Salt Lake County tightens controls

Salt Lake County leaders are tightening the leash on several divisions embroiled in scandals since last year.

A new administrative services department will now oversee the beleaguered fleet division and the personnel department as part of an effort by Mayor Peter Corroon to lend more fiscal oversight to those areas of county government.

"We're not going to see some of the scandal we've had in the past," Corroon said during Tuesday's County Council budget meeting. "It's too much work for one person. Basically, the division heads have become their own little department heads."

The fleet division came under fire last year for misuse of county gas cards and has recently been scrutinized. Director Nick Morgan was fired after allegations of wrongdoing. The personnel department was also in the spotlight this year for abuse of the tuition-reimbursement program and allegations of improper hiring practices.

Many of those scenarios, Councilman Randy Horiuchi said, could have been avoided by relieving the chief administrative officer of his responsibility for eight separate administrative divisions. Handing that oversight to a centralized department and a fiscal manager may have staved off the slew of county scandals, he added.

"The last two years of foul-ups by the Workman administration were due to too much responsibility on one man," Horiuchi said. "The breakdown of the last administration occurred because they don't have the controls and the chief administrative officer was overloaded."

That new department, which will have a director and a fiscal manager, will reign over all eight of those administrative sectors, including records and archives, facilities management and real estate.

Each of the divisions will fall under a sole department head but will also have indirect accountability to county chief financial officer Linda Hamilton.

"It's easy to point your finger at personnel and say they should have done better," chief administrative officer Doug Willmore said. "There have just not been enough good people to do what needs to get done. We have to get more fiscal oversight."

Although the new department will cost the county roughly $344,307 annually, Corroon said the savings from preventing additional scandals will outpace any upfront cost to start the department.

But the new department also will have heightened accountability to keep costs down while the government structure is growing. A provision tacked on by Councilman Mark Crockett gives county programs the chance to opt out of any of the eight services if they can get the same product for a better price elsewhere.