The governor of Iowa, Chet Culver, has some questions about the nonprofit organization that controls most of the student-loan business in the state and is holding off on appointing anyone to its Board of Directors until “a number of institutional, legal, and policy issues have been satisfactorily addressed,” the Des Moines Register reported.

The Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corporation, which holds $3.9-billion in assets, was created by the state in 1979 but is not subject to Iowa’s open-records laws. That lack of openness is one of the governor’s concerns. He has asked the state attorney general’s office to gather information about the private loan organization, including whether having state employees serve on its board represents a conflict of interest, and whether board members should be paid compensation, particularly if they’re state officials.

The concerns coincide with headlines about a national scandal over potentially inappropriate relationships between colleges and loan companies, but Governor Culver, a Democrat, made no allegations of similar problems in Iowa. Steve McCullough, president of the Iowa student-loan organization, strongly defended the nonprofit corporation, saying it had helped many students who otherwise would not be able to go to college. —Charles Huckabee