Workman may face felony counts

Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman was riding a horse in Sandy's Dimple Dell Park Wednesday morning when she got the news: A panel of four county attorneys announced that it had found "sufficient credible evidence" to charge her with felony misuse of public monies.

Workman clicked off her cell phone, looked at the hundreds of acres of wilderness around her and sighed.

"Last time I was here, my horse threw me on my head," she said. "Now this. This is not a good place to be."

Several hours later, Workman — still in the boots, jeans and T-shirt she wore while riding — stood before a swarm of reporters in a Salt Palace Convention Center room and maintained she had done nothing wrong except fail to strictly follow procedure in paying county employees to help her daughter. She said she would fight the charges and continue her re-election campaign.

"I cannot roll over," she said.

The panel report said "there is sufficient credible evidence against Mayor Workman to sustain two criminal counts of Misusing Public Monies. . . . The amounts in question are $4,085.00 and $13,177.50, making one count a third-degree felony and one count a second-degree felony. Additionally, the panel believes there may be violations of (sections) of the Utah Local Health Department Act prohibiting health department employees from receiving illegal payment, a class B misdemeanor."

The panel came to its conclusion after looking into Workman's hiring of two employees who did accounting work under her daughter, Aisza Wilde, at the Murray-based Boys and Girls Clubs of South Valley. The employees, whose time cards were signed by Workman herself, were paid primarily with county money. The panel found that "there is no evidence that either ever performed any work for Salt Lake County."

Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom, who conducted the investigation into the matter, convened the panel in June to avoid the conflicts inherent in a county attorney deciding whether to charge his own chief executive with a crime.

Workman, noting that the panel based its conclusions on Yocom's investigation, as well as the fact that one of Yocom's investigators sat in on all the panel's meetings, said it wasn't enough.

"They've long had a saying in the computer business: garbage in, garbage out," she said in a press release. "The conclusion of the panel can only be as valid as the input its members received."

The panel convened by Yocom consisted of Utah County Attorney Kay Bryson, Weber County chief deputy attorney William Daines, Summit County chief prosecuting attorney David Brickey and Davis County deputy county attorney Brian Namba.

Yocom has yet to decide whether to actually charge Workman consistent with the panel's conclusions.