State auditor and AG won't examine Polk County grants for Christian schools County attorney says grants were legal, auditor points out

Clark Kauffman | The Des Moines Register

State Auditor Mary Mosiman will not review Polk County’s decision to spend $844,000 in public money to help church-affiliated schools.

Mosiman’s chief of staff and legal counsel, Bernardo Granwehr, said that while the legality of the county’s actions might be open to question, the job of the auditor’s office is simply to test governmental agencies for their compliance with the law.

If a compliance issue is identified, he said, the office advises that agency to seek the advice of its own legal counsel.

Granwehr said Polk County Attorney John Sarcone told the Des Moines Register he’s confident that county supervisors acted legally when they voted unanimously in 2012 and 2013 to route $844,000 in county money through a corporate intermediary to church-affiliated schools.

"According to your article, Polk County appears to have consulted with legal counsel, and the Polk County attorney took a position on the issue,” Granwehr said.

More: Polk County hires a public relations firm to promote 'thoughtful' gambling-revenue grants it previously used to fund Christian schools

A spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said Tuesday that Miller's office doesn't have any enforcement authority with regard to the law that prohibits the use of country money for church-affiliated schools.

The county board's former legal adviser, Michael O’Meara, said county supervisors asked him in 2011 whether they could donate county money derived from Prairie Meadows Casino and Hotel gambling proceeds to local Catholic schools.

O’Meara said he told the board that such an action would be illegal given the state law and county policy that prohibit the use of county money for schools and other organizations that are under ecclesiastical or sectarian control.

A few months later, several of the Catholic schools’ supporters formed a new Iowa corporation called Education for the 21st Century to apply for and receive county grants with the understanding the money would be used to buy supplies and equipment for those schools.

The board of supervisors awarded the corporation a $400,000 grant in 2012 and a $444,000 grant in 2013.

The supervisors also agreed to pay the legal expenses associated with creating Education for the 21st Century.

O’Meara is now retired, but his former boss, Sarcone, said recently he’s confident the grants were legal.

“In the final analysis, (O'Meara) would never have approved anything like that if it wasn’t legal,” Sarcone told the Register. “He would never have said, ‘This is legal,’ if it wasn’t legal.”

As for whether Education for the 21st Century was created to do an end-run around state law and county policy, Sarcone said he’s confident that’s not the case.

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “We wouldn’t set up some sham (corporation) just to do something. That’s not the way this office operates, and that’s not the way this board operates.”

The two Polk County grants were the sole source of income for Education for the 21st Century.

It has ceased operations after the last of the grant money was spent, and in 2016 the Internal Revenue Service revoked its tax-exempt status for failing to file a tax return three years in a row.

Some Polk County residents have called on the schools that benefited from the grants to reimburse the county.

Earlier this week, Eric Stimson of Des Moines wrote to Richard Pates, bishop of the Des Moines Diocese, to express his “extreme disgust” with the county grants.

“This deal is slimy, intended to avoid public scrutiny,” he wrote. “I would think an immediate and total reimbursement of the funds to Polk County would be in order, as well as a public statement disavowing these reprehensible actions.”

John Mauro, the county supervisor who arranged for the grants, has acknowledged they were designed to help church-affiliated schools.

“We give to the Christian schools, and we give to the Catholic schools,” he told the Register. “I’m very proud of that.”

Mauro was defeated in the Democratic primary by Matt McCoy.