Usually, it takes a scandal to make the question appear, but when it does, few people seem to have answers.

The question is this: Why do we elect certain county officials, such as the clerk, treasurer, auditor, assessor and surveyor, to name a few?

Another related question arises every four years. This one usually comes to mind when voters enter their polling places and face a slate of candidates for these offices. It goes something like this: How do I know which candidate to elect? Are there, for example, differences in Republican and Democratic philosophies toward surveying property boundaries or recording deeds?

Both questions are hitting this year at about the same time. First, we had a scandal. Salt Lake County's auditor, Craig Sorensen, resigned after admitting he used a county credit card to gas up more than just his county-issued vehicle. Next, it is an election year. The so-called "minor" elected offices are not up for grabs in Salt Lake County, but they are in several of the state's other counties.

So now is as good a time as any to answer the question. Why do we need to elect these people? Why can't the county mayor appoint them with the advice and consent of the county council, the way she does the public works director or the fire chief?

It may help to ask another question. How many layers would you like to peel from an onion before getting to the part you want to eat? And how many tears would that peeling produce?

It's all a question of accountability and bureaucracy, and the level of buck-passing you're willing to tolerate.

Better yet, listen to how Salt Lake County Surveyor Vaughn Butler answers the question.

Butler, who is in the middle of his third four-year term, remembers when the Olympics were on the way and road construction was sliding ahead faster than a four-man bobsled team. He happened to notice equipment on Redwood Road ripping up the monuments his office had put in place to record section corners. No one had notified him or given his people a chance to record the monuments so they could be replaced later.

Butler complained to the state.

"I got a phone call saying we have to move quickly on these projects. They're costing quite a bit of money," he recalled last week. "They said, 'We can't stop construction or stop a bulldozer in order to worry about your silly little section corners.' They said if I couldn't live with that, they would have to replace me with a surveyor who could."

The caller, whom Butler doesn't want to identify (he gets along fine with the state now, he said), didn't realize the county surveyor was an elected official, accountable only to the voters. Butler educated him. He also told him to come into his office right away to resolve the problem or he would go to the district attorney and file charges. Eventually, the county collected about $50,000 from the state for ripping up monuments without permission.