DES MOINES, Iowa — State leaders say a computer coding problem is preventing the accurate distribution of court fines and penalties in the Iowa court system.

The system collects more than $140 million in fines, penalties and surcharges which helps fund state programs, but not all programs have been getting the proper allocation the last several years.

The issue stems back from changes approved by the Iowa State Legislature in 2021. A bill changed how fines and penalties are supposed to be used to fund those state programs, but IT problems within the judicial branch misallocated those funds. How much has been misallocated?

The Iowa Department of Management Director Kraig Paulsen said that it’s more than $53 million. The letter highlights where some of the improper distributions went to; leaving the Victim Compensation Fund shorted by $3.7 million, the Juvenile Detention Home Fund shorted by $3.5 million, the DARE program shorted $154,000, and the Road Use Tax Fund shorted $10 million.

Paulsen said that it’s unclear why the internal controls for the Judicial Branch have not been tested and the issues are still ongoing. Paulsen outlined that the Iowa State Auditor’s Office was notified in an email on October 7, 2022 that there were financial irregularities concerning the collection and distribution during fiscal years 2021 and 2022.

The Iowa Judicial Branch hired a third-party to review how money is distributed and the IT Department in the branch is in the process of correcting these program errors and testing it to avoid situations like this in the future.

Last week Speaker of the Iowa House Pat Grassley, (R) from New Hartford, released a public letter calling out State Auditor Rob Sand (D). It read in part, “Your inaction in this case is baffling and inexcusable. If there is any other explanation why it appears the taxpayer’s watchdog was sleeping on the job, I would be very interested to hear it.”

On Monday, Auditor Sand responded by releasing his own letter, and talked to WHO 13 News about the allegations made.

“If you want to have this conversation in public, we can have the conversation in public, but it’s just going to sound like you don’t know what auditing is or how it works,” said Sand. “They’re saying, ‘oh well you learned about this stuff in October ’22 but it wasn’t in your fiscal year 2022 audit.’ Fiscal year 2023 is the one that covers October ’22. And you know, not everybody needs to know this stuff, but just call us, you know, just call us. I can walk you through this, our professional staff can walk you through this. And then you don’t have the whole state of Iowa knowing that you weren’t really paying attention to how the office even works. Or, again, if you know how the office works, you’re just playing partisan politics.”

Sand added that a new state law passed and implemented this last calendar year does not allow the office to release audit paperwork until the audit is completely finished. Meaning that even in the case of allegations of misconduct, the office would not be able to release the information until the audit was fully complete.

The Iowa Judicial Branch in a statement on its website said in part, “The judicial branch is committed to correcting these issues. It is working with all stakeholders to fix its case management system and remedy previous misdistributions.”

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