(Radio Iowa) – Republicans in the Iowa House may hire a company to use Artificial Intelligence to analyze spending in each Iowa county and in the 220 largest school districts in Iowa. As lawmakers and the governor consider plans to cap property taxes, House Speaker Pat Grassley says local officials could use the data to compare expenses with other counties or school districts and find ways to cut costs.
“In my time up here, we’ve not had access to this kind of level of line-by-line data that I think could be provided if we decide to move forward with something like this,” Grassley said. The company has offered House Republicans a contract with an upfront payment of up to one-and-a-half MILLION dollars, with a nearly a million dollar payment due in each of the next two years. That money could be approved in one of the state budget bills the House and Senate will approve and the governor will sign this spring, or Grassley says House Republicans could move forward on their own and use the House budget to cover the cost.
“We would like to get this thing in action and get rolling,” Grassley told reporters. Governor Reynolds says she’s hired consultants for state government work and understands how the data being promised could be helpful, but she is asking state I-T experts who have experience reviewing proposals from similar companies to review Tyler Technology’s proposal. “This isn’t reflective on this company, I’m just talking about historically what we’ve seen: really good ones, not so good ones and some really bad ones that they absolutely can’t come through with what they’ve committed to,” Reynolds says, “and so I would like them to at least take a look at that.”
A representative from Tyler Technologies testified yesterday (Tuesday) during a House Oversight Committee meeting. Representative Charley Thomson, a Republican from Charles City who’s the committee’s chairman, says the company would provide the first sophisticated method of looking at what’s being spent by local government. “It’s like walking into a big storage room that you’ve never had a light bulb in and suddenly turning on the light bulb and seeing what’s in there,” Thomson said.
Mark Welch, a senior account executive with the company, told legislators the company will identify which local governments in Iowa are running efficiently and which aren’t. “We would look at how do these services compare on a nationwide basis,” he said. “We would also, through the process, come up with a database that would be just Iowa data and say: ‘Hey, how are these organizations comparing to other like-sized Iowa organizations?'”
Tyler Technologies is based in Texas and provides payroll and payment software as well as cybersecurity services to government agencies around the country. The company’s website indicates it has contracts with dozens of state and local agencies here that date back to 2020.
