Salaries paid to Iowa’s executive branch employees fell 7.6% over the past decade when adjusted for inflation, according to a report released this week by State Auditor Rob Sand. However, the offices of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Secretary of State Paul Pate have bucked that trend, posting increases where the rest of the state’s government saw declines.
Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor this fall, based his report on the state’s annual Employee Salary Book, covering fiscal years 2016 through 2025. Iowa Starting Line independently verified the report’s core figures against the underlying salary data and also identified additional patterns in the same dataset suggesting a widening gender pay gap and a major staffing surge at the Department of Corrections.
Governor, SOS salaries wax, while the rest wane
Total inflation-adjusted compensation for Iowa’s executive branch employees dropped from $1.6 billion in fiscal year 2016 to $1.48 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Comparing the four years before the pandemic to the four years after, four of the state’s six statewide elected offices saw salaries decline or stay essentially flat over that period:
- Attorney General: down 1%
- Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS): down 3%
- Auditor: down 6%
- Treasurer: down 9%
The Iowa Governor’s Office and Secretary of State’s Office were the exceptions. Salaries in the governor’s office rose 35% in real terms over the decade, including a 16.5% increase in the four years since the pandemic compared to before it. The Secretary of State’s office saw a 10% increase since 2016, and 7.1% since the pandemic.
The auditor’s report also flagged a sharp rise in outsized individual pay increases. Only two employees saw their base salary at least double between fiscal years 2016 and 2020. Between fiscal years 2021 and 2025, that number rose to 10 — including one employee in the Secretary of State’s office whose base pay nearly tripled, from $45,136 to $139,568, as their title changed from administrative assistant to “public service executive.” Iowa Starting Line confirmed this and every other case in the report’s tables against the raw salary records.
What do the offices say?
Mason Mauro, deputy communications director for the Office of the Governor, pointed to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ broader record rather than addressing Iowa Starting Line’s questions about the salary figures.
“The most important investment any organization makes is in its people, and government should be no different,” Mauro said in a statement.
He cited the Reynolds administration’s recruitment of “experienced professionals” from other states and the private sector, its pandemic response, more than $300 million in savings from state government realignment, and roughly $30 billion in tax cuts returned to Iowans over a decade.
The Secretary of State’s office gave a more direct response. A spokesperson said Secretary Paul Pate has not taken a pay increase in 10 years, and attributed the office’s salary growth to investments in cybersecurity and IT staff, as well as training for election workers.
“Our office has invested significantly in specialized roles in IT and cybersecurity to navigate potential threats, and we have brought in these individuals as full-time staff, whereas many similar agencies have contracted these roles out to other agencies or vendors,” the office said.
The spokesperson added that rising turnover among the state’s roughly 10,000 part-time poll workers and county auditors during the pandemic required “more extensive training resources.” The office said it hadn’t yet reviewed the report in full but was “confident that our staff is paid fairly and competitively.” It did not offer an explanation for the employee whose salary nearly tripled.
A widening gender pay gap in Iowa
A review of the underlying salary data shows a gender pay gap among executive branch employees that grew substantially over the same decade.
In fiscal year 2016, the median full-time male employee earned $61,739, compared to $58,285 for women — a gap of about 5.6%. That’s the unadjusted, workforce-wide number, not a comparison of identical jobs. By fiscal year 2025, that gap had grown to 8.7%, with men earning a median of $71,686 compared to $65,429 for women.
Part of the shift traces to the rapid growth of the Department of Health and Human Services, which didn’t exist as a standalone department in the FY16 data and grew to more than 5,000 employees by FY25. HHS alone accounts for nearly half of all female executive branch employees, compared to less than a fifth of male employees — a department where a large share of positions are lower-paid, direct-care roles.
What else changed after the pandemic?
The report found that the executive branch has increasingly relied on temporary and seasonal workers. It attributes most of the headcount growth to temporary and seasonal hiring, which rose from about 1% to nearly 9% of the workforce.
Travel and subsistence reimbursements declined 21% in real terms since the pandemic, driven in part by steep cuts within the Auditor’s own office, which saw its travel spending fall from an average of $451,000 a year before the pandemic to $125,000 since, the largest percentage decline of any statewide office.
On headcount, one department stood out: the Department of Corrections’ full-time headcount grew from 2,911 to about 4,200 employees over the decade — a roughly 45% increase, among the largest of any state department. Unlike the Governor’s and Secretary of State’s offices, that’s a headcount story, not a pay-rate story — more people on payroll, not bigger raises.
