Spurred by the scandals that rocked Salt Lake County government last summer and fall, the County Council on Tuesday passed a package of ordinances intended to repair the damage and prevent future scandals.

"There are things here the public ought to be very proud of," Councilman Joe Hatch said. "This is the silver lining to the guzzlegate and the hiregate scandals."

Council members had been generally unsuccessful in passing individual ethics proposals, with some of those proposals degenerating into partisan bickering and name-calling. It took council members agreeing in September to have Acting Mayor Alan Dayton present a package of ordinance changes, which the council would vote on as a whole, to make any real progress.

The changes include something the council continues to bang away at from time to time: campaign finance reform, though this time a cap was put in place for the first time. The ordinance limits per-donor contributions to $5,000 for countywide races and $2,000 for district council races.

"This has been a long time coming. . . . This is something we'll have to keep looking at. We need a bigger and better and bolder discussion on campaign financing," said Hatch, a strong advocate of campaign finance reform.

The ordinances also include something rising directly out of the guzzlegate scandal: The elimination of car allowances, which, depending on the status of the employee, were as high as several hundred dollars a month.

County cars were already gone. Shortly after the scandal erupted last spring, Mayor Nancy Workman eliminated the use of county cars by her immediate staff, and that mandate has been expanded countywide (except for police officers and similar employees).

The ordinance changes also require new employees to read a statement saying they will act ethically and follow the laws and constitution, and undergo ethics training every two years. (Employees already attend sexual harassment training.)

Dayton included, and the council passed, a provision the mayor called "Government in the Sunshine," encouraging all officials and employees to keep their meetings and records open to the public, to the greatest extent possible, even if not required to by state law.

While the vote was unanimous, not all council members were totally happy with the new ordinances. David Wilde called them a "knee-jerk reaction." Randy Horiuchi said similar changes were made after the celebrated Doug Short-County Commission fights in the 1990s — specifically, the change in the form of county government — and yet "as a result, we have the worst scandal in the history of county government."

Horiuchi said the only way to ensure scandal-free government is not to tinker with ordinances but elect honest people.

"We can continue to do things and try to fix things cosmetically like we're doing here today, (but) don't let us delude ourselves and the public that we're really getting our arms around this issue."

In any case, Councilman Russell Skousen noted that more work will always be needed.

"It's just a starting point," he said. "There will never be any perfect ordinance, any perfect organization. We cannot craft a perfect law. (But) we're on the right track."

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