I am a committed Auston Johnson Supporter for several reasons:
1. My sister is nearly a CPA (She is in the midst of the 2000 required internship hours to get her license after the required 6 years of training) She is neither political nor involved in the races. I asked her about the important traits the leader of a CPA office MUST have. She said the number 1 trait is knowledge of the nuances of changes in accounting policies because they change at least monthly and often weekly. The head of an accounting office must be able to make judgment calls based on federal accounting standards as to how to apply those standards when new standards conflict. Auston Johnson is an expert there. His employees (some of whom I am acquainted with) feel they can go to him at any time and receive counsel from someone who is even more expert than they.
2. Auston Johnson strongly feels that this office should be independent and not beholden to any one political office or party. This is incredibly important because Auston is equally willing to call out abuses done by the Republican party as he is the Democrat party. In a state that is so heavily controlled by one party, having friends and buddies is NOT what you want in an accountability office.
3. John WILL have to hire more accountants to accomplish the same amount of work that Auston's office gets done. There are not ifs about it. Auston himself trains newly elected government leaders on government accountancy and is a resource for all of the departments that report to him. It is exactly because he is that resource that issues like the parade float in Utah County get exposed publicly. John will be a good office manager with his MBA, but he WILL have to get someone else to do that job. He will also have to hire more accountants to handle the work load of the performance audits that he wants done (something the Legislative Auditor's office already does to a degree and something that Auston started to do before John and others rallied to cut the Auditor Office's budget significantly 2 years ago). The money that might be saved will be spent on the policing force to collect it (this is just like growing the IRS to enforce ObamaCare). Either more accountants will have to be hired or more will have to be automated, which will increase mistakes. There is no way to do both.
4. John has proven himself willing to go too far and push too hard to get something accomplished and then have to back off in the end. He heartily defends his role in sponsoring the original HB477 as something that "had to be done to wake up the public". As I personally worked to get someone to notice the problems with the bill during the 24 hour public comment period and I know that I emailed a 5 page, detailed report to John, Becky Edwards, and others that never even got read until after they passed the bill, I am well aware that it is not intentions that matter, but what they do with the power once they have it. HB477 had major problems and if he had even been willing to read an email rather than holding press releases to defend the bill, the one year of battles and wasted taxpayer funds could have been avoided. I DO NOT want to see mistakes and problems that get blown up in the Auditor's office just to get attention. That is the LAST place we need to see that kind of bullying and positioning.
5. Auston Johnson cares. Everything that John Dougall has ever said he wanted done in that office, Auston has done to the best of his ability given the budget and time constraints. Four years ago, John started talking about doing performance audits through the State Auditor's office. Auston immediately began implementing them - then their office was specifically targeted for higher than the 8% across the board budget cuts that everyone else faced and his office never received a dime of the backfill money that went to other priorities. At some point, someone needs to realize that it is Auston's humility that makes him such a target, not because of anything he is doing wrong. No one else has fought harder for transparency. ANYONE who wants access to public reports has them AS SOON as he can get them up. Even John does not even close to have that track record. VOTE AUSTON JOHNSON!
https://chumly.com/n/13cc3a9
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