One might think that with Democrats controlling the executive and legislative branches of both Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County governments, the two entities would be working together inside the otherwise Republican-dominated culture in Utah to reach goals common to their liberal-leaning philosophies.
The irony, though, is that liberal Democrat Ralph Becker gets along quite well with the conservative Utah Legislature, and that has enabled him to push through initiatives in the city without being molested by state lawmakers. But the city’s relationship with the Democrat-controlled county is deteriorating.
“The joke around county circles is that we miss the good old days of Deedee Corradini,” said County Councilman Joe Hatch, referring to the rocky relationship former Mayor Corradini had mostly with Democrats Randy Horiuchi and Jim Bradley when those two councilmen were county commissioners.
Observers credit much of the feuding among Democrats representing the two entities to the recession and the dwindling tax revenues putting pressure on both governments to maintain services.
But county officials attribute much of the discord to the different styles of the two councils and the personality of Becker.
Hatch, for example, cites the lengthy process in the city to develop a historic district on its east side.
“They tend to go through lengthy committee report hearings that end up delaying actual decisions for a long time,” he said. “We tend to either kill or pass proposals at a much faster clip.”
Whether one style is better than the other is debatable, but Hatch’s comment shows a certain level of disdain each government body has for the other’s way of doing things.
While former Mayor Rocky Anderson ran the city with a loud, chest-thumping passion for his issues and a personality that often had the force of blotting out the sun, Becker has a quiet, laid-back style that some county officials interpret as aloof and uncaring.
The two Democrat-led governments have sometimes clashed over policy decisions and appear to be upstaging each other.
Some of Becker’s staffers, for example, were furious when the County Council passed an ordinance last year prohibiting housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The city, under Becker’s lead, had passed a similar ordinance earlier but, through negotiations with the Legislature, agreed to delay its implementation until after the 2010 legislative session.
The county’s ordinance went into effect immediately after passage, which some city officials feared would threaten their agreement with the Legislature and possibly cause lawmakers to undermine both ordinances through legislation.
The county Democrats viewed the immediate implementation as a way to make it harder for the Legislature to pre-empt the ordinance because it would be viewed as taking away citizens’ rights that were already in place.
That incident shows not only a difference in style but an underlying mistrust that hovers between the two entities.
But the crux of the animosity is economics.
The city is constantly accusing the county of using its general fund to pay for county municipal services. The county steadfastly denies the charge.
The county’s general fund is fed by property and sales taxes collected countywide and is supposed to pay for services that are countywide. The county’s municipal fund comes from property and sales taxes collected just from residents living in unincorporated Salt Lake County and is used to provide municipal services to those residents.
Because the city provides nearly all the services the county provides, there is a constant argument that its residents are paying both city and county for services like public safety. The fact that both governments are controlled by Democrats doesn’t seem to help.
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