DES MOINES - While budget-conscious motorists are keeping their eyes on gas prices, state inspectors are making sure consumers get what they pay for.

Ivan Hankins likes to think of the team as the "third man" between industry and consumers.

"You name it, basically, we check," said Hankins, the program planner for the Weights and Measures Bureau of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

Besides checking that gas pumps are dispensing an accurate amount of fuel, inspectors are testing fuel's ethanol content to ensure it is being sold as it is labeled.

They double-check that advertised prices on street signs match the price on the pump, which must be calculating totals properly.

And they detect "meter creep" - when meters continue to run after the pump stops dispensing gas - to ensure customers aren't overcharged.

"We all take our job extremely seriously because, hey, we're consumers, too," Hankins said.

The department is required to inspect each of Iowa's more than 35,000 retail gas pumps annually. But with budget cuts, sometimes it takes longer.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey said gas pumps generally are inspected every 12 to 18 months.

Many of them don't go much more than a year between inspections, he said.

Getting to each pump every year is going to be even more of a challenge as the department absorbs a $3.3 million budget cut.

"It's going to be hard to get to them as quickly as we used to," Northey said.

The department has had eight inspectors to cover all of those gas pumps, along with other duties. With one position currently unfilled because of a hiring freeze, they'll have six inspectors when another one retires.

In addition to inspecting gas pumps, those inspectors are charged with checking out counter scales found in delis or any place that does commercial measuring and the 1,200 grain moisture meters typically found at farmers' cooperatives.

Complaints from the public are also checked out by those inspectors.

Jim Lind has owned a service station on the same corner in Waterloo for the past 39 years and remembers the "old days" when state inspectors came twice a year.

Back then, they were armed with five-gallon gas containers to measure how much fuel the pumps were dispensing. Now they use more sophisticated equipment and techniques to test whether gas pumps are dispensing the correct amount of gas.

But whether gas is 30 cents a gallon or $4 dollars a gallon, Lind said, consumers will be concerned they aren't getting shorted at the pump.

"They're always watching that, and I think they always have and always will - for good reason," Lind said.