Utah Auditor Tina Cannon, the first woman elected to the role, filed — then quickly dropped — a lawsuit against the board that oversees the state Capitol and its grounds, after its repeated efforts to push her out of her current office in the main Capitol building.
The lawsuit filed Friday in 3rd District Court alleged the Capitol Preservation Board, which is composed of Utah’s top elected officials, violated the Open and Public Meetings Act when it voted in September to remove Cannon from her space.
Her office asked the court to void that decision, but moved to dismiss the complaint Monday afternoon after the board held a second meeting earlier that morning to vote to take the same action.
“We fulfilled the purpose of the lawsuit,” Cannon said in an interview. “We have been negotiating in good faith over the last 90 days and trying to get them to do the right thing, but at a minimum, if they were going to do this, they needed to do it openly and in the sunshine.”
Cannon said she remains disappointed in how the lawmaker-majority board has handled the space reallocation process as it adds another building to the Capitol, adding that it raises concerns about the power the Legislature has over other branches of government.
The auditor has not been given a date by which she must vacate her office, she told The Salt Lake Tribune.
The board includes Senate President Stuart Adams, House Speaker Mike Schultz and four other legislators, as well as Attorney General Derek Brown and Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks.
Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson and Utah Supreme Court Justice Jill Pohlman also sit on the board, but have not been present for discussions about Cannon’s office. In September, Oaks was the sole dissenting vote.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) State Auditor Tina Cannon, center, observes Senate proceedings at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, Friday, March 7, 2025.
The Capitol Preservation Board convened a meeting outside its regular schedule on Monday morning to discuss the issue. Supporters of the auditor packed the in-person discussion, while over 80 more joined on Zoom.
“Out of the abundance of caution,” said Assistant Attorney General Paul Tonks, who acts as legal counsel for the board, “I advised that it would be good for, instead, the board [to] do a revote ... so there’s no question that it was done legally and, again, in a public meeting.”
In that meeting, where Oaks was absent, the board unanimously reaffirmed its previous vote.
Cannon’s current main office space is on the second floor of the building, adjacent to the rotunda and near those of other executive branch elected officials, with the exception of the state treasurer.
The treasurer’s office is on the first floor, across from the space where the board voted to relocate Cannon — the previous visitor center beside the Capitol’s east entrance.
An agenda of the September meeting, published the prior Friday, did not explicitly indicate the board would consider relocating the auditor’s office — the item was instead marked “Visitor Center” on the agenda.
The item was labeled “Visitor Service Reallocation of Space, Relocation of Auditor Space” in Monday’s agenda.
Under Utah’s Open and Public Meetings Act, an agenda “shall provide reasonable specificity to notify the public as to the topics to be considered at the meeting.”
‘Do I really have independence?’
“I appreciate the reconvening of this body to make this discussion openly and in the public where this discussion belongs,” Cannon said at Monday’s meeting.
A law passed in 2024 created a timeline under which the auditor’s office was scheduled to be moved to a “substantially similar space,” and her current suite would be given to the Legislature.
That law also says the auditor is among the parties that “shall assess the use of space in the State Capitol to determine the best use of the space,” including the area Cannon currently occupies.
Cannon told board members it’s her “humble opinion that the interests of the state auditor have not been recognized through this process.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Adams, referring to the legal requirement that Cannon be included in the process of assessing space in the Capitol, said, “My understanding is that requirement had been met.”
Tonks responded, “Yeah, and the statute just simply says a study does not require for people to sign off — again, it is the board that has the authority as per space allocation."
The September vote Cannon initially challenged followed an attempt by Adams late in this year’s legislative session to boot Cannon from her office. After she publicly protested the move, lawmakers abandoned it.
“The code was written to reflect and protect the independence of the state auditor, and to give a voice to the state auditor in the location of the space,” Cannon said in an interview. “Remember, I am to be an independent auditor. And when someone can just sweep me unilaterally through a majority of legislators out of my space, do I really have independence?”
Cannon’s office must now discontinue an audit into spending on major developments at the Capitol complex, including the addition of a fourth building, she said, because the decision jeopardizes the impartiality of that endeavor.
Instead, Cannon plans to hire an independent auditor to examine spending in the project that has cost Utah more than $300 million. That expense is not in her office’s budget, however, so it will have to ask lawmakers for money to fund it in the upcoming session.
“It is a sad day for the taxpayers that I represent when ... the very body screaming for a balance of power will not recognize mine,” Cannon told The Tribune.