It's a recipe for financial ruin in any business. For Salt Lake County government, that unholy triumvirate translates into an estimate of millions lost in tax money.

Every year.

Costlier than cars and worse than timecards, shoddy financial controls even make losses in tuition payments look like "a pittance," according to the Mayor's Office.

So despite the latest string of scandals, the new administration calls corralling waste its No. 1 priority.

"The red flag has gone up," says Linda Hamilton, Mayor Peter Corroon's chief financial officer, who noticed the problems "from the time we walked in the door."

"It's overwhelming."

How could such sloppiness permeate the $750 million budget, the second-largest behind the state's?

One department is centralized, the other two fractured. Finance positions are "grossly" underfunded and understaffed. Procedures - though rarely followed - date back to the now-defunct commission form of government. And the county's general-ledger computer system is a dinosaur.

Blame also falls on the county's booming service industry, where employees may be more concerned about starting a swim class on time than collecting cash. That's also true at golf courses, rec centers and other facilities where staffers are trained in services, not finance.

"The sophistication of county operations due to rapid growth has outstripped the ability to manage it," explains internal audit director Jim Wightman, who also fingers lax attitudes by division directors and outdated policies.

But it's more than just the system failing the people:

l Employees in the field don't submit bills on time.

l Managers fail to initial bank deposits or verify void slips.

l Divisions concentrate on programming, but ignore cash handling.

l Staffers have access to money and accounting records at the same time - violating a standard financial control.

The mayor's office says it may take a year to update antiquated accounting procedures and train personnel to clean up the mess. But expect to see crackdowns right away on employee meal reimbursements, travel, credit cards and petty-cash payouts.

Doug Willmore, Corroon's chief administrative officer, has worked with or consulted nearly 100 organizations, including some in the nation's capital. Outside the Beltway, he says, Salt Lake County's money management is the "worst I've ever seen."

"What you've got are outdated financial processes and controls, up to 20 years old, that need to be changed," he said.

The money at stake is significant. Standard business models calculate that fraud, waste and abuse can siphon 10 percent from any big budget. That equates to $75 million at the county. Whittle the amount to just 1 percent, Wightman notes, and the figure still sits at a staggering $7.5 million.

"We find problem transactions all the time and stop them from going through," notes new auditor Sean Thomas. "Standards the public expects us to have [should be] higher at the county than what exists in the private sector."

Yet, until now, officials were not forced to report to a chief financial officer such as Hamilton.

She shakes her head, for instance, when identifying $30,000 a year squandered in contracts that fail to claim county discounts.

"There's a whole bunch of little things like that that we are uncovering," Hamilton says. "We haven't had the right number of people and the right kind of people handling the county's finances."

Corroon compares the scenario to a dollar bill sitting out in the open. "If you don't have the controls in place to protect that, sooner or later it's going to get abused," the mayor says.

The depth and breadth of the county's slipshod accounting caught the attention of new Councilwoman Jenny Wilson, who has called for an independent auditor to examine the county's books.

Wilson says she was told soon after taking office in January that certain departments and divisions were off-limits to review.

"We're now saying: This is a new culture and a new system of operating," she says.

Old equipment is another culprit.

Steve Spencer, the auditor's director of accounting, says auditors have known for more than six years that upgrading the county's character-based computer system to a Web-based model was possible.

"We've been recommending it for years," says Spencer, who laments the $1.6 million computer overhaul repeatedly was denied by former County Mayor Nancy Workman and her then-chief administrative officer David Marshall.

The new administration is considering the move.

But software is just one element in a fiscal overhaul Willmore calls the "most important thing we're doing."

Wightman agrees.

"It's a bit of a paradigm shift," he says, "a culture change - taking care of business every day."

Key steps

To clean up Salt Lake County's financial house, the new administration has:

* Launched an accounts- payable recovery audit, the first in more than five years.

* Added three high-level fiscal analysts to train, audit and improve financial controls across the county's three departments.

* Required every financial administrator to report to the chief financial officer.

* Committed to overhauling the county's antiquated general-ledger computer system.

* Designed a new tracking system to verify whether recommendations from past audits have been implemented.