Salt Lake County Council member says top aide — a high-ranking GOP official — was targeted by fellow council member

A Salt Lake County Council member says he and his top aide are facing retribution due to another council member’s vendetta against them.

The dispute boiled over last week after council member Aimee Winder Newton proposed eliminating each member’s personal policy adviser. Council member Sheldon Stewart said the proposal was intended to target his aide, Kim Coleman, specifically.

“Ever since I’ve gotten on this council, my policy adviser has been under attack … particularly by the member that has made this motion,” Stewart said during the Nov. 19 meeting. “We have incoming members that relied upon this and for us as a legislative branch to be this negligent. … We’ve effectively cut ourselves from being able to effectively manage our budgets.”

Winder Newton, who has denied any animus toward Stewart or Coleman, introduced the proposal when the council’s Tuesday budget workshop was abruptly rescheduled to the morning session from its afternoon slot. She cited county Mayor Jenny Wilson’s request that elected officials cut down on spending amid an “incredibly tight budget year” as the reason behind slashing the positions.

Staffing shuffle

The council currently employs nine advisers — one for each member — to help with research, writing policy and connecting with the community. These advisers work full time and have six-figure salaries, Winder Newton said. Her proposal would eliminate four of the positions, reducing the mayor’s $2 billion budget by $450,000.

All nine positions would be vacated on Jan. 6, when three outgoing council members — Democrats Jim Bradley and Ann Granato, and Republican Dave Alvord — leave office. The county would then rehire five positions, which would be reallocated across the council.

One aide would be assigned to the council chair, and the four others would be split among the council’s Republican and Democratic caucuses.

Republicans hold a narrow 5-4 advantage on the partisan council, a power dynamic that will not change when three new members — Democrats Natalie Pinkney and Ross Romero, and Republican Carlos Moreno — are sworn in next year.

“Since no other part-time elected officials have their own employees in this state, I assume it will work just like they’ve been doing it,” Winder Newton said. “This is pretty normal. This is what usually happens with part-time elected officials, as they generally do share staff.”

Council dispute simmers

The move to cut the positions represents an about-face for the governing body. In June, the council reaffirmed its support for each council member to have his or her own policy adviser, and council members stated their intent to continue funding the positions in the fall.

Stewart said the policy turnaround was in order to eliminate his policy adviser, who serves as vice chair and national committeewoman of the Utah Republican Party.

Both Stewart and Winder Newton are Republicans, and Coleman said Winder Newton’s aim is to silence dissent on the council because of unpopular positions Stewart has taken, including his recent vote against sending a half-billion-dollar jail bond to the ballot, despite its support from the other eight council members. The bond went on to be voted down by Salt Lake County residents this month.

“In the past decade, the Republican-led Salt Lake County Council has doubled the budget — from $1 billion to $2 billion …,” Coleman said in a statement. “Now these same ‘Republicans’ want to nip a tiny fraction of a percent from the budget in order to take away the policy adviser from incoming new council members and a current councilman who has consistently opposed their tax and budget increases.”

Stewart echoed Coleman’s concerns, and said Winder Newton personally has taken shots at Coleman to prevent her from doing her job so that Stewart can’t adequately serve his constituents.

Timing was right, Winder Newton says

Winder Newton rejected Stewart’s allegations.

“Sometimes people are angry and lash out,” she said. “I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about.”

Stewart fears the elimination of personal policy advisers will impact the ability of council members to act independently because they will share aides with fellow members.

And the three new council members who will be inaugurated in January, he said, ran with the expectation that the part-time positions would come with full-time help.

“You will have to compete [to have] individuals to help you write your policies, to research issues, to find that information — during the time that we’re working our full-time job,” Stewart said. “Advocacy is a big deal for me, and I’m not able to attend all the meetings that I would need to attend, so my policy adviser is able to go in my stead. So now we will not be able to represent because these policy advisers will be torn.”

Winder Newton has sympathy for new council members who won’t get the benefit of having their own advisers. But in her 11-year tenure on the council, she said restructuring the policy staff has been a recurring thought — and this year was the right time because advisers were already on the way out with council members leaving office.

“It’s been nice to have people take the load off, but I do think that there’s an expectation from people who elect us that we’re going to be the ones showing up to meetings, and we’re going to be the ones making our own decision and not just listening to somebody else,” Winder Newton said. “When we’re looking at taxpayers overall, we’ve got to do what’s best for our constituents and what’s best for the county.”

The council voted 6-2 in favor of Winder Newton’s proposal but signaled support for reducing the mayor’s budget by $400,000 to retain the remaining $50,000 for recruitment efforts. Stewart and Democratic council member Suzanne Harrison were the two opposing votes. Alvord was absent.

The policy is now “basically in effect,” but the final county budget will get a final vote Dec. 10, Winder Newton said. If formally approved as part of the final budget, the three incoming council members would help make hiring decisions for the five open adviser positions.

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