Watching politics in Utah, one always has to be amazed when you see normally bright people make really dumb decisions.
You see it all the time, year in and year out.
Maybe it's a big gaff, like former Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini asking "friends" for $10,000 a pop so she could keep up the mortgage payments on her house.
Or former Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman providing county funds to a private nonprofit that employed her daughter.
Maybe the errors are smaller, like powerful politicians asking a favor from a local college president, and then thinking that nothing was done improperly because no public funds were inappropriately spent.
But it is the appearance of wrongdoing — even if there was no legal wrongdoing on the part of the politicians, like the two mayors — that saps the public's good opinion of elected and appointed public officials alike.
The latest gaff comes in the building of a float by the Mountainland Applied Technology College in Utah County.
Here are the facts as revealed in an audit by state Auditor Austin Johnson and interviews with legislators:
Leading Utah County legislators Sen. Curt Bramble, Senate majority leader from Provo, and Rep. Becky Lockhart, Executive Appropriations co-vice chairwoman, also from Provo, and other local Republicans decided it would be a nice thing if the Utah County Republican Party had a float to drive in a number of summer parades.
According to Lockhart, the next question was where to get an old car to use as the float's base. Once that was donated, how do you build the metal frame around the car to carry the float?
Along with Bramble, the pair hit upon the idea of seeing if the MATC — which basically teaches all kinds of skills like plumbing, welding, computer science and so on — had a welding class that, as a class project, would build the frame.
Lockhart says she and Bramble approached Clay Christensen, campus president of MATC whom they knew well, and asked if such a thing was possible.
Lockhart promises that from the very first, she offered to write Christensen a private check to cover the costs. Christensen said maybe someone at his college could build this thing. He told Lockhart to wait for any payments, as he didn't know the cost yet.
The car is delivered. The metal frame is built. The float is finished.
Lockhart said she, again, offered to write a check. In state audit work papers, Bramble says he, too, offered to pay. But Christensen said no — that an anonymous donor had come forward to pay for the work.
Lockhart says she doesn't know who that donor was, nor the ultimate cost of the welding work and materials.
While Johnson didn't name the donor in his audit, he told me it was Don L. Ipson, the citizen chairman of the Utah College of Applied Technology, the group that oversees all of the state's applied technology colleges, including MATC.
"There is nothing wrong with Mr. Ipson as a private citizen paying for this," says Johnson. "What is curious is the timing of all of this" — who was offering to pay when. "And why would Mr. Christensen inappropriately try to force this payment (for the work) through the college's financial payment system. It doesn't make sense."
Well, maybe it makes a little more sense when "friends" are trying to do favors for "friends."
Everything seemed good in all of this — until someone squealed to the state and an investigation was started.
Johnson issued his audit of MATC this week, with the GOP float one of only several problems found.
In fact, the audit says that state laws were likely broken in the float affair because no state operations can be used to aid partisan politics — which was apparently what happened here.
Worse for Christensen, the audit says he purposely hid various billing operations so they wouldn't be tied to the float and the Utah County Republican Party.
It is up to the state Board of Regents what happens to Christensen, who in a written response to the audit apologized and said he'd follow all internal rules in the future.
But the audit points out that — whether intended by Bramble or Lockhart or not (they say not) — Christensen may well have felt pressure to help out the powerful legislators.
"It certainly brings up the question of whether (Bramble and Lockhart) should have even asked. It is a sticky proposition," says Johnson. "But that is beyond my ability to say in an audit."
In audit work papers, Christensen is quoted as saying he felt "tremendous" pressure from Bramble and other legislators to do the float work, because as MATC director he was trying to rebuild "relationships" with powerful legislators. Bramble denies he pressured Christensen.
But it is clear to me that Bramble and Lockhart should have never asked for this favor, even if they were more than willing to pay for the "whole cost, with no discounts or favors" — as Lockhart says she put it to Christensen.
Did Christensen really feel that he had a choice to say "no" to the legislators? Few would doubt that if they so desired, and I'm not saying that they would do so, MATC could be greatly harmed by Bramble and/or Lockhart.
As members of the all-powerful Executive Appropriations Committee, the two and their committee colleagues decide funding for every college in the state.
Don't expect either the House or Senate to conduct formal ethics investigations of this affair — such investigations are rarely called and almost never result in any action against a legislator.
So, this incident is just another example of the good-ol' boy network working fine — one hand washing the other — until someone squealed.
Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com