By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)
State Auditor Rob Sand says a recently dismissed University of Iowa employee “pocketed nearly a million dollars” by using public equipment and public employees for his own business. Brian Busch was the manager of the Department of Physics and Astronomy Machine Shop.
“He would have employees handle the work on university-owned machines while on the university’s clock,” Sand said during a news conference in his statehouse office, “but $943,000 worth of payments…ended up in his own bank accounts.”
The Machine Shop fixed equipment and made parts for experiments, but Sand told reporters the Physics Department also used the expensive tools and equipment in the Machine Shop to fulfill orders from other departments on campus. “What it fundamentally came down to is at the end of the day Mr. Busch had public employees and public equipment doing work for him, instead of doing work for the university,” Sand said.
Busch was placed on administrative leave in 2021, but was not fired until last Wednesday when the auditor’s office presented its report to University of Iowa officials. Sand said keeping Busch on the university’s payroll for three years wouldn’t have been his choice due to warning signs. In 2019, the university had Busch repay over $3500 for work done on campus for his own company.
“They did not do an internal review of conflict of interest policies or heighten review of Busch’s future transactions at the Machine Shop,” Sand said. “Busch had not noted the company, D3T, on the conflict of interest forms that he had been required to fill out with the university.”
Sand’s office has been working with a federal agency that’s been investigating the allegations, as well as the Iowa City Police. Under state law, Sand said there are a few months left to sue Busch or file criminal charges in state court and a couple of years before the federal statute of limitations expires.
“The whistleblowers in this case provided much of the information needed to investigate it, including text messages with Brian Busch that are detailed in our report and photographs,” Sand said. “The report is about 300 pages. This is a big one.”
According to the audit, Busch was having university staff do work for a company called Xometry, but directed Xometry’s payments into his personal bank account and an account linked to his business. The University of Iowa has issued a written statement, saying it is attempting to recoup the wages paid to Busch and two other employees while they were on paid leave. The statement begins by saying the University of Iowa “is committed to managing its resources responsibly.” University officials say they requested a state audit and immediately took other steps when they first learned of the allegations against Busch.
