2 employees testify in Workman trial

No one hid the fact that two employees hired by Nancy Workman were doing accounting at the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Valley instead of community outreach in the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, witnesses in Workman's trial testified Friday.

Workman's lawyers are trying to rebut statements by the former mayor's chief administrative officer, David Marshall, that Workman wasn't honest with him in describing what the employees would be doing.

"Did anyone tell you not to say you were working for the Boys and Girls Club when you went to the county?" defense attorney Greg Skordas asked Jennifer Schroder, one of the two employees.

"No," she answered.

"Did anyone tell you not to say you were an accountant?"

"No."

Workman is charged with two counts of felony misuse of $18,000 in public money to pay Schroder and Alina Iorga to work at the Boys and Girls Club under the supervision of her daughter when they were ostensibly working at the health department.

Marshall testified Thursday that Workman told him Iorga, the first employee to be hired, was to be a health services "community liaison" and that Workman mentioned nothing regarding accounting or the Boys and Girls Club.

Nevertheless, an electronic CP-4 employment form created when Iorga was hired — whose content was based in part on her own description of her work — listed her as a grade 13 "office specialist." County personnel director Felix McGowan testified Friday that an office specialist does general office tasks including "accounting" and "clerical-type work."

That's an accurate description of Iorga and Schroder's work at the Boys and Girls Club and quite different from the duties of a community liaison. On the same page, however, the CP-4 form listed "community liaison" as part of Iorga's duties, a jarring inconsistency with her job title.

That, defense attorney Jack Morgan said, is evidence that the health department "ghost employee" situation that got Workman criminally charged resulted from nothing more than a series of simple miscommunications. Morgan said the whole thing could have been corrected shortly after Workman and Marshall met had McGowan, in his review of the CP-4 form, hit his computer's F8 key to see the "remarks" portion of the form, which contained the job title and description.

"I probably would have questioned what that would mean . . .," McGowan testified of the inconsistency. "It would have raised a question as to what the duties were."