Murphy wants to bring transparency to Auditor's Office

Jon Murphy wants to be Iowa's “chief transparency officer.”

Murphy is on leave from his job as director of the Iowa Office for State-Federal Relations while he challenges Republican Auditor David Vaudt who is seeking a third term.

A top priority for the 39-year-old Des Moines native will be the creation of a centralized "online, checkbook level view of state government spending” to allow Iowans to see how their money is being spent, Murphy said during a July 28 stop in Cedar Rapids after a day of campaigning at the Johnson County Fair.

Iowans with that information will be empowered to lobby their elected officials to spend more or less or spend it on other priorities, Murphy said.

For example, Murphy, who has overseen Iowa's implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would like to develop something similar to the “dashboard” feature on the www.recovery.iowa.gov website that allows Iowans to track where the state's $2.4 billion of federal stimulus money is being spent.

Murphy, who has worked in Washington for U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell and his alma mater, Iowa State University, before joining state government in 2007, criticized Vaudt for tunnel vision in his operation of the Auditor's Office.

“I have a broader vision of what the office could be,” he said.

In addition to a user-friendly, centralized database monitoring state spending, Murphy wants to increase the use of performance audits of state programs. Of the more than 7,000 audits on Vaudt's website, he said, 33 are performance audits.

“I want to make sure we are measuring results,” he said. “Given the state's revenue drop, we have to be able to re-evaluate our priorities with real information.”

He's also pledging to be less political than Vaudt, who is on a three-week campaign tour with Republican gubernatorial candidate, former Gov. Terry Branstad.

Murphy will not endorse state or local candidates because partisan political activity “takes away from any measure of impartiality.”

Finally, given the state's current tight budget, every elected official “needs to bring more to the table,” Murphy said.

“Vaudt hasn't brought us one step closer to solutions,” Murphy said. “He stands on the sidelines throwing darts.”

Murphy and his wife, Katherine Lefert, live in Des Moines with their 14-month-old son.

For more, visit

www.murphyforiowa.com.