S.L. County recorder is cleared by audit

With his name now cleared, Gary Ott is anxious to continue his re-election bid for Salt Lake County recorder.

Ott had been accused of side-stepping county contract policies to fund a pet project, but an audit released Tuesday cleared Ott of the allegations, saying no evidence supported the claim.

He said in the future he will scour each and every contract to make sure policies and procedures are followed.

"I'm going to be looking at things a lot closer now, that's for sure," he said Tuesday.

The confusion began in November 2004 when the Salt Lake County Council approved $425,000 in budget requests for the recorder's office, equivalent to the amount Ott had saved through personnel cuts. Ott directed roughly $100,000 toward an off-site data management service.

That's where things get tricky. Audio recordings of the council meeting don't include anything about off-site management, and no contract was ever signed with AlphaCorp, now SIRE Technology, for the off-site data-management service.

The only documentation about the off-site Web server is a quote proposal with an unsigned letter attached, stating the county would end up paying an additional $230,000 over the course of four years for the data-management project. The audit doesn't delve into whether the county is obligated to pay the company since a contract was never signed.

Why the quote proposal ever made it through several layers of county government and ultimately won approval from the County Council and mayor's office is a question auditors said needs to be answered. The audit blamed a time crunch: the recorder submitted the budget proposal to the contracts and procurement office at one of the busiest times of the year — the holiday and budget season.

"You know how work goes at that time of the year — it is hectic, it's definitely hectic," Ott said. "This just went by, it fell through."

The audit also faulted the recorder's office for not taking responsibility for its own contracts. "The recorder's office relied exclusively on other offices to ensure compliance with contracting procedures and did not itself adequately understand the process or its own key contracts."

County Auditor Sean Thomas called for the audit March 3 after several county officials questioned the recorder's relationship with AlphaCorp. When asked if he believed calls for the audit were politically motivated, Ott, a Republican, said, "I would hope not, but maybe so."

His Democratic opponent said Tuesday this never would have happened had she been in office.

"We have policies and procedures for a reason, they serve as a check and balance," said Leslie Reberg, the former director of the Utah Committee of Consumer Services. "Elected officials have to have the good judgment and the willingness to abide by those. That's why they are there."

Councilman Jim Bradley said overall he was happy with the audit's results, saying the county will now start tightening the contracting process.

"I was pleased we didn't have any more county scandals," Bradley said. "This time the public's money was spent OK."

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E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com