Madison County’s turmoil is deepening as the state’s auditor called the county’s finances “very bad news.”
In two audit reports released Thursday, June 4, Iowa Auditor of State Rob Sand said his office “cannot issue clean audits” for Madison County for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 because they could not verify whether the county’s financial statements were materially accurate.
At a Thursday press conference, Sand called the findings “extraordinary” and said his office could not find any cases dating back to at least 2009 in which it had issued a qualified opinion.
“That is very bad news for the taxpayers of Madison County,” Sand said. “… These are not minor findings. This is a big deal.”
The two reports, both more than 100 pages long and “much bigger” than normal, according to Sand, detail a breakdown in Madison County’s basic financial controls, particularly in the Treasurer’s Office under former Treasurer Amanda DeVos.
They also faulted a consulting contract entered into by former Auditor Teri Kaczinski, whose brief tenure had already drawn public outrage, a sheriff’s referral to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and a lawsuit she later dropped.
“We think they need to understand that it is such a mess there that we can’t tell up from down,” Sand said.
The audits found 13 issues in fiscal year 2023, six of them repeated from the previous year. In fiscal year 2024, the number doubled to 26 findings, with 10 repeated from the year before.
“When you have that level of mess in the records, it’s far more difficult to detect errors and to identify fraud.” Sand said. “No auditor can offer the proper reassurance that the books are what they are supposed to be.”
The most serious findings center on the Treasurer’s Office under DeVos, who was arrested in January 2025 and resigned in July, days before a scheduled removal hearing.
DeVos faces six criminal charges tied to her time in office, including two counts of felonious misconduct in office and charges related to tampering with records, theft and fraudulent practices. She has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial Sept. 1 in Dallas County.
Prosecutors allege she altered records to make it appear she had paid about $760 for her vehicle registration and $6,500 in property taxes. The audits released Thursday provide a broader paper trail of those allegations and of financial dysfunction in the office she led.
In 2023, auditors found the Treasurer’s Office was not regularly checking whether county records matched bank records. When they helped prepare a year-end reconciliation, they found the bank balance was over $69,000 higher than the county’s book balance.
The gap included checks missing from the county’s list of outstanding payments, deposits that had not been properly counted, and bank accounts that weren’t included.
By 2024, the problem had worsened, the audits said. The last monthly book-to-bank reconciliation prepared under DeVos was in May 2023, and auditors said they could not complete the reconciliations because the county’s records were unreliable.
“We can’t make a reassurance to the taxpayers of Madison County that the financial statements are properly represented,” Sand said.
The 2024 audit found 39 deposits totaling $4.4 million made in a single day on Oct. 10, 2023. It also found 40 cash deposit slips totaling more than $73,000 deposited on Aug. 30, 2024, with handwritten dates ranging from June 27 to Aug. 26.
Then came the December 2024 cash count at the county courthouse.
Sand said his office staff “found cash, coins and checks totaling more than $221,000 just sitting in the treasurer’s office.”
More than $84,000 of that money could not be tied to any receipt or customer.
The failures reached beyond the county courthouse. DeVos also set up a nearly $166,000 tax apportionment payment in August 2024 that was duplicated in the banking system, causing entities to be paid twice before corrections were made.
In 2024, Winterset, the county’s biggest city and county seat, received $258,082 in Tax Increment Financing payments that were due to other taxing districts because the wrong TIF fund number was used in the county’s computer system.
“Delayed tax distributions to schools, cities, and other taxing entities, that really hurt the ability for those cities and schools in Madison County to do their job and to operate appropriately,” Sand said.
The 2023 audit also found that Farmers and Merchants State Bank told the county in July 2023 that an account was overdrawn by more than $340,000.
Auditors also said DeVos opened a county credit card in December 2023 without prior Board of Supervisors approval and entered into a postage-machine lease on July 31, 2023, also without board approval.
Former auditor’s consultant contract flagged
The audits also reached into the county Auditor’s Office, where Kaczinski’s short tenure had already become one of Madison County’s defining controversies.
Kaczinski took office in January 2025 after winning the November 2024 election.
Within days, she proposed creating a $29-an-hour part-time clerk position and immediately named her campaign manager, Leslie Beck, to fill it. Supervisors tabled the proposal Jan. 8 after residents objected that proper posting and hiring procedures had not been followed.
