A new law passed by the Utah State Legislature this year could take some power away from county auditor and place it in the hands of the Summit County Council.
According to Summit County Personnel Director Brian Bellamy, in 2014, the county will have to change who their budget officer is to meet the new state law.
“Right now the county’s Auditor, Blake Frazier, is automatically the budget officer. But the new law says that the County Council will appoint whoever they want to be the budget officer and oversee the county’s yearly budget and say how they are doing month to month.”
Summit County Manager Bob Jasper said the county will do what they have to under the new law and could reappoint the auditor to be the budget officer. But council member Sally Elliott said she believes the Council should appoint someone who would have the time to devote to the county’s budget.
“If we change the budget officer we can also change the responsibilities,” Elliott said. “Right now, the auditor is not giving us the quarterly reports we asked for so we can make sure our budget is on track and dropping the ball on some other things.”
Two years ago, the County Council found out they were in the red after a review of their budget from the previous year.
The Council did not say who their selection for the budget officer would be at the County Council meeting last Wednesday, but Oakley resident Jeanina Rose said that having the budget officer be anyone but an elected official “makes me nervous.”
“I don’t like the power going to someone the voters don’t have a say on,” Rose said. “As a voter, I have the option of getting the auditor out of office. If the budget officer is the county manager, I can’t do anything about it if he is doing a bad job at managing the budget.”
Summit County Auditor Blake Frazier said the budget officer’s job is to submit a proposed yearly budget to the county manager, who then passes it along to the County Council for final approval.
“For about six weeks in August and September the budget officer meets with department heads and devises a budget outline,” Frazier said. “If the duty was no longer mine, it would take away a significant amount of the work I do, probably a couple hundred hours worth.”
Frazier added that he thinks the new law is poor legislation and that auditors all over Utah oppose the law.
“It is putting more power in the hands of the County Council and county manager and circumventing the checks and balances that are currently in place,” he said. “As the elected auditor I answer to the public, not to the County Council. If you take the auditor out of the budget process it takes away the balance.”
Bellamy said the county will work toward changing the position to meet state law before the deadline. He added that the Auditors Association may lobby the Legislature to reverse the law in the next few years.