Wednesday Morning Bits & Pieces

Nobody's perfect -- especially "us"

We're going to do something here at Weber County Forum that we haven't done in a good long time. We're going to submit today's article to a complete re-write.

Earlier today we leapfrogged off today's Standard-Examiner article, and hastily published what we confess to have been a half-baked opinion piece, criticising in part the reporting of Ace Reporter Schwebke, and his story about last night's Emerald City RDA session. So stunned were we that last night's meeting didn't result in a flurry of new bonding, that we overlooked a few highly essential points. Here's what we originally said:

We find a puzzling Scott Schwebke story in this morning's Standard-Examiner, regarding the American Can development project. The Emerald City RDA board last night amended the existing development agreement governing that project, the article reports; however our favorite Ace Reporter provides not the slightest clue as to the substance of that amendment. We incorporate Mr. Schwebke's hopelessly vague "descriptive" paragraph here:

"OGDEN — The Ogden Redevelopment Agency agreed Tuesday night to amend a development agreement enabling a developer to secure a $3.7 million bank loan to renovate Building D within the former American Can Co. complex."

That's it folks. That single paragraph is all this story provides us regarding the nature of last night's development agreement amendment. From this point the story rambles off into an odd array of largely irrelevant tangents, leaving interested readers scratching their heads, wondering exactly what substantive change the RDA Board made to the existing development agreement.

Here's the part of Mr. Schwebke's article we failed to highlight:

The development agreement amendments approved by the RDA board, made up of city council members, will enable Peddie to borrow funds from Wells Fargo Bank to make improvements to Building D, said Richard McConkie, the city’s deputy director of community and economic development.

Peddie plans to lease about 57,000 square feet on three floors in Building D to Amer Sports Corp., an international outdoor gear company.

The development agreement amendments call for Peddie to form a single entity, AmCan Properties I LLC, to own and operate Building D, said McConkie.

The amendments also allow tax increment by Building D to be pledged by Peddie to secure the Wells Fargo loan.

The development agreement for the complex renamed the AmeriCan Center calls for Peddie to receive 75 percent of the tax increment generated by improvements through 2017. Those proceeds are expected to total about $1.6 million, McConkie said.

Several of our gentle readers immediately set us straight about this glaring omission on our part; and we have thus somewhat sheepishly re-written today's article. Ace Reporter Schwebke did indeed provide us most of the essentials to last night's RDA session story, which boil down to these elemental points:

Our Emerald City RDA Board apparently handed another Friends of Matt (FOM) another fat taxpayer subsidy last night, once again reprising the tired Boss Godfrey refrain:

Emerald City remains "the armpit of Utah;" the only way to turn this city's economy around is to round up a few FOM's and reward them generously.

We regret our error, and apologize to Mr. Schwebke for what we now consider to have been unwarranted criticism.

We also apologize to our gentle readers, for posting the original article "on the fly."

We aim for perfection here on Weber County Forum, and we'll now eat another bite of delicious and nutritious "crow."

On another topic, we'll briefly highlight another Standard-Examiner Letter to the Editor, appearing on this morning's editorial page. Judging from this Donna Gardner letter, it would appear that it's not just Weber County Forum readers who are a mite suspicious of Boss Godfrey's "Godfrey the Crimefighter" 2007 election campaign platform plank. If anyone amongst our readership knows Ms. Gardner, we hope they will refer her here. As regular Weber County Forum readers know, in the arena of crime-fighting, Boss Godfrey isn't merely an exaggerator -- but rather an outright prevaricator.

The floor is open. Talk about any of the above... or whatever else floats your boat.

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.

Boss Godfrey Reveals Pending State Audit

Nary a day goes by without another Boss Godfrey blunder

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 a
$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.

For 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."

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."

Mark Shurtleff -- Dead Wrong Again

Hey, nobody's perfect, right?

We find a couple of stories of particular interest in this morning's Standard-Examiner:

First, Boss Godfrey's American Can/Governor's Office of Economic Development grant is front page news again this morning, under a right column headline "Ogden's use of $900 of $900 thousand grant OK'd.":

OGDEN — The city hasn’t violated the terms of a $900,000 state grant used to purchase the former American Can Co. and shouldn’t be forced to repay the money, according to an opinion from the Utah Attorney General’s Office.

The city has attempted to comply with the grant contract even though a provision requiring the American Can facility to become a "high-tech center" hasn’t materialized, Assistant Attorney General William C. Loos said in a four-page written opinion released Friday to the Standard-Examiner.

"It seems that they made a good-faith effort to develop a high-tech center and simply ran into some problems," he said.

It comes as no great surprise of course, to those of us who have been following this story, that Attorney General Shurtleff's office would provide Boss Godfrey with political cover in this politically-prickly matter. Above all else, the Emerald City political wonks who read Weber County Forum are keenly aware of certain "political realities."

We think gentle reader Ozboy got it "spot on" in his May 30 comment:

"The Governor, Republican that he is, is not going to go against and embarrass the Little Lord (also a Republican as Curmudgeon is fond of pointing out) in the months leading up to the election.

