Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Tad Rasmussen, auditor candidate, emphasizes fraud detection, 0‑based budgeting and fixing Vault delays
Loading...
Summary
On the Utah County Republican Party podcast, Tad Rasmussen, a candidate for county auditor and current auditor-office procurement staffer, said he would tighten fraud flags, push for 0‑based budgeting to reduce surprise tax increases, tighten checks after a tax-rate entry error, and speed up the Vault ERP rollout by staffing implementation earlier.
Tad Rasmussen, who works in the Utah County auditor's office and is running for county auditor, told the Utah County Republican Party podcast that his priorities include strengthening fraud detection, improving budget accuracy and accelerating the county’s Vault enterprise-resource-planning rollout.
Rasmussen said he spends his current job “always looking at potential fraud issues,” and described practical flags that trigger deeper reviews — for example, suppliers repeatedly winning procurements with minor changes or line items altered to get under approval thresholds. “If there is some potential fraud, we will look at it more thoroughly,” he said.
He criticized early budget estimates that led to large recommended property-tax increases and urged better data and citizen input to avoid “sticker shock.” The host cited prior county recommendations — a 67% initial increase in 2019 and a 48% increase in 2024 — and Rasmussen said those large swings signal that the initial data was incomplete. He said he favors moving from a target-based approach to 0‑based budgeting so departments must justify each request and present a narrative of what they would accomplish.
On the Vault ERP implementation, Rasmussen said delays were driven in part by a change in the implementer (AST was acquired by IBM), personnel turnover and a decision not to hire temporary implementation staff that consultants had recommended. “I would have hired extra people temporarily just to get it going and implemented,” he said, adding that bringing new contractors up to speed after a buyout slowed progress.
Addressing operational controls, Rasmussen discussed a prior county incident in which incorrect tax rates were entered into the system and property-tax notices underreported amounts, costing taxing entities “six or even seven figures” in expected revenue, as summarized by the host. Rasmussen said the error could have been caught by a double-check of the spreadsheet, and he recommended automating processes to reduce touch points while retaining a human verification step: “Even with the computer doing it, there should still be some eyes on it to verify the information is correct.”
Rasmussen also defended the auditor's office decision to investigate a commissioner’s monthly newsletter after an audit tip. He said internal auditors requested documentation showing that the newsletter and its $28 monthly expense were a county-wide official use rather than a targeted political mailing; lacking that documentation, the auditors considered it a nonofficial county use under government accounting rules.
On staffing, Rasmussen said the auditor's office size is generally appropriate for county growth but acknowledged some open positions that have not been filled. He said hiring decisions should weigh cost against benefit and that he would be more hands-on with employees to improve retention. Rasmussen said he supports performing a few more thorough internal audits while weighing the cost of hiring additional auditors against expected audit coverage.
Rasmussen told listeners he plans to work from the Provo office Monday–Friday, generally 7:30 a.m. to 4:30–5 p.m., is self-funding his campaign and said he has a credit score over 800 and has not filed bankruptcy. He gave his campaign contact information (tadforauditor.com, Facebook "Tad for Auditor", (385) 204-1023, TadforAuditor@Gmail.com).
The interview closed with Rasmussen saying taxpayers — and the commission — are his principal accountability mechanism, and that he will follow party platform principles of fiscal responsibility. The podcast host thanked him and ended the episode.
