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Show Auditor denies wrongdoing FARMINGTON Monday's action by the County Commission which eliminated the position of internal in-ternal auditor and removed Jim Larson and his budget from the auditor's au-ditor's office has left County Auditor Au-ditor Ruth Kennington "shocked and saddened." The action came after Commissioners Commis-sioners Bill Peters, Harold Tip-petts Tip-petts and Gayle Stevenson accused Mrs. Kennington with being involved in-volved in a suit filed against Com. Peters, Com. Tippetts and Interim County Clerk Glen Saunders, charging them with misuse of public pub-lic funds and eight other related offenses. In addition, the Commissioners have asked that all charges be dropped in the suit and have issued a statement charging Mrs. Kennington Ken-nington with nine allegations of "abuses of staff, equipment, and corresponding county funds." (See related story.) Mrs. Kennington denies any wrongdoing in the matter. "I had nothing to do with the charges being filed against them," she said. According to the auditor, Monday's Mon-day's action is just one more incident inci-dent in the continuing feud between be-tween her department and the commissioners, com-missioners, a battle which has heightened in intensity as the election elec-tion draws near. What began when Mrs. Kennington Ken-nington took office in January 1987, as "an attempt to instigate the. state auditor's recommended accounting system in the county," has mushroomed into a full scale war between the auditor and the commissioners. A war which is costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars. "I ran for the office of auditor because my acquaintances who knew I had 25 years of experience in cost accounting, asked me to run," said the auditor. She explained ex-plained that when she found out the county did not have a centralized accounting, cost accounting or a central purchasing agent, she was anxious to serve. "During my years in the private sector I had O CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Auditor denies wrongdoing CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 O been able to help several businesses busines-ses become profitable businesses busines-ses that were in trouble due to poor accounting methods," she said. When she assumed office, Mrs. Kennington attempted to consolidate consoli-date the 53 separate county budgets. "I was allowed to audit only 12 of them. The remainder were controlled by Commissioner Tippetts," she said. She said her attempt in December Decem-ber 1987 to investigate travel expenses ex-penses and outside employment in the County Attorney's office resulted re-sulted in her being denied access to the computer files containing the information. "When that investigation investi-gation began, we were told by Com. Tippetts that we could not review juvenile court records to verify time spent by the attorneys." attor-neys." Mrs. Kennington said her relationship with the county commissioners com-missioners began to "deteriorate" at that time. "They complained I was trying to take over the county and the commissioners refused to listen to my suggestions, even though five vpnrs of outside audits had recom mended the very changes I was trying to implement," she said. Mrs. Kennington claims that she tried to follow the recommendations recommenda-tions in the independent audit, but she was not allowed to do so. She asked for and received a description descrip-tion of her duties from the State Attorney General's office. The reply re-ply from Assistant Attorney General Gen-eral Ralph L. Finlayson agreed that according to Utah Code Ann. 17-19-6 and 9 "should be understood to require a county auditor to maintain main-tain the financial accounting system sys-tem of the county." He then quoted from the code which reads "The auditor shall keep the books of the county in such a manner as will show the amount of receipts from and disbursements of each department." Mr. Finlayson also wrote, "As a supplementary matter,, I would note that under Utah Code Ann. 17-5-19 it is the duty of the county commissioners to 'see that they faithfully perform their duties'. ..it is the statutory duty of a county commission in Utah to assist the county auditor in performing his or her duties both to the Dublic and to the commission." According to Mrs. Kennington she has been trying to perform her duties, but her efforts have been thwarted by the commissioners. "I want my office to be open to the people of Davis County to see any document they want to see. It's a privilege they've paid for." The commissioners are accusing Mrs. Kennington of not conducting any internal audits. "When Com. Tippetts called me on the carpet about that, I reminded him of 16 that had been completed that he had received. . . , ,v "If I am guilty of anything, I am 1 guilty of doing my job. An auditor who is the watch dog for public expenditures is never popular with those she audits. I don't know if I'm getting close to something they don't want me to know or if they just don't understand what a good management tool audit reports can be." She said when she invited Com. Gayle Stevenson to come to her office and review the problems including in-cluding the fact that she does not have access to certain computer files, that he responded, "I owe my loyalty to the commissioners." He declined the invitation. Mrs. Kennington said she would like to do her job and she feels that can be accomplished with the support sup-port of the county commissioners. |
