Cabinet spot stirs tiff in auditor race

With all eyes focused on the scandal-plagued race for county mayor, another county race is also playing out with a lot of attention on the question of trust and independence.

The two main candidates for county auditor — Republican Sean Thomas and Democrat Peter Stevens — spend a lot of time talking about the office's independence from the mayor's office, and just how much it matters.

Thomas has been serving as interim auditor since former auditor Craig Sorensen resigned after admitting to misusing public funds.

When Thomas agreed in September to be part of the acting mayor's Cabinet, Stevens said he was "outraged." On Wednesday, he told the Deseret Morning News such a move "essentially violates the trust of the voters."

"The mayor is an auditee," Stevens said. "With (Thomas) serving on the Cabinet there is no way that he can have any independence in appearance or in fact. He has made statements in support of (Republican mayoral candidate Ellis) Ivory. Now what happens if he gets elected and if (Democratic mayoral candidate) Peter Corroon gets elected?" He said he personally knows Corroon and independent mayoral candidate Merrill Cook, "but I'd be darned if I'd endorse them. And they know that."

But Thomas denies there's any conflict whatsoever in having an auditor in a Cabinet position, adding that the auditor's office serves several different functions, and that the auditor's budgeting and financial roles should translate into the auditor serving as a mayoral adviser.

"Our office has always sat as a financial adviser to the County Council, providing data," Thomas said. "To suggest that it's goofy for us to also sit in the office of the mayor is just silly."

And Stevens doesn't call into question Thomas' ethics in joining the Cabinet, "I just think he didn't know, and I don't think Sean knows what he doesn't know."

Which is becoming another issue in the race. Stevens, 68, says Thomas, 33, is inexperienced, and he laments the fact that Thomas is not a certified public accountant, a problem, he said, for an officer dealing with a $750 million budget.

"Anybody on God's green earth can run for this office," Stevens said. "You don't have to have a high school diploma. You don't have to be a CPA."

He said he would fight for legislation to change that.

He said the work being done by the auditor's office now "looks like they were frozen in time 40 years ago."

But Thomas said his experience in accounting and finance is strong and that being a CPA is not a requirement for doing a good job as auditor.