As a past employee of nearly nine years in the Utah Attorney General's Office, I witnessed Attorney General Jan Graham spend big money on various pet social causes that are not in her job description.
The Utah constitution says the attorney general is the state's chief legal officer, not chief social worker. Graham's spending patterns robbed the office of an effective merit salary system. Expert and experienced attorneys have left in large numbers. Office morale is low.
State agencies are unhappy with the attorney general's service; more and more are quietly hiring their own in-house attorneys. A lot of these hires violate the state Constitution and laws that require the attorney general to provide the legal services.
Until this serious separation-of-powers problem is addressed, tax revenues will support two armies of attorneys: the demoralized and underpaid assistant attorneys general on the one hand, and the ever-growing legion of extra-constitutional agency attorneys on the other, both duplicating much of the other's work while taxpayers pay through the nose.
Democratic attorney general candidate Reed Richards is right in the middle of these problems. He's been Jan Graham's man in charge of carrying out all her social projects, and he'll just keep it up if elected. Richards refuses to admit the growing in-house agency attorney problem or that it stems from the failure to meet the agencies' legal needs.
Mark Shurtleff, Republican candidate for attorney general, wants to turn the pet social projects over to the social service agencies where they belong, get back to providing good, timely, quality legal service to the state agencies and face the problem of in-house staff attorneys.
That's why I support Mark Shurtleff for attorney general.
J. Mark Ward
South Jordan