In the five years since Mayor Rocky Anderson was elected, the Salt Lake City Council has paid more than $77,000 to hire consultants for a variety of controversial issues that have hit Utah's capital.
That money was often spent getting second opinions on issues that Anderson was pushing at City Hall. But a Deseret Morning News review of consultant spending — information obtained through a Government Records Access and Management Act request — showed the legislative body has often disregarded the opinions of their consultants or ended up conceding to Anderson's position anyway.
Council members defend the expenditures as legitimate, saying they needed more input before arriving at a final conclusion and required fresh looks at complex issues.
"It's the necessary cost of having dual branches of government," Councilman Carlton Christensen said.
City staffers ultimately have to answer to the mayor, so if Anderson has a strong opinion on an issue it may be difficult for city staffers to give the council unbiased information, thus the need for independent consultants, Christensen said.
In many cases the outside information has helped council members shape their decisions even if they didn't follow the advice of those consultants, council members say.
"It's OK to look outside for advice," Councilwoman Jill Remington Love said. "We've faced a lot of complicated issues in our downtown over the past few years."
And in other cases the council has taken the advice of outside consultants, as it did in amending the city's walkable communities ordinance and the establishment of its open-space fund.
Still, there are some cases in which the council has seemed to ignore its consultants despite paying hefty sums for the advice.
Take five years ago when Salt Lake City was divided about whether it would approve the construction of a sprawling grand mall on its far western borders.
After Anderson vehemently opposed the project, the City Council paid a consultant $6,200 to study the issue. The consultant came back with a finding that the council could approve the mall without causing a detrimental effect on downtown retail.
A few weeks later, however, enough council members went against the consultant's advice to kill the mall deal.
Two years later, during the contentious Main Street Plaza fray, the council spent $23,100 on legal fees researching, among other things, whether it could usurp plaza decisionmaking from Anderson.
In the end, though, the council backed Anderson's solution to the plaza mess.
The next year, as Anderson urged the council to allow Nordstrom to move to The Gateway, the council paid $20,000 for outside consultants to advise them. Those consultants said Anderson was right and Nordstrom should be allowed to move away from Main Street.
The council, however, overwhelmingly voted against the move.
In 2004 Anderson was pushing a plan to allow street artists at Pioneer Park while the council wanted to ban those artists.
With the city attorney supporting Anderson, the council spent $6,000 to hire attorney Randy Dryer to advise them on whether they could ban the artists from the park, among other First Amendment issues. After Dryer's advice, which was not made public, the council sided with the mayor and allowed the artists.
The latest incarnation of consultant spending has yet to play out. Anderson's administration has proposed new laws that would provide greater protection for the city's taxicab companies.
Unsatisfied with Anderson's plans — some two or three years in the making — the council paid an independent consultant $14,671 to study the issue. That consultant put a dagger through many of Anderson's recommendations and suggested that instead of providing more protection for existing cab companies, the city should open up the market for greater competition.
The council is taking public comment on the taxicab issue and hasn't decided what it will do.
The current City Council hasn't been as eager to hire consultants as were it predecessors. For instance, in Deedee Corradini's eight years as mayor the City Council spent $104,000 on outside consultants.
By preserving a budget to hire consultants, the council can maintain a smaller full-time staff, thus cutting its costs.
"We've purposely kept our staff small to save money," Councilman Dave Buhler said.
Council members acknowledge there are times when they don't take their consultants' advice but say that doesn't mean the advice was worthless. Ultimately elected officials are accountable to the public for their decisions.
"You have to live with yourself and you have to answer to the general public. Sometimes you just make gut calls," Christensen said. "If it were all up to the consultants why would you have elected officials?"
Added Buhler: "We're not hiring a consultant to make hard decisions for us, we're hiring them to give us information and help analyze things."
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com