County government antics are a good read

You have to love our local politicians.

If the stuff they do wasn't true, it would make a cheesy TV show.

You may recall that Salt Lake County Democrats had a field day with county government last year. We had a car scandal, where several GOP officeholders and top appointees were caught red-handed using their county cars and county credit cards for personal use.

We had the GOP mayor, Nancy Workman, charged with crimes for using county funds to pay for a Boys and Girls Club worker who helped out Workman's daughter, a manager at the club. (Workman was later found not guilty on all charges.)

We had Republicans lose the mayor's office and one County Council office in the November elections.

All the elected officials promised to clean house, run county government in a better fashion.

We also had some ugly allegations coming out concerning sexual harassment in Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen's office. Swensen is a long-time clerk and a Democrat, one of the few Democrats who managed to hold on to her office over the years of growing Republicanism in Utah and the county.

Perhaps seeing a chance to get some shots at a Democrat (Swensen) as their GOP colleagues were dropping like flies, the County Council, with a GOP majority, last fall asked a private Salt Lake City attorney, James E. Morton, to conduct an independent investigation into the clerk's office, specifically to see if any retribution had taken place against some clerk employees who had cooperated in the sexual harassment case.

(The Republicans on the council perhaps didn't trust Salt Lake County District Attorney Dave Yocom to handle this investigation; Yocom, a Democrat, was prosecuting Workman and had declined to prosecute the sexual harassment case in the clerk's office, which is now in civil court.)

So, Morton interviewed a few people (not enough for a "thorough" investigation, say county officials) and in early March gave an eight-page report to the council.

Someone leaked that investigation report to Deseret Morning News county reporter Alan Edwards, who wrote a story about it.

And here's my point: Some of these Democrats who were so shocked, angry, outraged, disappointed over the county car and Workman's phantom employee scandals now want Yocom to conduct an investigation into who gave Edwards this "confidential" report, and prosecute the whistle-blower with a Class B misdemeanor.