It’s interesting where a reputation for integrity, or the lack thereof, will take you. On one hand, we have watched the rise and fall of John Swallow, for a short time Utah’s Attorney General. On the other, we have seen the sacrifice and continued prosperity of Greg Bell, until recently Lieutenant Governor of Utah.
Last year, Utah watched in morbid fascination as John Swallow, one of the best funded candidates for Attorney General in recent memory, fell to disgrace and infamy, resigning before even completing a year in office. Many long time watchers, including this writer, were unsurprised. Whether accusations by accused flimflammers, Lieutenant Governor findings, or filth of campaign corruption exposed by the House investigation committee, the allegations that brought Swallow down were credible.
And that doesn’t even include what the District Attorneys Troy Rawlings (Davis County) and Sim Gill (Salt Lake County), who have deputized each other to allow each to assist in the other’s investigation, have found. Gill told the Salt Lake Tribune that his investigation is only half complete. With his reelection set for November of this year, it’s unlikely we’ll see him pass out indictments until November.
That’s where a reputation for a lack of integrity, a reputation that has followed Swallow since his first campaigns for the Utah House and the United States Congress, will lead you. (If you want to learn more about Swallow’s checkered past bending the rules to win an election, check out these stories, including FEC investigations and a strange one about him “cleaning off” an opponent’s sign).
How about the opposite case? What about someone who does have a reputation for integrity?
Let’s take Greg Bell, former Lieutenant Governor, who also in the last year came under investigation for alleged impropriety. Bell was accused of misusing state resources to conduct an internal audit of a Division of Child and Family Services case relating to a family friend. Immediately, and in stark contrast to the Swallow case, people in and out of government came to Bell’s aid, vouching for his integrity and contrasting his behavior with the Swallow scandal.
It was no surprise, then, when the Davis County Attorney’s investigation cleared Bell of any wrong doing.
The story does not end there. Leaving government shortly after to pursue work in the private sector (government service had, again in contrast to Swallow, cost Bell more than it profited), Bell has, as of January 1, 2014, been appointed to lead Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR), bring with him his reputation for integrity to the organization. An audit recently found that USTAR, on on hand hailed as a way to bring innovation to Utah and on the other decried as a “glitzy way to fund University of Utah and Utah State University research” (by Senate President Wayne Niederhauser), had inflated the number of jobs it had created.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune the audit (find it here) found that:
[…]the organization said it had created 3,380 jobs, but about 60 percent of those no longer existed — they were construction gigs at already-completed research facilities. The number of research-based positions, meanwhile, was based on projections rather than actual jobs and auditors could confirm only a fraction of those had actually been created and filled.
The organization also claimed to bring in $463 million in contracts, sponsored research and private donations. But more than half that money, about $268 million, was either over-reported, hardly involved USTAR or represented contracts that hadn’t yet paid out.
Emphasis added.
While no one seems to see any malfeasance or intentional dishonesty involved, the appointment by Governor Gary Herbert of his former Lieutenant Governor sends a message about the importance he puts on transparency and careful management of state resources. Bell, with his reputation for integrity and government service, will be a steady and trustworthy hand on the wheel as USTAR works to produce the results that it has claimed and that Utah deserves for its resources.
What can we say about Swallow? His story isn’t closed, yet. Unfortunately, for his family at least, it’s not likely to end well.
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The $130 Million USTAR facility at the U for microbiology should have been $15 Million to $30 Million less, without loosing any size or quality. They hired an outside the state design firm to create the reinforced concrete moment-frame structure. Changing that system and the window system would have saved $15 Million or more. The USTAR building was to attract the best. I look forward to what Greg Bell will do to USTAR.
I do, as well. I have enormous respect for Bell, and I hope he succeeds here.