This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Salt Lake County may slash or completely eliminate its contribution to the Economic Development Corporation of Utah as the county — the largest dues-paying member in EDCUtah — looks to do more business recruitment and development on its own.

Carlton Christensen, the director of regional development for Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, presented a budget to the County Council on Tuesday that would have slashed the county's $250,000 contribution to EDCUtah to $50,000.

But the council may throw McAdams a curve as it took a preliminary vote Tuesday to eliminate the county's participation in EDCUtah entirely.

"The mayor felt like we should stay engaged with them at some level," Christensen said in an interview. "That could always change. It wasn't what the mayor proposed."

Earlier this year, West Valley City, another one of the top EDCUtah contributors, dropped out of the organization entirely, opting to redirect its $150,000 in annual dues toward handling economic development and business recruitment on its own.

The two entities accounted for about 10 percent of EDCUtah's total annual budget. EDCUtah director of marketing, Michael Flynn, did not return a message seeking comment after the county council's vote Tuesday.

Christensen said that McAdams proposed the $200,000 reduction to give a break to previously unincorporated areas of the county facing the costs of forming new cities, to put additional money to economic development along the Mountain View Corridor, and to focus on business development at the county level.

"We're shifting our focus and our economic development," Christensen said. "We'll still work with cities when they have tax-increment [incentive] requests, but we're shifting our focus to a global-export strategy and primarily trying to assist small- to medium-sized businesses to position themselves so they look at that as an economic development direction."

The county and EDCUtah haven't seen eye-to-eye recently, most notably when McAdams and the council fought an effort by West Jordan, EDCUtah and the Governors Office of Economic Development (GOED) to lure a massive Facebook data center to West Jordan with hundreds of millions in tax breaks — a move that McAdams and the council said would produce little economic benefit for the cost.

At the same time, EDCUtah has been the focal point of heightened scrutiny, after it was discovered that the quasi-governmental business recruiter, funded largely by taxpayers, failed to file its tax returns for five consecutive years, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to revoke EDCUtah's nonprofit status for two years before the oversight was discovered.

A recent report by the legislative auditor general also found shoddy record-keeping and frivolous personal charges by a former EDCUtah chief operating officer, Todd Brightwell.

Auditors identified $5,788 in potentially fraudulent charges by EDCUtah's former chief operating officer and about $45,000 that didn't have a receipt or business purpose. Brightwell left the organization with a generous severance package.

The audit also questioned whether EDCUtah violated the state's gift ban by purchasing meals for GOED employees during a period when the later agency decided to significantly increase its state contract with EDCUtah.

EDCUtah filed its late tax returns earlier this year and had its non-profit status re-instated. The organization's CEO, Jeff Edwards, said last month that reforms have been implemented — like hiring a new financial officer and creating an oversight board — and that he was retiring from his position.

EDCUtah has an operating budget of about $3.2 million, with most of it coming from state and municipal taxpayers.

Last month, EDCUtah touted its successes in its annual report, saying companies it had recruited had committed to creating more than 13,000 jobs and investing close to $1 billion in capital in the state.

Twitter: @RobertGehrke