By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)
State Treasurer Roby Smith says short term investing of unspent state funds has yielded over $1 billion for the State of Iowa since he took office in January of 2023.
“You’ve heard of purchasing power. This is investing power and so we invest it and we have received over $1 billion in the last two and a half years, which is a record amount,” Smith told Radio Iowa. “We’re excited about that.”
A number of people in the treasurer’s office and outside money managers are investing pooled money the Iowa the Veterans Fund and the Road Use Tax Fund. That’s the fund where gas taxes are deposited and used to fix and build Iowa roads and bridges. Any investment earnings go back into those funds. The $4 billion in the Taxpayer Relief Fund where state budget surpluses have been funneled for the past 14 years is also being invested.
“We do a ladder approach where we’ll do investing every month, but a certain amount, so every month it comes due, so you’re not sitting around and waiting for two years,” Smith said. “You’re just having them come due every 30 days.”
Smith said the state has enough liquidity to pay its bills on time — meaning “there’s money in the checking account,” but money that’s not yet spent should be invested.
“If we know a school aid payment goes out the 18th of every month, we can put that money in a short term investment for a week,” Smith said. “Granted, it’s only a week, but if it’s on $100 million, $200 million that’s a lot of money you can bring in and then we move it back right before we have to send it out to the school districts and when you do that kind of investing, that’s what gets you these kind of returns.”
The average return on investment has been around 4.4% since early 2023. “Records are made to be broken. We’re going to see what next year brings,” Smith said, “but what we do is keep the money safe, we keep it liquid, but we also get a competitive rate of return and we put that money to work for the taxpayers.”
State law for the past five decades has required this sort of short term investing. And the law says both state employees and outside financial experts are to handle the deals so it’s a diversified investment team.
