When Leonard Blackham left the Legislature in 2004, he still had thousands of dollars left in his campaign account from more than a decade of fundraising.

For the past five years, the former senator and current Agriculture Commissioner, has donated the money to 4-H shows and political campaigns, but he never reported a dime of that expenditure to the Lieutenant Governor's Office as required by state law.

"I guess I've been delinquent for the past three or four years."

The same could be said of the Lieutenant Governor's Office, which is charged with reviewing all disclosures and making sure the proper ones are filed.

A Tribune analysis of the lieutenant governor's disclosure Web site found more than 160 former officeholders and candidates with a total of more than $1.5 million left in their accounts. Although, this year, the Legislature passed -- and the governor signed -- SB162, which stops candidates from using campaign finances for personal gain, that law doesn't apply to those who ran for office before the law took effect.

Some of the biggest, such as former House Speaker Greg Curtis with nearly $400,000 left, and former House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander with $60,000, have kept current. Others, though, had some funds left - for example, former Senate President Al Mansell still had a reported $45,000.

And the Lieutenant Governor's Office, which oversees state elections disclosures, won't do anything until it receives a complaint.

"We work in sort of this limbo of being a warehouse of information and spending staff time investigating, which we have no authority to enforce," said Joe Demma, the lieutenant governor's chief of staff. "It's an example in how we have very little authority to compel anybody to do anything."

State law directs the Lt. Governor's Office to ensure each former officeholder or candidate has filed required reports. If they haven't, the office is required to notify the violator and if the proper report isn't made within 14 days, the offense, a Class B misdemeanor, is to be referred to the Attorney General's Office.

Assistant Attorney General Thom Roberts said he can't recall any prosecutions for failure to file a disclosure in the eight years or so he has been working in the elections area.

In Utah, where former candidates have had no restrictions on what they can do with their leftover money, accountability is a big issue.

"When you're able to take personal advantage of that money, there's a financial influence there, and we're always concerned about adverse financial influences and how they affect the legislative agenda," said Anthony Musci, former chairman of watchdog group Common Cause of Utah. "At the very least, disclosure allows us to track the money to better understand potential conflicts of interest."

Demma hopes public attention will get former candidates to file.

"In cases where this nonreporting does occur, when they see their names in the paper, they'll figure out how to start reporting," Demma said.

Patrice Arent, who retired after 10 years at the Legislature, said she immediately called the Lieutenant Governor's Office after The Tribune inquired about the tens of thousands of dollars left in her account.

Arent forgot to file her 2008 report. She says she has about $17,000 left in her account, but because of errors both on her part and the Lieutenant Governor's Office, the state Web site showed twice that much.

She has donated money to political and charitable causes, and has reported since leaving office. But, staff members at the Lieutenant Governor's Office told her there were issues with staff entering wrong information into her file.

"It's going to be a huge amount of paperwork to figure all this out," Arent said. "I'm not real thrilled that they're not confident that their records are completely accurate."

Data entry errors "happen in all different arenas" from the candidate to office staff, Demma said.

Moreover, the system -- which predates Herbert's tenure -- isn't equipped to track former officeholders.

Similar issues have plagued the system since its inception.

The Lieutenant Governor's disclosure Web site lists former Gov. Mike Leavitt as having $38,000 left in his campaign account, but former staff members say the account was empty after Leavitt won his re-election in 2000. On Thursday, Leavitt's former staff again faxed in a report that was time stamped from August 2001 -- when Leavitt was the sitting governor-- that zeroed out Leavitt's account.

"It's hard to say this is only a Gary Herbert issue," Demma said.

However, it's something that takes a back seat to the other duties carried out by the Lieutenant Governor's Office. Only one of the office's nine staff members looks into candidates who had reports from before 2005, when Herbert took office.

"When we have a reporting deadline, it's all hands on deck, but the day-to-day is just one person," Demma said.

That person is Mark Thomas, office administrator for the lieutenant governor.

The other eight do a range of duties, from speech writing and scheduling the lieutenant governor to authenticating nearly 17,000 documents a year, Demma said.

That's in comparison with North Carolina, which recently was named the best elections office in the country. It has 13 people dedicated solely to campaign finance, and have five full-time auditors checking on campaign accounts.

In Utah, Thomas is the sole person in charge of juggling several duties, from entering data on disclosure deadlines to overseeing the state's notaries. When he gets a free moment from those duties, he digs into old campaign accounts for candidates, corporations, political action and issues committees.

"I couldn't venture a guess on how much time I spend doing it, but it's not much," he said, though interns do help dig into past reports when they have nothing more pressing to do.

He has also worked to improve the disclosure Web site, which some advocates view as an important duty of the office.

"I hope they can set up the system to make it a little bit easier so that the candidates don't forget and that the public can have access to those reports," said Sandy Peck, of the Utah League of Women Voters. "Voters really appreciate having that information."

When Thomas does have a free moment, he takes action.

"When I find out about an account in 2000, it drives me crazy. I wonder why this guy didn't file and tell me what he did with the money, and I wonder why we didn't we find it and get to it," Thomas said. "That's our job, but it's a matter of not having enough time."

smcfarland@sltrib.com

This is a corrected version of the March 29 article. Based on a Lt. Governor's Office report, the story stated former House Speaker Marty Stephens' campaign account had $24,000 left in it. Stephens actually had properly closed the account in 2005 after spending the money on his gubernatorial campaign.