Voter trust is priority, retiring Black Hawk County auditor says
Grant Veeder is one of Iowa's longest-serving county auditors
WATERLOO — Grant Veeder finally has an office with a window — just as he’s retiring.
Veeder has been Black Hawk County auditor for 36 years, with 43 total years’ service in the office. He’s one of the three longest serving county auditors in the state of Iowa, and has sat on the board of the National Association of Counties.
But until a very recent renovation, he occupied a space not much bigger than a walk-in closet. It was just inside the employee entrance by the service counter.
He inherited the cubbyhole quarters from his old boss and predecessor, Isabelle Frerichs.
“If it was good enough for her, I guess it was good enough for me,” Veeder said.
Veeder may not have exactly had “a room with a view,” but he had a clear eye when it came to serving the public.
As county elections commissioner, making sure everyone who could vote, did vote, and that their vote was counted correctly, was a duty and a hallmark of Veeder’s office along with its other functions regarding the county budget, calculating taxable property valuations, and serving as clerk to the board of supervisors and the county’s financial officer.
“People’s right to vote is very important them and it’s very important to me,” Veeder said. “When you’re in a democracy, it’s very important to have people who serve the public. Serving the public is rewarding to me. I haven’t always done it perfectly, but by and large, I’ve done a good job. It is its own reward. A lot of people express their appreciation.”
He and his staff also try to make coming to the courthouse a less intimidating experience for folks who aren’t there often, or come under less-than-ideal personal circumstances. If they come to the wrong office, he’ll walk them to the right office and tell staff there their needs.
“If I see somebody in the hallway looking around and it’s obvious they don’t know where they’re going, I’ll try to direct them in the right direction,” he said.
Veeder, a 1970 graduate of Boone High School, graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1974 and earned a master’s degree in history in 1979. After deciding teaching high school wasn’t for him, he chose public service — and found the auditor’s office a suitable calling. As a lover of American history and an aficionado of President Lincoln, he keenly appreciated voting as an underpinning of representative democracy.
“I started in 1981 and I was in the Elections Office for six years,” Veeder said. He then moved into the real estate property tax end of the office following a retirement. "Isabelle (Frerichs) wasn’t running again and she asked me if I wanted to take that position to make me more familiar with the office, with the plan of running to replace her. I did that for about a year and a half, which was very helpful.”
He was elected to his first of nine terms in 1988.
Among his peer county auditors around the state, only two others have served as long or longer - Barb Rohwer in O’Brien County and Jim Dowling from Sac County.
Veeder also takes minutes of Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors meetings.
“It’s usually not boring,” Veeder said of his office’s duties. “We don’t just do one thing. We do some widely disparate things. That’s kept the work interesting for me through the years. I’ve seen a lot of (county) supervisors come and go.”
In dealing with the various personalities that have flowed in and out of county government, Veeder said one of the people he admired was the late Pete Burk, a gentlemanly, unflappable longtime assistant Black Hawk County attorney and legal counsel to the Board of Supervisors for 44 years. He passed away in 2021
”If any one was a mentor to me it was Pete Burk; a role model is probably more accurate,” Veeder said. “He exemplified what I think is the best in government service. Always ready to provide the work that was necessary, but he did it in a way that was cheery, friendly, nonoffensive, but focused on the facts. He was a good friend but also his attitude of public service were things that I tried to apply in my situation as much as I could,” in working with the public or cooperating with other county departments.
Regarding recent heightened attention to election integrity, Veeder said, “There have always been guardrails and safety measures to preserve the integrity of elections. The technology has changed significantly in the time that I’ve been here,” from the old large mechanical lever-operated voting machines to the current electronically scanned paper ballots. “And so a lot of those safety measures had to evolve along with the equipment.”
The office also handles voter registrations. “Any time we end up in a situation where we have to tell somebody their vote is not going to count, regardless of where the error lies, that’s always hard. I hate that,” Veeder said. “And it is going to happen from time to time. I think we have had very excellent staff over the years, very conscientious and assiduous,” who try to get as much registration and voting information out to the public as possible.
One significant change, social media, “is a two-edged sword,” Veeder said. “It unfortunately allows a lot of misinformation and disinformation to get out there that some people are all too willing to believe. On the other hand, it gives us the opportunity to increase our transparency and provide information to people. If they just take advantage of what’s out there, they’ll find that we are taking very serious precautions to make sure that elections are fair and safe.”
Veeder is known for his diligence in posting voter and election information on the county election office’s Facebook page and social media platforms, such as election-day turnout numbers as the day progresses, as well as election returns.
“Before the election, there’s public testing of voting machines. After the election, there’s a post-election audit,” Veeder said. “We have conducted numerous recounts over the years in addition to those post-election audits. It always results in showing that our counting of ballots is done accurately.”
Veeder also studied English and craved an outlet for his writing. He found it in his lucid, droll and always interesting minutes of county department head meetings, which contained the subtlest twist of Dickensian satire.
”Which are now at the UNI archives,” at the Rod Library on the UNI campus, Veeder said, thanks to outgoing archivist and fellow Friends of KUNI radio board member Jaycie Vos. “I really didn’t think anyone would have much interest in my old department head minutes, but I thought, well actually, this would be good item for the archives.” he said.
Back in the ‘70s at UNI he was elected secretary at the Bender Hall dormitory and had to take minutes of student government meeting there.
“That kind of stuff was always considered dry and boring. Well, if I was gonna write something, I wanted to write something interesting and not boring,” he said. “I always tried to make it humorous or at least interesting. So I ended up over time, writing the minutes for various organizations,” including the Friends of KUNI board and the Pinstripe Faithful Iowa Chapter, a local club of New York Yankees baseball fans which has a card, memorabilia and autograph show featuring a former Yankee every November.
In taking Board of Supervisors minutes, “I have to be pretty serious,” he said. But in writing minutes for other groups, like the KUNI board or department heads, “I let loose my non-serious side.”
He hopes indulge another of his passions in retirement — “reading, writing, and teaching history,” he said. He hopes to teach through UNI’s Lifelong University program.
”I’m going to be doing a class on Lincoln’s law career,” he said. He’s also had articles published on Lincoln’s connections to Iowa and hopes to do a book on the subject.
”I better do it, because I told everybody I was going to!” he said.
In April, Veeder received the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) Medallion Award for his career of service. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate presented him with award at the courthouse in Waterloo.
A retirement open house for Veeder is scheduled 4 to 8 p.m. Jan. 11 at the Waterloo Center for the Arts.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription.
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