Almost 30 years ago, Utah's brand new Legislative Auditor General's Office hired a young accountant to help conduct management audits on state agencies.
That accountant, Wayne Welsh, will retire this week after spending 20 of those years as head of the office, overseeing hundreds of audits that have saved taxpayers an estimated $165 million.
Under Welsh's leadership, the office has been praised for providing one of the most important functions in state government. But it took time for the office, which reports to lawmakers, to be accepted.
"There were some times that agencies didn't know who we were, didn't know what our authority was, didn't know what the impact of our reports would be," Welsh said of the early days. "Of course, they feared the worst."
The office was seen, he said, as "doing the Legislature's bidding, basically, trying to follow their agenda. It took a few years to establish a reputation of being independent and unbiased, and reporting what we found, not reporting necessarily what people thought we should find."
That started to change in 1976, Welsh said, when the office was asked to take a closer look at a request from the Utah State Hospital for money for new facilities. The audit found problems at the Provo facility for the mentally ill, including a supply of spoiled food.
"I think it was a watershed audit," Welsh said. "We were really pleased with what happened after we completed the audit, and that was that the state hospital did implement some better management practices in those areas we looked at."
Not every audit has been received so well. Welsh and his 25-member staff only make recommendations to lawmakers, and those recommendations aren't always accepted. That can be frustrating, he acknowledged.
Take the audit done in 1989 on the Utah Sports Foundation, a private organization with a state contract to promote amateur sports competitions. The foundation had started as a state entity created to help boost Salt Lake City's Olympic bid.
Welsh's office determined that foundation officials, including Dave Johnson, were double-billing for expenses. Conflicts of interest were also cited, as was the size of the pay raise Johnson received after the foundation was privatized.
Johnson went on to serve as vice president of both the Olympic bid effort and, later, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee before he was forced to resign at the height of the bid bribery scandal — 10 years after the audit.
Both Johnson and Tom Welch, his boss at the bid and organizing committees, faced criminal charges in connection with the more than $1 million spent to influence members of the International Olympic Committee. The two men eventually were acquitted.
Welsh was asked often during the scandal about the audit and whether more decisive action taken a decade earlier could have saved Salt Lake City from the shame associated with the bribery allegations.
Although some state officials say privately the scandal may well have been prevented, Welsh disagrees. Still, he takes some satisfaction in the fact that the scandal showed there were problems that should have been dealt with years earlier.
"I don't want to say I told you so," he said. "I guess it is a little bit of vindication. . . . We felt a little bit ignored. We felt like more needed to have been done. It was a policy decision by the Legislature, and they saw the Olympic bid more as a private sector endeavor."
It's not going to be easy for Welsh to walk away from a place where he spent nearly three decades. But at 59, he's ready to spend more time with his family, including his four grandchildren.
"I'm leaving with mixed feelings. I've enjoyed the work," he said. "It's been very rewarding and satisfying to see how much change occurred in government in the last 30 years. But I'm not the only one who can do this job."
Deputy Auditor General John Schaff, whose experience includes a stint at the federal General Accounting Office, will take over the office while a national search is conducted to find a permanent replacement for Welsh.
Legislative leaders say Welsh will be missed.
"Wayne has done an excellent job managing one of the most important functions in state government," House Speaker Marty Stephens, R-Farr West, said. "His office has a statewide reputation for being thorough and fearless."
Welsh said he never considered doing anything else once he joined the Auditor General's Office. Through his job, he was able to see, up close, the challenges faced by other government agencies.
"I thought, 'Boy, I'm glad I'm not in their shoes,' " Welsh said. "I just have to sit back here and play armchair quarterback and not be responsible for implementing anything."
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