It's business as usual in county government

Why does it seem to be that there's always some kind of scandal circulating around Salt Lake County government?

I've been around for a while, and every few years something boils over in that place. I recall reports of a county fire chief and his son, also a county firefighter, running a family insurance agency out of a fire house. I recall arguments over a county treasurer running a drywall operation out of his office.

A married county commissioner was charged with having sex with an underage boy. Another county commissioner was arrested for possession of a controlled substance.

Now, the personal foibles you see above can be found with people anywhere. But the scandals like Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman is facing now — strictly a question of proper use or misuse of county monies — seem to pop up every now and then in county government.

Why?

Does Salt Lake County government have more of these things than, say, state government or Salt Lake City government?

From my point of view, the answer to the second question seems to be yes. The why is tougher to answer.

First off, county government is large and relatively unseen. The county pays good salaries, usually higher than the state or cities do.

Combine high-paying jobs with low visibility and the high number of "exempt" employees — political slots where bosses can hire their friends and supporters who may not have outside qualifications — and you have a recipe for shady dealings.

For example, an aide whose livelihood directly depends on keeping the top elected or appointed person happy may be more willing to shade the truth than a merit employee who can keep his job no matter what — even if he criticizes elected officials or official policy.

Add in the internal partisan politics of county government — the top elected people are party affiliated, and then hire exempt employees who also are partisan people — and an "us vs. them" mentality grows.

Workman and other county Republicans are already blaming Democratic Salt Lake County Attorney Dave Yocom for Workman's legal problems, even though Yocom got a bipartisan group of county attorneys to conduct the investigation that this week suggested there's enough evidence to file two felony charges against her.

The bipartisan group, in a letter and "findings of fact" sent to Yocom, also says that Workman lied to co-workers, the panel's own investigator and to the panel itself about some of the things she did in hiring two accountants and paying them out of county health department funds to help her daughter manage a local Boys and Girls Club.