowans as the “taxpayers’ watchdog.”  “I think that most Iowans expect rules for how their tax dollars are handled. We have lots of rules for what public schools can do and can’t do with tax dollars,” Sand says. “It doesn’t make any sense to me nor to most people that we don’t have those same rules apply to private schools who are taking tax dollars through the vouchers program.”

State Auditor Rob Sand, (RI file photo)

Over 30-thousand private school students in Iowa have qualified for E-S-As this year. When fully implemented, Iowa will be among eight states where all private school students are eligible for state funding to cover tuition and other expenses. Sand says if any Iowans notice something suspicious or have concerns about financial irregularities in their local governments and entities, they can submit a confidential tip to his office online.

“Auditor.iowa.gov is our website. We have a button on there that says, ‘Send us a confidential tip.’ We always want to learn if people think that something’s going wrong, right?” Sand says. “If you see something, say something, and learning about a possible issue is the first step in getting on the road to addressing it.” Sand made his comments Tuesday in Manchester.