OCR Text |
Show High Court Makes Important Ruling Following months of litigation in which the publisher of the Transcript-Bulletin at Tooele, Alex . Dunn, sought to force Fred Bryan, county clerk and ex-officio auditor of Tooele county, to publish in detail financial statements of his county during January Jan-uary each year, the matter has been finally settled through an opinion just recently handed, down by the supreme su-preme court of Utah. The decree of the court was that county auditors must publish such reports that concern con-cern the public, showing an itemized statement to whom the money is paid, the amount paid and for what purpose. pur-pose. A review of the case which brought the issue, follows: . Dunn, a resident taxpayer of Tooele county, filed petition in the Third district dis-trict court, for writ of mandate against Bryan as auditor of the county coun-ty to compel him to publish in a newspaper news-paper of general circulation, in that county a detailed financial statement of the county for the year ending December 31, 1929. The district court sustained Bryan's demurrer and dismussed the action. The supreme court now reverses the district court ordering it to vacate the order sustaining the demurrer and dismissing the action, and to reinstate the case and overrule the demurrer. J Petition filed in the district court, set out a pretended financial state- j ment which Bryan claimed was in ; full compliance with the statute, but which Dunn claimed failed to meet the requirements of the statute. ; The auditor published a more or( less general financial statement. Dunn contended that disbursements of the county should be reported in detail, showing each warrant issued with the name of the payee, except where more than one warrant is issued to the person per-son and in this instance, the aggrc-, gate amount may be shown. In its decision, the supreme court: declares that the statute clearly re-' quires that the financial statement published shall contain each warrant issued, to whom and on what account. It is further held by the supreme court that while the publication of the 1929 statement may be of no benefit to the taxpayers now, yet the circumstances circum-stances are not such to preclude corn- pliance by lapse of time. It may well be, says the court, that if the county j auditor fails to publish a proper statement within the time designated by law, the courts could and should require him upon timely application, to do so within a reasonable time thereafter; otherwise the plain mandate man-date of the statute and the will of the people as expressed by the lagis-lature lagis-lature could be defeated by the public pub-lic office delaying action until the time designated had expired. |