Watching politics in Utah, one always has to be amazed when you see normally bright people make really dumb decisions.

You see it all the time, year in and year out.

Maybe it's a big gaff, like former Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini asking "friends" for $10,000 a pop so she could keep up the mortgage payments on her house.

Or former Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman providing county funds to a private nonprofit that employed her daughter.

Maybe the errors are smaller, like powerful politicians asking a favor from a local college president, and then thinking that nothing was done improperly because no public funds were inappropriately spent.

But it is the appearance of wrongdoing — even if there was no legal wrongdoing on the part of the politicians, like the two mayors — that saps the public's good opinion of elected and appointed public officials alike.

The latest gaff comes in the building of a float by the Mountainland Applied Technology College in Utah County.

Here are the facts as revealed in an audit by state Auditor Austin Johnson and interviews with legislators:

Leading Utah County legislators Sen. Curt Bramble, Senate majority leader from Provo, and Rep. Becky Lockhart, Executive Appropriations co-vice chairwoman, also from Provo, and other local Republicans decided it would be a nice thing if the Utah County Republican Party had a float to drive in a number of summer parades.

According to Lockhart, the next question was where to get an old car to use as the float's base. Once that was donated, how do you build the metal frame around the car to carry the float?

Along with Bramble, the pair hit upon the idea of seeing if the MATC — which basically teaches all kinds of skills like plumbing, welding, computer science and so on — had a welding class that, as a class project, would build the frame.

Lockhart says she and Bramble approached Clay Christensen, campus president of MATC whom they knew well, and asked if such a thing was possible.

Lockhart promises that from the very first, she offered to write Christensen a private check to cover the costs. Christensen said maybe someone at his college could build this thing. He told Lockhart to wait for any payments, as he didn't know the cost yet.

The car is delivered. The metal frame is built. The float is finished.

Lockhart said she, again, offered to write a check. In state audit work papers, Bramble says he, too, offered to pay. But Christensen said no — that an anonymous donor had come forward to pay for the work.

Lockhart says she doesn't know who that donor was, nor the ultimate cost of the welding work and materials.