Rocky to jettison alcohol policy

Former Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini said Wednesday she used a separate, privately raised fund, not taxpayer dollars, whenever she bought alcohol for visitors as the city's chief executive.

"I felt it was inappropriate" to use tax dollars to pay for alcohol, Corradini said. "To me alcohol is a kind of extra and something that I personally didn't feel comfortable asking the taxpayers to pay for. Plus it was against city policy so all the more reason."

That policy may be about to go the way of the dodo.

Mayor Rocky Anderson said Wednesday he will eliminate — "as soon as I can get the paperwork done" — the Corradini-era policy against spending city tax dollars on alcoholic beverages.

"It's that kind of alcohol policy that makes us look absolutely foolish to the rest of the world," Anderson said. He joked that he may substitute the alcohol ban with a "prohibition on high-fat content desserts."

The move came a day after it was revealed that Anderson was reimbursed in July for two sizeable bar tabs — including both food and drink — one for $457.88 and another for $175.86, from city tax dollars. How much went for alcohol and how much for food aren't stated on the bills, which are from July, when Anderson hosted Salt Lake City International Jazz Festival musicians and other mayors here for the Sundance Summit — A Mayor's Gathering on Climate Protection, which Anderson and Robert Redford helped organize.

Corradini was responding to Anderson's claim he wasn't the only city official to neglect the alcohol policy.

"You don't think Mayor Corradini bought drinks for IOC members?" he said.

Unlike Anderson, Corradini didn't have a city credit card and would instead use her personal card for purchases, she said. When she would file for reimbursement from the city she would simply subtract the cost of the alcohol from her bill.

Moreover, whenever she hosted gala events she would have all the alcohol donated by local restaurants.

Corradini said the money for the fund was donated at mayoral galas.

"That's even worse," Anderson said of Corradini's approach. "There you're going to have people, mostly developers, pay for it instead of having it disclosed and paid for out of the general fund."

Anthony Musci, director of the government watchdog group Common Cause of Utah, agrees on that point.

"I would much rather see — if this is legitimate city business — I would much rather see it funded by the taxpayer than special-interest groups," he said.

However, Musci said Anderson needs to do a better job disclosing who he's paying for so the public can determine whether the expenditures really had much to do with city business or not.