Casaday was Dolan's deputy mayor for eight years before he was called last June as an LDS Church mission president in Argentina. He returned home due to a family medical emergency to no job and no insurance.

So Dolan and the Sandy City Council approved a new position for Casaday, who will be one of the city's highest-paid employees at $43.27 an hour ($90,000 a year) plus benefits.

City spokesman Ryan Mecham says Casaday's responsibilities will include property acquisition and disposal management, public safety interlocal agreements and grant acquisition.

Meanwhile, the city still must hire a new prosecuting attorney to replace a veteran female attorney who was paid $20 a hour and quit after her request for benefits was turned down because the money wasn't budgeted.

Employees say several departments "were leaned on" to cough up the money needed to hire Casaday, whose brother Kelly has worked on Dolan's campaigns.

Here's an irony: When Democratic Salt Lake County Commissioners Randy Horiuchi and Jim Bradley were elected in 1990, they felt that they were stuck with dozens of division directors and assistants in their assigned departments who were loyal to the Republican Party, which had controlled the commission for a decade.

County ordinances restricted the commissioners to just three political appointments - an administrative assistant, executive secretary and one department head. They lobbied for a change so they could hire more of their own people, but that effort was criticized by Mike Stewart, the one remaining Republican commissioner. He said the Democrats were trying to create a "Tammany Hall."

Then, when Republican Nancy Workman was elected county mayor under the new mayor-council form of government, she created 23 new positions exempt from merit system rules so she could surround herself with her own handpicked cronies. No Republicans complained of "Tammany Hall." But they might if Democrat Peter Corroon becomes mayor and gets to fill those slots with his own appointees.

Telemarketer training needed? When Amy Nielsen was called by a Ballet West solicitor in July and agreed to buy season tickets, she told the caller she was in a wheelchair because her right leg had been shattered in an automobile accident.

Nielsen asked about special accommodations and was told it would cost an additional $100 for handicapped seating. So she purchased regular seats in the balcony.

At the first performance Oct. 2, she found she could not hop up the steep steps, so she ended up scooting on her rear end, in a dress, up 13 steps. "It was embarrassing," she said, adding that no usher offered to help.

Mary Ann Cowan, Salt Lake County's Americans with Disabilities coordinator, said the Ballet West solicitor should have offered special accommodations at no extra cost. Cowan says Nielsen will be able to view the remaining performances from the main floor in her wheelchair.

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Paul Rolly and JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells welcome e-mail at rolly_wells@sltrib.com.