Ace Reporter Schwebke contributes an interesting news tidbit this morning, with a story reporting that the State Auditor's Office is in the process of conducting an audit of the American Can transaction:
OGDEN — A request from Ogden mayoral candidate Rep. Neil Hansen, R-Ogden,has prompted the state Auditor’s Office to investigate the city’s use of aFor those readers, by the way, who find it strange that Boss Godfrey has the capacity to unilaterally determine true "intent": Remember, Godfrey is a "visionary." He hears "voices."
$900,000 state grant in 2002 to purchase the former American Can Co. complex.
Mayor Matthew Godfrey, who is seeking a third term in November’s general election, said the audit request is a political move designed to discredit him.
"The intent is to make me look bad," Godfrey said.
We believe the most striking oddity in this story is Boss Godfrey's paranoid delusion that an audit of this sort is somehow intended to cast him in a bad light. The State Auditor's office conducts audits of municipal transactions constantly and routinely. Doing such audits is the State Auditor's job. Frankly, we find it find it astonishing that Boss Godfrey is complaining about this at all.
Further down in the article Godfrey tells our favorite Ace Reporter that "the city will cooperate with state auditors. 'We have nothing to hide,' he said."
And we think that's the whole point. If indeed the American Can transaction was on the financial "up and up," we don't understand why Boss Godfrey is grousing about it. If State Representative Hansen received constituent complaints about the tranasaction, it was of course his duty to pass them on to the Auditor's office, just as it's the State Auditor's duty to follow up with an audit, when the same citizen queries wind up on his desk. Surely even Boss Godfrey must understand this simple government 101 concept.
And we're wondering about one more thing: If Boss Godfrey is so terribly concerned that the pendency of this audit will somehow damage him politically, why did the normally-secretive Boss of Us All find it necessary or prudent to squawk to the Standard-Examiner about it?
While skeptics might leap to the conclusion that Boss Godfrey has gone public with this story to cultivate sympathetic political effect, we know that Dear Leader would never do anything like that. Boss Godfrey has more integrity than anyone in the room, as we all know. We therefore believe we can put any suggestions of disingenuousness quickly to rest.
And one more thing: Ace reporter Schwebke got this story almost completely wrong, from the article headline to the closing paragraph. This audit plainly has little to do with the $900,000 grant. The State Attorney General's Office has already resolved questions about the legal propriety of the application of the original grant funds, of course.
Assistant Attorney General Loos provides a hint of that in this paragraph:
"Loos said Thursday that while his opinion centered on Ogden’s compliance with the grant contract, the state audit will likely examine how the funds were used."
What the State Auditor's office will be doing in this audit, we believe, is to track the money trail in the transaction from the federal and state grants which seeded the original purchase, to the entities who wound up with the sale proceeds.
Among those entities is the mysterious Ogden Community Foundation, a shadowy and purportedly private entity operated from an office in city hall, chaired by The Little Lord Mayor himself, and populated by many of his Godfreyite henchmen. Our insider sources reveal that some within the State Auditor's Office suspect that this entity may in fact be a quasi-public, alter-ego subdivision of the city administration, subject under Utah law to audit by their office.
Now that the story has been taken public, it will indeed be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
And now for the Big News aspect of this morning's story. We were pleased to read this morning that Representative Hansen has quietly switched political affiliations, and is now a Republican State Representative. If you don't believe it (and we know this revelation will be particularly crushing to "yellow dog Democrat" gentle Curmudgeon,) go back and read Ace Reporter Schwebke's first paragraph.
It must be true; we read it in the paper.
Welcome to the Grand Old Party, Representative Hansen! With your constant fiscal conservatism, and love of open, honest government, we think you're a natural for the party of Abraham Lincoln.
Please don't all speak up at once, gentle readers.
Update 7/17/07 4:12 a.m. MT: Boss Godfrey now has two newspapers digging into the facts surrounding the American Can transaction. Check out yesterday morning's Kathy McKitrick story, in which Godfrey is quoted at his snarkiest.
Why Boss Godfrey won't just shut up about this, and let the audit run its course we do not know.
Perhaps it's because he has "more integrity than anyone in the room."
