With John Dougall, the current Utah State Auditor, running for Congress, the auditor position is now open.
Ricky Hatch – Qualified through convention – http://rickyhatch.com/
Ricky is currently the County Clerk / Auditor of Weber County. It is the largest county in the state that still combines the two positions. He is grateful that he has a very good management team that allows him to focus on bigger issues such as working with the state legislature. Ricky is on the board of directors of the National Association of Counties, which has over 40,000 members and represents over 3.6 million county employees in the country. He is also the chair of the elections subcommittee for that body. Ricky was also elected by his peers to be the President of the Utah Association of Counties, an organization that represents all 400+ county officials in Utah.
Ricky also serves as the Treasurer of the International Association of Government Officials, which has over 400 members. He is also on the executive committee of the Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Council and the vice-chair of the Board of Advisors for the US election assistance commission, which was created after the 2000 hanging chad issue in Florida. Ricky has also testified twice before congress regarding election integrity.
He has been super impressed with John Dougall as auditor and nominated Dougall back in 2012. Ricky said then that whoever tries to fill those shoes is nuts. He didn’t want to run for a statewide office but felt a need to continue the legacy. He does want to enhance certain areas though. Ricky said that a lot of small government bodies and special districts don’t have the expertise to know all of the rules and best practices. He feels it is far better to put a fence at the top of the cliff than an ambulance below. Ricky would rather put more effort in proactively reaching out and training than enforcement. He would like to beef up the current 3 staff members that deal with local government.
Another area that Ricky would like to expand is Project KIDS. This currently gathers data volunteered by the school districts and allows citizens to compare schools based on different metrics. He would like to expand this to include state universities. This is basically a performance audit with the data being made public.
Ricky started his career with Price Waterhouse, auditing multinational companies such as Wells Fargo Bank and The Walt Disney Company. He believes that his experience as county auditor has prepared him for the state role. Ricky is the only CPA in the race and has been endorsed by the Utah Association of CPAs. He describes himself as an audit nerd that also has the needed soft skills. People approached him to run for those various leadership roles.
Tina Cannon – Qualified through convention
The author declined to interview Tina Cannon for this race as she previously threatened him over an article he was going to write several years ago.