Workman aims to counter any charges — fast

A day after an independent panel announced there is sufficient evidence to charge her with felonious misappropriation of public funds, Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman said she will fight any charges and called on District Attorney David Yocom to get the matter adjudicated before the election "so we can let the voters know."

"We want to get into court right now," she said. "They've concluded their investigation. ... I'd like to see him go forward with it. Let's get a judgment out there."

For his part, Yocom says that kind of speed in the legal world is impossible.

"I don't know of any case that has been adjudicated that soon," he said.

Yocom said he will likely announce today whether he'll charge Workman according to the panel's conclusions — and the panel was convened solely to determine if charges should be pressed.

Consistent with state law, county councilmen are preparing to put Workman on a paid leave of absence until the charges are disposed of one way or another. Before they do that, Councilman Joe Hatch, a Democrat, urged the Republican mayor to voluntarily take the leave of absence and help heal a county where "the atmosphere is absolutely poisonous."

Workman has accused Yocom of trying to "hijack the election" with the timing of the possible charges, which arose out of her hiring of two county-paid employees who — instead of working at the health department, where they were ostensibly employed — worked under her daughter at the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Valley.

"Just an investigation, or a charge, they can take an incumbent out of the race," she said. "I can't let that happen."

Assuming he charges her, Yocom said he would be willing to cooperate with Workman and her attorney, Ron Yengich, to get the matter tried as soon as possible. Even in a perfect world, however, going through the entire process of a preliminary hearing, arraignment and trial in two months is an extreme long shot. Preliminary hearings alone for non-jail cases, in which the defendants are not sitting in jail waiting for their day in court, are regularly set 30 to 45 days away in 3rd District Court, and getting a trial onto a judge's calendar often takes significantly longer.

The trial date for alleged Elizabeth Smart abductor Brian David Mitchell, for example, was set on Thursday for Feb. 1 — five months away. And jail cases such as that one are given first dibs.

"A person sitting in the jail is going to get priority over an elected official worrying about her election," Yocom said. "That's pretty blunt, but that's the reality."