RadioWest Transcript: September 26, 2000
By Bryan Schott

When voters go to the polls in November, they will be deciding who will fill the positions in a brand new county government. The highest profile job at stake will be the Salt Lake County Mayor. Although the office is called "Mayor," just what that person will do isn't exactly clear right now.

Reporter: Didn’t we just go through this? Is Rocky’s term up already? If you live in Salt Lake City, or Murray or Holladay, you might be asking yourself this very question. You just elected a mayor last year, and now you’re electing another one, a county mayor. Taking the place of the three-member, full-time county commission is a part-time council of nine and one full time mayor.

Wilson: Now you have one person who will have the vision of the county, an important budgetary position, to set a county budget, to articulate programs and ideas to the county council for adoption, to solve county-wide problems.

Ted Wilson is a former mayor of Salt Lake City and now the director of the Hinckley Institute for Politics at the University of Utah. He points out that the first Salt Lake County mayor has no history to fall back on to define the office:

Wilson: You have an opportunity for someone to really take hold and become a strong countywide leader. So I think there is an opportunity there for a powerful mayor.

But if the winner of the new office has visions of becoming a sort of mayor king, she is sorely mistaken. One function of the office will be a negotiator. Picture the different levels of government as layers in a cake. There are layers of individual cities with a county layer on top. But that doesn’t mean the cities are subservient to the county. They compliment each other, much like different flavors of cake compliment the whole. Finding a way to work with 13 individual cities is going to be important for the new mayor, says Matthew Burbank, political science professor at the University of Utah:

Burbank: As long as the county mayor approaches this in a way that says, I’m an elected official and there are a number of other important elected officials out there, we need to coordinate our efforts, then I think that there is some potential for making progress. There’s always the potential for problems, however, because each of these elected officials feels like they have certain vested interests and there are things that they need to protect and need to promote. It may not all be smooth sailing. We have to see, for example, how well the mayor of Salt Lake City and the mayor of Salt Lake County work, or how the mayor of Sandy and the Salt Lake County mayor work. Those questions remain to be resolved.

For example, as a negotiator, the new Salt Lake County Mayor might help cities come up with a unified plan to deal with light rail :

(Natural Sound - Train leaving)

Salt Lake County voters will decide whether to increase the sales tax that goes to the Utah Transit Authority. If approved, UTA will use the money for commuter rail and light rail expansion. If the tax passes, UTA has proposed new light rail extensions into Draper, South Jordan and Sugarhouse. But the cities will have some say on where those extensions will go. Again, Matthew Burbank: Burbank: How do we coordinate what South Jordan would like with what Sandy would like with what Salt Lake City would like? Because clearly for commuters, they don’t really care, (laughing) you know, about what city they are in as they’re passing through, what they want to know is how quickly can I get there? That’s the kind of thing which again really requires some coordinated effort. We probably have not seen the kind of coordination between the cities that we would need to have a real coherent transportation plan. That’s the kind of item the county mayor is going to have to deal with.

A second function of the Salt Lake County Mayor is that of administrator. Salt Lake County Government provides important services to all residents - no matter what city they’re in. Services from the county include the health department or the clerk and the recorder.

(Natural Sound - Fire engine interior)

The new mayor also oversees contracted services to cities. Salt Lake County is forming a fire district, and will provide fire and paramedic services for Taylorsville, Herriman, Holladay, Draper and Riverton, as well as the unincorporated areas. Finally the new mayor must decide whether Salt Lake County will extend and become wall to wall cities or not. Just a few years ago, unincorporated areas in the county totaled about 40 percent of the lands, but with annexation and incorporation, that shrunk to about 20 percent. For the most part, what’s left are areas that are unattractive to cities because they don’t provide tax revenue. There are about 60 “islands” and peninsulas of unincorporated area that the county provides services for. Again, Ted Wilson:

Wilson: We’re talking about emigration canyon with no commercial base, we’re talking parts of the valley with no commercial base. And so, how does the new mayor deal with that? Is the new mayor going to support annexation and incorporation of the remaining parts and we have wall-to-wall city? Or is the mayor going to go in and defend vigorously this sort of protected zone called the unincorporated county. So that’s going to be a very, very vigorous part of this job, is trying to figure out what to do with the remaining chunks of unincorporated county.

A third function of the job is a leader. The Salt Lake County mayor will have 180,000 constituents and an annual budget over 500 million dollars - second largest in the state. That makes the office extremely powerful politically. The Salt Lake County Mayor will have charge of a budget and population that’s second only to the Governor’s, so the job could be a bully pulpit for whoever wins. Again, Ted Wilson:

Wilson: In terms of direct legislative power, it’s probably not as expansive job as it seems on the surface. If this new county mayor sees the job to reach out and say I’m the king pin, the perception of power alone is enough to make this a very powerful individual.

And if the new mayor fully utilizes that perception of power, she could take the lead in charting Salt Lake County’s future. How do the individual cities address problems like affordable housing, development and open space? The new mayor, if she chooses to, could take the mantle of leadership on these issues.

But, is it more important for the new mayor to have a vision for what the county should be and what direction it should take, or should she work as a mediator, helping the disparate parts of Salt Lake County unify their vision and plans for the future? Matthew Burbank says no one can be sure until the new mayor takes office:

Burbank: Based upon the fact that, again, we do have a number of cities, my sense would be that it would be more important for somebody to be able to bring people together and try to help them articulate common interests and a common vision than it would be to try to say here’s my vision for what Salt lake County ought to look like, because it doesn’t look like county government is going to be in a position to put that into practice. On the other hand, more than you saw under the county commission system, there is the potential for a single leader to be a stronger political. There’s something about being able to focus on that single person that I think is useful in terms of leadership.

Executive, negotiator and leader - these are the three roles the new office could be. If you listen to the candidates, each would choose to emphasize a different role. And voters have a unique opportunity this November to not only decide who gets the job of Salt Lake County Mayor, but also what kind of job the office will be.

I’m Bryan Schott, KUER News.

To hear this news story, listen to this short Quicktime audio clip. Listen to this news story by downloading a free version of Quicktime.