An auditor without aggression
Who would have thought that the most interesting and locally important race of the 2012 political season would be … State Auditor? That’s the one between Auston Johnson (a CPA first elected in 1995) and his challenger, state Rep. John Dougall (an MBA). What makes the race interesting and important is the unfolding financial scandal at Timpview High School (Link to latest story and related stories here). It’s a colossal case of auditing failure whose tentacles now appear to engulf schools across the whole state.
Bottom-line question is whether the State Auditor should sit back and wait until scandal breaks to get involved, or whether his constitutional role requires him to intervene early to identify — and solve — problems in the handling of public money. Case in point: Timpview. On the State Auditor’s website (sao.utah.gov) you will find rows of neatly finished independent audit reports relating to Provo City School District that include a lot of unchallenged boilerplate. Over and over again, the reports include rubber-stamp statements like, “In our opinion, the Provo City School District, complied in all material respects” with good financial practices and “No instances of non-compliance noted” in categories like cash management, purchasing and public debt.
Don’t choke on your Cheerios. The statements are laughable. Utah’s State Auditor — the one who touts his status as a CPA and promotes his office as “the state’s CPA firm” whose job is “to ensure the integrity of the audit process within the State and safeguard the resources entrusted to state government” — seems to have been asleep at the switch. Like a dirty football player who jumps on the pile after the tackle has already been made and is first to celebrate, Johnson has been no driver in getting to the bottom of anything, even though there has been plenty of information around for a long time that should have triggered audits.
Not only is the State Auditor’s office “Johnny Come Lately” to the Timpview school scandal, it was at least six months late getting involved in the Springdale, Utah, police scandal in which cops in the town that promotes itself as “The Gateway to Zion National Park” were caught writing tickets to foreign tourists and requiring them to pay in cash. The practice was improper, as was the handling of ticket books, but somebody else had to figure that out before Johnson jumped in to take credit. Not to mention bad advice in 2004 to then-Gov. Olene Walker about ownership of assets in the Workers Compensation Fund that cost the State of Utah $50 million. On the recommendation of the State Auditor, Walker stymied an attempt by WCF to settle a lawsuit over the assets. It was settled later by a unanimous Supreme Court — against Utah.
Johnson is unabashedly proud of his record. “I promise to continue the excellence that has become the standard for this office,” he wrote on his campaign website. Gee, that’s a relief.