The Utah public secured a victory last Thursday when a Utah judge decided to keep court proceedings surrounding the guardianship of former Salt Lake County Recorder Gary Ott open. Information gleaned from last week’s hearing proves how important that transparency was.
Ott’s family, who now has guardianship over Ott’s medical and financial matters, settled with the county in July, and county Republicans have elected an interim recorder. Last week’s hearing was held to settle the matter of guardianship, after Karmen Sanone claimed that Ott had designated her as guardian prior to his incapacity.
In fact, it turns out that a doctor diagnosed Ott with dementia more than a year before he ran for re-election as county recorder. Or, more than a year before Julie Dole and Sanone, former chief deputy recorder and personal assistant (and former fiancée), respectively, ran his campaign for re-election. If it weren’t so real, this Weekend at Bernie’s scenario would be laughable. But it’s not.
Ott now has stage four Alzheimer’s disease. During the hearing last week, Ott’s family’s attorney laid out a “timeline of events during which physicians, employees and friends say they witnessed a clear decline in Ott’s ability to hold conversations and conduct business.” A clear decline.
But we already knew that, from his absence at campaign events, to his absence at the office and his failure to respond coherently in front of the county council. His former chief deputy, before Dole, testified at the hearing that by late 2013, “He would sign whatever you told him to sign.”
The information we now have about Ott’s diagnosis illuminates the state auditor’s report, which concluded that Ott hadn’t conducted any financial oversight of the office in years. Instead, Dole and Sanone ran the office, lobbied the Legislature on behalf of the office and coordinated Ott’s public persona.
The Salt Lake County Republican Party has already investigated Dole for her role in possibly covering up Ott’s mental decline.
On a personal level, it seems clear that the sad case of Gary Ott calls for an investigation by police or Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill. Ott earned a paycheck, but no one paid his mortgage or utility bills. Where did the money go? And if Ott was mentally incapable, who was running the office, and why didn’t they disclose that he was mentally incapable?
And from a public policy standpoint, the story we now know is a convincing argument that such functionaries as the county recorder, county surveyor and county treasurer should not be elected officials. When those officers are beholden only to the voters, and the vast majority of voters have utterly no idea who they are or what they are doing, slow-motion disasters such as this are much more likely to happen.
They should work for the county mayor, who would then be accountable for any such shortcomings in performance or abilities.