The governor may or may not like Godfrey, but he is not going to hang him out to dry - ever - for any reason. That is not how it works in Republican and LDS land. Remember, we do not criticize leaders, even if it's true."

And gloating in his high-chair on the municipal building ninth floor, Boss Godfrey could not resist dropping in yet another snarky comment, which left us more than slightly puzzled:

Mayor Matthew Godfrey said he isn’t surprised by Loos's opinion and hopes it ends a strong message to Littrell.

"I hope Dorothy Littrell and her group (sic) will stop fighting Ogden’s progress," he said.

We're not sure which "group" Dear Leader" is alluding to here. In our experience nobody acts with more political independence than Dorothy Littrell. Dorothy Littrell -- the member of a group? Take it from us, Boss Godfrey. Dorothy Littrell doesn't do groups.

In yet another morning story dealing with yet another Attorney General opinion, the Standard-Examiner reveals (surprise of surprises) that A.G. Shurtliff was also dead-wrong on the law regarding the legislature's two twin voucher bills:

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s voters will get to decide the fate of school vouchers, the state’s highest court decided Friday.

The court, in a 4-0 decision, said the November referendum language will not be changed and that the creation of a voucher program will depend entirely on the outcome of the vote.

Before the decision, confusion existed as to whether the referendum could really repeal the voucher program because the referendum addressed only one of two bills that created the program.

"Should (House Bill) 148 be rejected by the voters … (House Bill) 174 would be without meaning," Associate Chief Justice Michael J. Wilkins read from the court’s findings Friday before a large crowd at the Matheson Courthouse.

The referenced confusion, of course, resulted from an earlier Attorney General opinion, which said that the two bills were independant and free-standing. Yesterday's Supreme court decision pretty well makes mince-meat of our neoCON AG's reasoning and rationale re the voucher situation. We think one Utah Legislator/blogger hit the nail squarely on the head in his article of yesterday:

The biggest loser in this chapter seems to be Attorney General Mark Shurtleff whose legal analysis (and political instincts??) appears to have been dead wrong. I guess Carol Lear and Jean Hill got it right. Instead of trying to fire them maybe he should listen to them. Note to State Board of Education: Keep taking your counsel from your long-time attorneys and ignore the Big Bully. The Supremes have got their (and your) back. I have a hunch a majority of Utah voters will too.

Ah yes! a reference to the voters; an allusion to the ballot box. That reminds us that there's a municipal election in November.

Playing It Fast and Loose With Legal Definitions

Boss Godfrey henchman squirms at the prospect of refunding a $900 thousand state grant

By Curmudgeon

This morning's Standard Examiner bumps the $900K grant story to the first "Top of Utah" page, promoting it from the side bar of the previous day. And it's also on the free Std-Ex site.

As for the assumption made by some that Ogden will be found in violation and have to repay, the article says this: GOED spokesman Clark Caras told the Std-Ex the fact that the Governor's Office of Economic Development is looking into the matter "doesn't mean GOED suspects the grant funds have been handled improperly." "We haven't seen anything wrong," he said.

Further down, the story quotes Ogden's director of community and economic development, Dave Harmer. He is, he told the Examiner's Scott Schwebke, "confident that plans... to transform the complex into the North American headquarters for Amer Sports Corp. fulfills the intent of the grant."

"The original purpose of the grant," he told Schwebke, "was to help the city save a historic building ... for productive economic use." Harmer also said that "the definition of what constitutes a high-tech center is vague, adding that Amer, which uses cutting edge technology, enables the complex to meet the intent of the agreement."

I don't know if the city's use of the grant followed the terms of the grant or not. But I do know this: the kind of breezy sophistry Mr. Harmer peddled to the Std-Ex is exactly the kind of thing that undercuts public confidence in government --- all government --- and leads to the kind of democracy-crippling cynicism about government I see in students every day.

If Mr. Harmer's view is right, that "high tech center" doesn't really mean "high tech center," that the term is so vague that it can mean virtually anything... or nothing... that "hey, the building will have some machines in it, some of them new. Close enough" is a significant and truthful response to the questions raised, then we have to wonder what the point is of the Governor's Office of Economic Development granting money for any particular purpose at all. It might as well just hand bundles of cash over to cities, regardless of what the cities claim they will do with the money, and say "Here's the loot. Do whatever you like."

Of course, Mr. Harmer may not be entirely objective about all this, since he signed the grant approval when he was working as executive director of the state Department of Community and Economic Development.

Which leaves Harmer in the interesting position of arguing that that Harmer guy working for the state signed a grant so vague and full of terms so ill-defined, that that Harmer guy working as Ogden's director of economic and community development, can recommend the City's doing pretty much anything with the building the grant helped pay for, so long as it has some new machines in it someplace.

Becoming clearer by the day why Mayor Godfrey thought Mr. Harmer would be a good fit for his administrative team.

And in Mayor Godfrey's Ogden City, the beat goes on....