On Jan. 28, 2025, Kaczinski hired Robert Morris Group to evaluate county processes. The firm advertised itself as a “political consulting firm for pro-life, pro-liberty and pro-family conservatives.”
Records showed RMG was contracted for a “four-week plan” at $250 per hour, an estimated $40,000 commitment, without prior Board of Supervisors approval.
The Madison County Sheriff’s Office forwarded complaints about the unapproved contract and concerns about possible access to voting systems to DCI. The board froze the contract and later terminated it.
Madison County ultimately paid the firm more than $7,000 for 29 hours over two days at the courthouse in Winterset. The firm never fulfilled its contract or produced a report.
The audit said the lack of review resulted in a contract that “may not have the best interest of the county.”
Kaczinski has since been cleared criminally in connection with the contract. The Warren County Attorney’s Office, reviewing the case with DCI, found insufficient evidence to file charges.
Kaczinski filed a petition with the Iowa Supreme Court in April 2025 seeking to force Beck’s appointment, accusing supervisors of acting arbitrarily or capriciously. She later withdrew the lawsuit and announced her resignation, effective July 2025.
Other findings spread across county government.
In 2023, Madison County paid $16,100 for building repairs to Clayton’s Home Improvement, a business owned by Chief Deputy Sheriff Clayton Allen. Auditors said the transactions “may represent a conflict of interest” under Iowa law because they exceeded $6,000 and were not competitively bid.
The Board of Supervisors also was faulted. In both fiscal years, supervisors did not approve appropriations, so disbursements in all departments exceeded the amounts formally appropriated.
“Financial safeguards were not in place,” Sand said. “Taxpayers in Madison County deserve better. They should be able to trust that the people who are handling the money and decide what’s being spent are providing oversight and are following the law.”
Turmoil did not end with the audited years
The audits cover fiscal years ending June 30, 2023, and June 30, 2024. But Madison County’s problems have continued.
After Kaczinski resigned, supervisors appointed Matthew Schwarz as auditor in July 2025. Residents petitioned for a special election, and Michele Brant, a former Board of Supervisors clerk, won with 70% of the vote in August 2025.
By early 2026, Brant was questioning whether taxpayer money was being used to fund Supervisor Heather Stancil’s personal federal lawsuit against county officials. She paused payment on outside-counsel invoices after they arrived with the same sparse description: “pending litigation.”
Stancil’s lawsuit followed a July 2025 Facebook comment in which she wrote that if residents forced a special election for auditor, she would “offset” election costs by “shrinking government.”
Sheriff Jason Barnes referred the comment to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office for potential voter intimidation and election interference. Stancil then sued Barnes, later adding County Attorney Stephen Swanson and employees in the auditor’s and sheriff’s offices as defendants.
Most recently, Brant filed a suit of her own after supervisors moved to restructure the Auditor’s Office.
A district judge issued a writ of certiorari and stay, temporarily freezing parts of an April 28 Board of Supervisors vote that would have changed the office’s structure, reduced HR staffing, outsourced courthouse maintenance and shifted custodial functions away from the auditor.
The county’s political makeup is now shifting, too. Swanson narrowly won reelection as county attorney in the June 2 election. Diane Fitch and Stancil are not running for reelection and are set to be replaced by Allen Todd Anderson and Dan Miller Hutton when their terms end Jan. 1, 2027.
Madison County will also have a new outside auditor.
Supervisors voted 2-1 in December to replace the Iowa Auditor of State’s Office with Mauldin & Jenkins, a Georgia-based accounting firm, for fiscal years 2025 through 2027.
“They instead selected a firm out of Georgia that was charging a higher per-hour rate,” Sand said. “If I was a taxpayer in Madison County, I would be suspicious of the fact that they didn’t want our office doing the audit anymore.”
Asked what he would tell Madison County taxpayers, Sand was blunt.
“I think if you’re a taxpayer in Madison County right now, you’ve got a lot of reasons to be angry,” Sand said. “I’d be angry, too.”
Nick El Hajj is a reporter at the Register. He can be reached atnelhajj@gannett.com. Follow him on X at @nick_el_hajj.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Sand says ‘we can’t tell up from down’ in Madison County’s finances
Reporting by Nick El Hajj, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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By Nick El Hajj, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
