(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation of the mis-allocation of 23 million dollars in court fines. Court officials first noticed the problem in late 2020 and the computer programming to distribute court fines wasn’t fixed until late last year. It meant money was incorrectly deposited in the state’s General Fund — and victim services programs, the Iowa D-O-T, county sheriffs and others got less than they were due for five years. Republican Representative Steven Holt of Denison faults court officials for waiting until late last year to notify lawmakers. “I hate to say it, but it absolutely feels like you were attempting to conceal from the legislature the fact that this was going on,” Holt said.

State Court Administrator Bob Gast says they brought in a national consulting group to diagnose the problem — and didn’t anticipate it would take so long to figure out the extent of the errors. “We wanted to have the full scope and breadth before we came to you,” Gast said, “and not come in as ‘The sky is falling!’ and not have some idea of what we were looking at.”Gast, who testified at an Oversight Committee hearing in the statehouse today (Wednesday), says there was no “malfeasance” behind the long-term computer programming errors in the court system. “The Judicial Branch takes full responsibility for these errors,” Gast said. “We have fixed the errors…and the new programming has been audited and verified through an independent audit that was recently completed by Zirous, a West Des Moines I.T. firm.”

The state Judicial Building.

Gast says the court system plans to arrange for an independent audit of its I-T department, too. Representative Judd Lawler, a Republican from Tiffin, says he doubts the computer programming was that difficult to correct — and he asked court officials why they haven’t presented lawmakers with a plan to make up for the 23 million dollars worth of funding errors. “We have never seen a bill introduced, we have never been lobbied to fix this mess,” Lawler said.

Court officials say they are developing a plan and will present it to legislators for the 2026 session. Democrats on the Oversight Committee say the focus should be on fixing the problem — and simplifying the distribution list for court fines.