This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake County's Democratic Party is taking its fight for tougher enforcement of Utah's campaign-finance laws to court.
Unable to get the Utah Attorney General's Office to respond to its complaint that the lieutenant governor has done too little to get county political parties to disclose their financial dealings, the Democrats filed a petition Thursday urging the Utah Supreme Court to intervene.
"What do we have to do to bring their attention to the fact that we have a massive loophole in the law that hasn't been filled for years?" Party Chairman Weston Clark asked. "It just floors me that the Salt Lake County Democratic Party is having to tell the Lieutenant Governor's Office that this is how they do their jobs."
"I don't think it is a loophole," countered Mark Thomas, elections director for the lieutenant governor, who said the law does not specifically require county parties to file disclosures. "We go off the definitions [in the statute], and the definitions are there for a reason."
The push toward increased transparency comes after a Salt Lake Tribune analysis found that most county political parties — Republican and Democratic — failed to file financial disclosures by Aug. 31, the latest reporting deadline.
That examination found that 41 of the state's 58 major county political parties hadn't submitted their papers despite statements on the lieutenant governor's website that "all state and county political parties must file ... regardless of whether money is received or spent."
Many of those parties had missed repeated deadlines.
The Lieutenant Governor's Office has taken no action against those delinquents. Why? Because the state's financial-disclosure laws, according to Thomas, remain too ambiguous to enforce when it comes to county political parties. Until legislators clarify the law — Thomas now is pushing for a legislative fix — questions will persist about whether county parties must report their campaign cash.
"We would all like to get it better clarified," Thomas said.
But Salt Lake County Democrats insist the Lieutenant Governor's Office should do what its website suggests: Require county political parties to file.
Although parties raise relatively little money in some counties, the sums can be significant in larger ones such as Salt Lake. Republicans have raised $223,000 during 2010, compared with the Democrats' $84,000.
Last month, Salt Lake County Democrats urged the Utah Attorney General's Office to intervene, saying the lack of enforcement "creates an unfair advantage in favor of noncompliant parties."
They received no response.
"We didn't take action back then," said Paul Murphy, spokesman for the Attorney General's Office, "because campaign finance is regulated by the Lieutenant Governor's Office."
Questions, he added, should directed to that office — and they were.
The Democratic Party complained first to the Lieutenant Governor's Office. Only after that office responded — unsatisfactorily, in the party's view — did Democrats appeal to the attorney general for help. Now, Democrats are taking the issue to court.
"The lieutenant governor," the party alleges in its legal filing, "has failed to do what the statute requires."
By the numbers
71 • Percentage of major county political parties that didn't file financial disclosures due Aug. 31.
29 • Percentage of parties that did file.
22 • County Democratic parties (out of 29) that missed the filing deadline.
19 • County Republican parties (out of 29) that didn't disclose their finances.
Source: Salt Lake Tribune research