While the text of the Iowa Constitution lacks the prominence of that adopted by our nation’s Founding Fathers, people from Ackley to Zwingle and points in between should track down a copy and give it a read.
Buried away in the document adopted by Iowa voters in 1857, they will find Article III, Section 31, or what has come to be known as the public purpose requirement. That section says, in essence, that state and local governments are barred from spending public money unless there is a public purpose for those expenditures.
My public-school education tells me that section prohibits the use of taxpayer money to continue to pay someone for work after their performance ends unless the government entity provides justification of the public purpose served by those payments…