The Salt Lake County auditor’s warning of “significant gaps” in oversight of employee spending sparked frustration and accusations of inaccuracy from leaders in a County Council meeting last week.
Auditor Chris Harding’s report was disseminated in a news release Nov. 14 and detailed a lack of supervision of county spending cards and the county’s Amazon account. Although the audit did not uncover any misused funds, Harding’s team said it found numerous policy violations in its review.
Of the audit’s nine main findings, four were listed as significant risks, meaning they could have led to fraudulent use of county funds or assets, according to the report.
Included in these significant risks, according to the report, were the unauthorized uses of two proprietary spending cards — one from Smith’s and another from Sam’s Club — that allowed $4,535 in “unchecked spending” due to a lack of oversight from the county’s Contract and Procurements Department. According to the auditor’s office, the two county agencies that use the charge cards — Criminal Justice Services and Youth Services — have since agreed to cancel the accounts.
The report also found a significant risk in gift cards that were purchased against county policy and were then improperly tracked.
County officials, however, said Harding’s report triggered more alarm bells than was necessary.
“It does seem like there were perhaps some hyperbolic statements made, is how I would describe them, that aren’t necessarily in line with the findings …,” County Council member Arlyn Bradshaw said during the council’s Dec. 17 meeting. “It’s important to recognize proportionality and not damage morale of county employees who I think are working diligently and not trying to cause these mistakes. Clearly, it’s up to the policymakers to ensure we’re putting the right guardrails there.”
Darrin Casper, Salt Lake County’s deputy mayor of finance, said he had a “significant problem” with the tone of Harding’s news release summarizing the audit, and took issue with what he perceived as a characterization that the county’s financial management team was “lackadaisical.”
“I have complete confidence in the employees of Salt Lake County,” Casper said, “and where we find things that we can improve, we’ll do it.”
Casper also alleged that a main finding from the audit was inaccurate — he contends the county’s Contracts and Procurement Department was never intended to serve as an oversight agency for charge cards, and that Harding “can’t audit against the policy we want to have.”
Harding said his team’s expertise led them to believe the department does have some oversight. Without Contracts and Procurement’s supervision, he said, “that means nobody had oversight.” Casper argued that was untrue, saying oversight instead belonged to the fiscal administrator of each department that used the proprietary spending cards.
“Was that happening?” Harding asked Casper during the meeting.
Casper chimed in: “Did you audit them? Did you talk with them? So you didn’t talk with the right people.”
“We talked with the folks in the different departments,” Harding said, before Casper cut him off: “I’m sorry, but guess what …”
At that point, council member Sheldon Stewart interrupted, signaling the men to stop after the exchange had become contentious.
County officials also questioned why Harding chose to publicize the audit report in a news release rather than through a post on the audit website, which is what the department has done in the past. Harding said the release brought more attention to the audit’s findings and awareness to “much-needed improvement that we just weren’t getting” after issues with proprietary charge cards were flagged in an audit nearly a decade ago.
Casper contends important context was missing from the news release because the spending on proprietary cards only totaled $4,500, while the county’s budget in 2023 — the year that was analyzed — was $2 billion.
Harding stood by his report, but conceded that he hoped to improve the process through a “meeting of the minds” with management to ensure there are no misrepresentations before audit reports are released.
“We have wonderful employees, but I feel like my place, more than defending an institution, is to defend the taxpayers,” Harding said, adding that he doesn’t regret the news release.
Management, he said, is “taking a critical look at this audit, and they’re kind of sitting up and taking notice, and I’m not going to apologize for that.”
