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 election work, with year-to-date spending at about $1.6 million. She added that roughly $2 million in equipment acquisitions over the last two years came from state and federal grants.

Gardner emphasized election security and the county's operational improvements: the county averaged "84% of the results released" at the time results were first posted on election night and has dedicated, secure ballot-processing space. She also noted external review: "we recently had two different audits from the Department of Homeland Security," she said, describing cybersecurity and physical-security reviews that flagged the county's centralized ballot-processing room as a best practice.

Gardner warned that reliance on outside grant funding carries tradeoffs. Citing a conversation with U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, she said some federal proposals (referred to in the session as "HB1") could "tie" counties to vendors if funding is conditional, using the state's preferred vendor selection as an example and urging that local autonomy be preserved when possible.

Beyond elections, Gardner highlighted several digital-service advances launched in 2020. She called the county's fully online marriage-license and officiant portal "a first in the nation," and said the service increased marriage-license issuances by 147% year over year and is on track to exceed 10,000 licenses in 2020. The system, she said, enabled remote/Zoom weddings during COVID and brought in fee revenue that helped cover part-time customer-service staffing costs.

Gardner asked the commission to approve several hard-cost items for 2021, including funding tied to redistricting work and a proposal to buy an in-house film scanner to digitize legacy film records. She said a 2019 legislative change on expungement requires the county to ensure scanned archival records are reviewable and redactable; digitizing film in-house would reduce turnaround time on records requests and avoid ongoing outsource costs. On records, she reported the records-management budget at $418,000 with year-to-date spending of about $270,000 and said the office will continue to look for efficiencies to meet an across-the-board 5% budget reduction.

On financial controls and internal audit, Gardner said the auditor-side 2020 budget was listed as $526,124 and year-to-date actuals were approximately $185,244; the gap reflects unfilled positions and some software contracts that had been signed but not yet paid. She said internal audit will continue efforts to build a realistic audit cadence for departments, acknowledging some departments will take longer than the initially proposed two-year rotation to audit.

Gardner credited prior commission investments — secure space for ballot processing and a voter-outreach coordinator position that has helped secure grants — for improving capacity and lowering net general-fund draws. She also flagged operational pressures: signature-petition work required verification of "over 80,000 signatures," which she said equated to roughly 2,400 staff hours and more than $60,000 in verification cost in 2020.

The commissioners did not take a final budget vote in the session; they recessed the work session and scheduled further budget meetings with other departments. Gardner said the office will continue to refine figures and complete staffing changes before the 2021 budget is finalized.

Ending: The work session recessed with the commission setting the sheriff's department review for the next scheduled meeting.