(Radio Iowa) – State Auditor Rob Sand, a Democrat, says the Republican State Auditor in Mississippi has adopted his program for finding efficiencies and creating innovation in government. Sand says the Public Inefficiencies and Equity, or PIE program it was created in 2019. “It’s a program that essentially collects money-saving practices that government entities can use to protect taxpayer dollars and use them more efficiently. And then also rewards folks for doing well by putting a lot of those practices in place,” Sand says.

He says the program allows for new ideas to be added. “We also collect ideas — so if someone has got what we could call a PIE recipe…we would add that to the list and spread it around the state so these good ideas could get put into place in multiple locations more quickly,” Sand says.

Sand is taking the PIE program a step further by proposing a bill that would require the Iowa Auditor to distribute the PIE recommendations to public entities and prepare an annual report on the program. Sand is running for a second term as State Auditor. Republican Mary Ann Hanusa, of Council Bluffs recently announced she is running as well.