Salt Lake County Council gets down to business

It's a brand-new day at Salt Lake County, according to speakers at Monday's inauguration ceremony, and so County Council members are . . . talking about pretty much the same things they have been.

Partisanship and ethics — two major topics of the past several scandal-laden months — were the order of the day in Tuesday's council meeting, with wrangling between Republicans and Democrats over council leadership and Councilwoman Jenny Wilson proposing a more in-depth ethics ordinance.

The council has five Republicans and four Democrats. GOP Councilman Michael Jensen won the council chairmanship over Democrat Joe Hatch by a vote along strict party lines. Republican David Wilde won the vice chairmanship over Hatch by the same margin. Republican Mark Crockett won the chairmanship pro tem (authority to act as chairman in the chairman's absence) over Wilson by — well, you get the idea.

"I hope this isn't a precursor of things to come," Democrat Jim Bradley said.

The Democrats can at least console themselves that they have one more seat on the council than they had last year, as well as one of their own in the mayor's office. Nevertheless, with a one-seat majority, the Republicans are still calling the shots on the council.

"To the victors go the spoils," Democrat Randy Horiuchi sighed.

In reaction to past scandals the council has already passed a package of ordinances regulating campaign financing, open meetings, car allowances and ethics training. But even while they voted on the ordinances, several council members said they weren't enough.

"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," Horiuchi said at the time.

Wilson — who, along with Crockett, attended her first meeting as a council member Tuesday — is taking the lead on pushing the ethics issue further. She said the council needs to, among other things, enact a possible gift ban, research the "best practices" of other governmental bodies, and conduct more public input into possible additional ordinances.

"There is still work to be done. . . . " she said. "In this new era of government, the public expects it of us. We need to find out what passes the smell test."

Wilde went so far as to bring up the possibility of appointing an independent panel — much like the "guzzle-gate" panel that recently released its report after several months of investigation — to look into county ethics.

Wilson, Wilde and Crockett were appointed to look into the ethics issue and report back to the council about what should be done.

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