Rob Sand says he hopes to attract voters from both political parties by promising new ways to save the state money and increase government efficiency, as he travels Iowa this week making his pitch to be the next Iowa auditor of state.

“We’ve actually had a lot of success approaching Republicans. I put Sioux County, the biggest Republican county in the state on my announcement tour, even though I’m a Democrat, because I fundamentally think anyone who wants to conserve taxpayer dollars should be supporting me in this campaign,” Sand said on a campaign stop at The Messenger.

Sand, from Des Moines, will challenge Auditor Mary Mosiman, a Republican, who is seeking re-election.

“It’s not an office with a lot of partisan, divisive issues,” Sand said. “It’s really just good government. It’s not had the leadership it needs.”

Sand has worked in the Iowa Attorney General’s office for the last eight years, where he said he had frequent contact with the auditor’s office. He was named an Assistant Attorney General in September 2010 by Attorney General Tom J. Miller.

“I was working with the state auditor’s office in that time frame because I have done most of Iowa’s public corruption prosecution. The state auditor actually does all of the state of Iowa’s public corruption investigations,” he said. “They are an office that has law enforcement responsibilities, but the current state auditor refuses to hire anyone with law enforcement experience.

“She will only hire CPAs and accountants, which is like having 11 quarterbacks playing on your offense, all at the same time.”

Sand also wants the auditor’s office to give recommendations on how local governments can operate more efficiently whenever it does an audit.

“Every time they do an audit,” Sand said, “they’re supposed to provide efficiency recommendations, in helping them make government better. They have only done that several times in this state auditor’s tenure.”

For example, Sand said Scott County recently switched from requiring recycling to be sorted, to a single-stream recycling pickup, similar to what Fort Dodge has.

“They’re saving $2.5 million over seven years. For a county, that’s real money,” Sand said. “That’s a deputy on patrol, that’s a new playground, that’s potholes getting filled. That’s real money. They’re not doing that switch because the auditor told them about that technique though. They found it on their own.

“There’s a budget crisis going on in Iowa right now. We borrowed money to get through the last fiscal year. We had quarterly budget cuts, and we still had to borrow money at the end. We absolutely should be doing what we can to help cities and counties save money, as well as state agencies through that process.”

Sand believes new efficiencies within the auditor’s office could enable the existing staff to get more done. For example, he said staff enters numbers by hand into a spreadsheet whenever they do an analysis of bank records. Sand wants to see them using a computer program to auto-populate the spreadsheet instead.

“One of my first changes in the office would be to eliminate that practice, which means you would have a lot of people who suddenly have a lot of time on their hands,” he said.