State Audit Reveals Ogden Administration Improprieties

Auditor finds Boss Godfrey's Ogden Community Foundation routinely and wilfully violated its own bylaws

By Curmudgeon

A couple of interesting items in today's Standard-Examiner.

First is the article by Scott Schwebke, heading the Top of Utah section. Here's headline: Agency –– government or private? Ogden Community Foundation won’t have to return funds; still under scrutiny

Here are the opening graphs:

OGDEN — The city has made a “good faith effort” to comply with the terms of a $900,000 grant awarded in 2002 to purchase the former American Can Co. complex and won’t have to repay the funds, according to a state audit released Monday. The audit was conducted at the request of state Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden, and other individuals. They questioned whether it was proper for the Ogden Redevelopment Agency to use a $900,000 state grant to purchase the American Can Co. complex to house a high-tech center.

That was, of course, good news for the Godfrey administration and [in my view] good news for Ogden. But the good news for Godfrey ends right there, and the rest of the story and the state audit cannot have pleased him. From the story:

The office of the state auditor determined the Ogden Community Foundation, which acquired the complex in 2006 from the city’s RDA, has deviated significantly from its original articles of incorporation. As a result, there are inconsistencies as to whether the foundation is part of city government or a private organization, the six-page audit says.

The foundation’s original incorporation papers, which say board members are to be selected from a list of approved candidates appointed by Ogden’s mayor, require that the organization be included in the city’s financial statements because it’s considered a “government entity,” the audit says. However, the foundation has deviated from that practice and chooses new board members on its own without making selections based on a list from the mayor, says the audit.

And...

The audit also questioned the city’s decision to withhold information from individuals who submitted public record requests regarding the Ogden Community Foundation. “We believe that public officials have a responsibility to provide for open government,” the audit says. “In this situation, the city allowed the property to be sold into private hands where it no longer controlled the flow of information. While the city may have complied with the letter of the law, it certainly did not comply with the spirit of the law, which includes providing citizens with answers to their questions about the use of their tax dollars.”

The audit recommends that the city work with the foundation to amend the organization’s articles of incorporation to clarify its operating procedures and tax status. The foundation should also comply with state public records law if it is determined by legal counsel that the organization is a governmental entity, says the audit.

Godfrey said the foundation’s bylaws have been amended to demonstrate that the organization is separate from the city and shouldn’t be part of its financial reporting..

So, let's reduce that to basics:

(a) the Ogden City Foundation began life as a public body which, as such, was required to include its activities in the city's annual financial report.

(b)For some unexplained reason, however, it operated instead and in violation of its own founding by-laws, as if it were a private not a public entity, and it refused therefor to makes its records of its activities [which involved the transfer of public property to private entities] public when asked.

(c) The Mayor now says the by-laws have been changed to make the Foundation an exclusively private entity apparently so that it it can keep from having to explain its activities to the public.

(d) The state auditor finds such behavior on the part of the Godfrey administration to be, at the least, unethical, if not illegal.

Next, there is an interesting editorial on the newly announced crime-control steps, and their relation to the campaign. The editorial notes that crime control is shaping up to be a major issue for both mayoral candidates. It implies [faintly, but the implication is there] that Mayor Godfrey's --- who seems to have been asleep at the switch regarding gang violence in Ogden for seven long years until he realized his re-election was in jeopardy --- sudden interest in the topic is to no small extent campaign-motivated. Which raises of course this question: how long will his interest in controlling gang violence survive the closing of the polls on election day this November?

Additional reader comments are invited, of course.

Update 9/18/07 12:16 p.m. MT: For the benefit of our detail-oriented readers, we've obtained and uploaded to our storage site a full-text pdf version of the above State Auditor's Report, which can be viewed here.