Mark Walsh, the UAC's associate director, stepped down Friday after the often secretive, taxpayer-funded organization held its annual convention in St. George.

Piute County Commissioner Kay Blackwell - a three-year UAC board member - confirmed reports from Salt Lake County officials that the move followed a two-year probe into financial practices by the UAC's executive committee.

"He was cashing out unearned vacation and sick time," Blackwell said. "They know it's been going on at least that long."

Contacted on Wednesday, Walsh acknowledged he had check-writing authority but adamantly denied violating UAC policy. He said every check required two signatures - his and Executive Director Brent Gardner's.

"There was never any check ever written to me for any amount that I wasn't due or owed," he told The Tribune. "My leaving has been by mutual agreement. . . . It was a power struggle between me and Brent, and I lost."

Lamar Guymon, Emery County sheriff and the UAC's immediate past president, declined to comment about employee matters but said questions about a financial review "are on the right track."

Walsh has hired an attorney for what he characterized as protection during severance negotiations.

Gardner acknowledged that Walsh's departure was mutual, but referred all other questions to Hal Reiser, an attorney retained by the UAC for the Walsh matter. Reiser declined comment on "private employment matters."

News of the departure garnered sharp reaction.

"It's about time," crowed Heidi McIntosh, a Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney. "He's a real bomb-thrower."

During most of his 26 years at the UAC, which advocates counties' issues, Walsh carried the flag for rural Utah counties' battles against environmental groups, such as SUWA, and against federal land-management agencies, which control most of the land in Utah.

He was the driving force behind SUWA-WATCH, a UAC-sponsored campaign launched in 1997 to counter "misinformation" spread by the 24,000-member environmental group. Walsh remains a staunch critic of President Clinton's creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.

Salt Lake County Councilman Joe Hatch says Walsh was often antagonistic.

"He seemed to be a lightning rod between the rural counties and the urban counties," Hatch said. "I wonder if [alleged financial transgressions] was an excuse to pull the trigger, so to speak."

Even Gary Herbert, outgoing Utah County commissioner and now the lieutenant governor-elect, suggested "little things were starting to irritate people."

"There might be many arrows in the quiver," he said.

But Carol Page, a 12-year Davis County commissioner who has dealt with Walsh much of that time, says they had a good working relationship.

"I'm disappointed to see him go," she said. "It's hard to replace that knowledge, especially in rural Utah."

Walsh acknowledges conflict "for several years" between him and Executive Director Gardner, and says a severance negotiation was broached as early as last summer.

Yet he insists "it was just time to move on."

"The bottom line is, there hasn't been an investigation," he said. "There is a policy that allows the employees to treat their unused sick leave and vacation in a fashion that they determine."

djensen@sltrib.com