After public pushback from new Utah Auditor Tina Cannon over what she called a “disrespectful” move to push her office out of the state Capitol building, the state lawmaker behind the last-minute legislation said it won’t go forward this session.
“We’re going to keep working on the issue, but tonight, I’m not going to run the bill,” Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, the sponsor of SB143, told reporters on the final evening of the 2025 Legislature.
Both McKell, R-Spanish Fork, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, criticized the auditor’s response to the relocation intended to make more room in the historic building for lawmakers.
“We’ve got more important things to do. This is over office space and the rhetoric over it, I think, has been totally inappropriate and I’m very disappointed in the auditor,” Adams said, adding that lawmakers will “start again” on the issue.
McKell said it was “unfortunate where this dialog has gone today. I think I’m still very, very concerned with what’s happened.”
Cannon, the state’s first female auditor, said in a statement she is “grateful to so many people, organizations and members of the Legislature who were willing to stand up and speak out for what is right.”
The Capitol, she said, “should always and forever be a place to showcase the balance of power enshrined in the constitution and forever be a place for all branches and officers of state government.”
Cannon said she is “thrilled to be returning to the original language of the statute. It was a strange initiation, but my desire now is to work in cooperation with the other constitutional officers and legislative leadership, to determine the best use of space in the state Capitol.”
Earlier Friday, Cannon, who is one of five statewide elected officials along with the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and treasurer, told KSL NewsRadio’s “Dave and Dujanavic” that the legislation had come as a surprise.
“It felt very last-minute and very rushed through the process. I can’t speak to why that happened that way. I’ve only been here 60 days. I find it a little shocking, frustrating, disrespectful of the process in general,” the Republican said.
The lengthy bill dealing with a variety of legislative activities was substituted on the House floor Thursday night to add language turning over control of Suite 260 in the Capitol to the Legislature once “a substantially similar space on Capitol Hill is assigned to the state auditor.”
However, McKell said on the radio program it is important the auditor “have a presence in the Capitol building.” He also said his priority is to “get as many elected officials in the Capitol building” as possible, noting that eight of the 29 state senators did not have offices there.
Space allocations in the Capitol building as well as the adjacent House and Senate buildings are being reevaluated in light of a fourth Capitol Hill building set for completion in the coming year, he said.
Cannon said the Capitol building was envisioned as “an illustration” of the balance of power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Her major initiative since taking office in January was to open up part of the office to the public.
“It hadn’t been opened. We found a doorknob and opened the door to the public,” said Cannon, who is responsible for auditing state and local governments. “We invite the public in and we teach them how to search the records of the state of Utah that we have.”
McKell said there’s no reason that service couldn’t be made accessible to the public from one of the other buildings on Capitol Hill. He said any suggestion the office space has to do with the auditor’s transparency efforts is “unfortunate.”
“We want that office to be successful,” he said. “We want it to be accessible to the public.”
Cannon also held a news conference in her office Friday, saying she expected lawmakers to follow the process they’d previously approved for studying space allocations but that was “shoved aside” during a meeting with the Senate president earlier in the week.
“He said, ‘ignore the code, ignore the statute,’” Cannon told reporters. She expressed concern that publicly opposing the move could affect funding for her office, which had asked for an additional $1.5 million this session.
“There’s always a balance up here. I have a request for a budget increase that’s out there. If I make people angry, will I not get my budget increase?” Cannon asked. But when the change surfaced, she said she had to speak out.
Senate leaders responded to Cannon midday, saying they were “direct” with her about the need for her office space, but that she was the one who tied the move to her budget, not them.
“I was in the room. There was no bullying. We have vigorous debate on Capitol Hill. That’s what we do,” McKell said of Cannon’s meeting with the Senate president. McKell said he was concerned that Cannon was “trying to leverage her budget.”
His bill, he said, would have given the auditor shared reception space in the Capitol building with the attorney general as suggested by Cannon’s predecessor. But he said Cannon also had been “guaranteed” an office in the Capitol even though her staff will be moved out.
The auditor’s office distributed another proposed substitute to SB143, from Sen. Heidi Balderree, R-Saratoga Sprngs, that spelled out that Suite 260 would go to the Legislature only after “substantially similar space in the state Capitol is assigned to the state auditor.”
Contributing: Caitlin Keith
