After a late-session attempt by Senate President Stuart Adams to move the new state auditor, Tina Cannon, out of her Capitol office space, Adams said Friday she can keep it.
“We have more important things to do,” Adams told reporters Friday night.
But it’s clear some bad blood remains.
“It’s unfortunate where this dialog has gone today. ... I think some of the things that have happened are very, very inappropriate,” Adams said. “This is over office space and the rhetoric over it, I think, has been totally inappropriate, and I’m very disappointed in the auditor, I’ll tell you that much.”
Cannon, the first woman to hold the office, had accused Adams of “bullying” her out of her Capitol office space — which would have made her the only official elected statewide without a presence in the building — and withholding funds for her office unless she complied with his demands.
“It is just a huge bullying tactic over, oh, the first Republican woman elected statewide, oh, then push her right out of the Capitol,” Cannon said Thursday night. “That’s exactly what it’s about.”
Earlier Friday, Adams and Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, denied that they were trying to sneak language into legislation to move her out of the Capitol — the bill said she would still have a shared receptionist with the attorney general — and that her budget request wasn’t even discussed until she brought it up.
Sen. Heidi Balderree, one of two Republican women in the Senate, introduced a substitute version of the bill Friday morning that would have ensured the auditor’s office remains in the Capitol. When the bill came up for debate, McKell circled it — putting it on pause — and moved to other matters.
McKell said he would not revisit it during the final hours of the session.
Cannon, a Republican, had said Adams, R-Layton, shouted at her during a meeting earlier this week and told her she would be relocated.
“I was told that I would be written into legislation and removed from the Capitol, and I wouldn’t even know — while he was yelling at me — wouldn’t even know it was coming,” Cannon said. “That feels pretty bullyish to me.”
She also said she was not able to fight against the plan to move her because legislative leaders were holding up a $1.5 million budget request for staff salaries, which left her “feeling held hostage, to not be able to say what I knew was happening.”
Thursday evening, lawmakers agreed to fund a third of the amount, a few hours before adding language to a bill relocating her from the Capitol to offices southeast of the historic building where most of the auditor staff works.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) The state auditor’s office at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, Friday, March 7, 2025.
Freshman Rep. Nicholeen Peck, R-Tooele, challenged the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Val Peterson, R-Orem, over the decision and asked if the auditor was on board with the move. Peterson said he couldn’t speak to whether the auditor approved of it or not.
“I can,” Peck shot back. “She doesn’t like it.”
The bill passed the House on a 49-18 vote five minutes after the provision relating to the auditor was added with no other discussion. If it passes the Senate Friday and is signed by the governor, the effective date is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2025 — which Cannon said means she is “basically squatting” in the space.
“[I was] vehemently opposed to this. It was not done with my cooperation,” Cannon said.
“I was threatened [by Adams] that he would do it and that’s exactly what he did — while holding my budget and my staff hostage in the other hand,” Cannon said.
Cannon’s predecessor, John Dougall, and a few staff members had worked out of office space just off the Capitol’s rotunda since he took office in 2013. His predecessor also had office space in the Capitol. Cannon had kept Dougall’s suite since taking office in January and opened a new Transparent Utah office, where the public can get assistance searching government financial information.
Cannon said Adams told her he planned to use the space for junior senators who currently have offices in the building where Cannon would be relocated because, Cannon said she was told, it makes them feel like “second-class citizens.”
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Carolyn Phippen, left, speaks to reporters in support of state Auditor Tina Cannon at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, Friday, March 7, 2025, regarding SB143, which would remove the auditor’s office from the main Capitol building.
Carolyn Phippen, the president of the Women’s Republican Club of Salt Lake, joined Cannon in a news conference Friday morning decrying the proposal.
A cluster of women gathered outside the Senate gallery with her, waiting to see whether the bill would be heard, while the auditor’s office and its new transparency hub sat empty downstairs.
“We are at a time in our nation when trust in institutions of government and all public institutions is at an all-time low, and this move does nothing but further entrench that distrust that the people have for those we elect to serve us,” Phippen said.
Note to readers, March 7, 9 p.m. • This story has been updated after the Senate president said the auditor would not lose her office.
