Brooks and Bargman, who were also indicted in the case, are expected to testify at the trial as part of plea agreements with prosecutors.

Also testifying on Tuesday were two officials who looked into the inner workings at CIETC — Corrine Johnson, a senior state auditor, and Dennis Swafford, a financial analyst for the U.S. Department of Labor. Swafford said that upon inspection the bonuses and salaries given to CIETC executives didn’t seem right.

“This is way beyond the pale for this type of work,” he said.

Johnson spoke about an audit that delved into CIETC’s operations after a budget analyst at Iowa Workforce Development raised concerns about how grants were being issued to the agency.

“We believed that there were more services that could have been provided (by CIETC) had the compensation not been paid,” Johnson said.

Tami Higar, a former assistant to Tesdell, testified that Bargman told CIETC employees to change entries on their timecards and that Cunningham at one time told her to destroy the documents.

“I came to work one morning and there was a box of old timecards on my desk and Ramona told me to take them out to the Dumpster right away,” she said.

CIETC was the primary government-funded job training organization in central Iowa until about two years ago when top officials were accused of raiding job training funds. Prosecutors contend that officials misled federal agencies and the Polk County supervisors who funded CIETC, and have claimed that agency leaders misspent as much as $1.8 million.

The indictment in the case said that in fiscal year 2005 alone, Cunningham and Bargman were paid more than $360,000 each, and that Tesdell was paid more than $129,000.

The trial was moved from Des Moines to Davenport because of publicity about the case. It is expected to take about three weeks.