Fate of state audit into Leath’s plane use unclear

After reporting in October it intended to review Iowa State University Flight Services and its president's use of school aircraft, the Iowa Auditor of State's Office would not confirm Tuesday whether it still plans to do that.

The office said it audits the regent universities annually.

'We cannot comment or respond to specific questions while we are engaged in our audit work,” according to Bernardo Granwehr, chief of staff and legal counsel for the auditor's office. 'Any findings and recommendations will be included in our annual report of recommendations, which is typically issued in the summer.”

Granwehr's comments came a day after Board of Regents auditors reported that ISU President Steven Leath's use of school-owned aircraft on some occasions could have violated board or university policy.

'Many times these are clear-cut, black-and-white determinations,” Chief Audit Executive Todd Stewart told the board Monday during a special meeting.

'And still other cases, they enter shades of gray,” he said. 'President Leath's use of university aircraft, at least in a few instances, fall within this category.”

During the meeting, both Leath and Regents President Bruce Rastetter said no policies were violated - in part because a policy doesn't exist on some issues or is unclear on others.

After the meeting, Leath and Rastetter said the state auditor's office is not conducting a separate audit.

'It's my understanding the state auditor would wait and see the results of this audit before she made a decision,” Leath told reporters Monday. 'But she's certainly not been in contact with us.”

In an Oct. 24 email to The Gazette, State Auditor Mary Mosiman wrote that 'my office decided to review this situation as soon as we became aware of it. I cannot comment or respond to specific questions while we are engaged in our audit work.”

Her office Tuesday wouldn't say if something had changed since then or whether auditors are reviewing ISU Flight Services as part of the larger annual audit.

Regents requested the internal audit in October following news reports that Leath had, at times, used ISU planes for trips involving both personal and university business. He did not publicly disclose a hard landing in Illinois in 2015 that cost the university $17,373.

After the hard landing became public this fall, Leath wrote a check to cover the costs to the ISU Foundation. He had previously reimbursed the university for trips involving personal business, although the board audit found he was billed at a lower rate than he should have been.

In response to the audit's findings, Leath decided to give the foundation another $19,113 for additional questionable flights - including the 52 he took for 'proficiency/training or certification.”

According to the audit, Leath was the pilot or passenger on 95 percent of flights taken on ISU's Cirrus SR22, which the school bought for $498,000 in 2014 with foundation dollars set aside for 'the institutional head to commit at his/her discretion.”

When pressed for details of what else those discretionary dollars have bought since he was hired in 2012, Leath said Monday that hasn't historically been tracked.

'Something we've not been doing that we should have been doing for 20 years but we haven't been, is giving a full accounting to the foundation of everything we spent out of foundation accounts on a regular basis,” Leath said.

Miles Lackey, ISU's new chief financial officer, has started reporting to the foundation 'every expenditure that we make of foundation funds,” Leath said.