Clerk-auditor presents 2021 budget priorities, highlights election security and digital services

Amelia Powers Gardner, the county's clerk-auditor, presented a year-to-date 2020 report and outlined the office's 2021 budget priorities at the Utah County Board of Commissioners' work session. Gardner said the office's mission is "helping Utah County residents by providing seamless service" and described plans to expand digitization, audit capacity and election preparedness.

Gardner reviewed staffing and organizational changes, saying the office currently budgets 37 full-time positions and approximately 20 part-time employees and is organized into six subdivisions including finance, purchasing, internal audit, elections, clerk services and records. She credited new tools such as Questica and OpenBook dashboards for improving transparency and internal budgeting and said the office has moved to a paperless budget transfer system.

On elections, Gardner described a year of heavier operations and higher costs. She said voter registrations rose markedly — "in Feb 2019 we did approximately 22,000 voter registrations; through September we've done 132,000" — and that the office asked for roughly $2.7 million in general-fund operating support for 2020…