My tax money went where? State auditor Tina Cannon wants to open the door on Utah transparency

Yahoo

15-03-2025

The Utah Legislature voted on how to spend $30.85 billion in state and federal funds during the 2025 legislative session and approved policies impacting another $30 billion in state revenue.
Utah's new auditor, Tina Cannon, said she wants to empower residents to see how much their government has grown and to verify exactly where those dollars end up to help hold state officials accountable.
'Our job is to shine a light and that's where it comes back to the public,' Cannon said. 'We need the public to be able to see the data, use the data, and they can do what we don't have the time to do.'
The auditor is a statewide constitutional office tasked with tracking over 1,800 government entities, ensuring compliance with some state laws and conducting independent audits into public universities, government projects and election processes.
Before she was elected to replace John Dougall as state auditor, Cannon worked as a partner at an accounting firm, served as a county council member in Morgan County, ran for Congress and worked as Dougall's deputy financial auditor.
Amid national conversations about the Trump administration's overhaul of federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Cannon has literally opened the doors of her office to Utahns.
Upon entering office in January, Cannon opened a 'transparency room' in the Utah Capitol Building where the public is welcome to explore the 'Transparent Utah' website and make in-depth spending queries with the help of Cannon's team of data analysts.
Since taking up the role as auditor, Cannon has also worked with what she calls 'the best data analytics team in the country' to launch three new interactive dashboards that break down government revenue and expenditures since 2005, and higher education spending over the past decade.
Cannon plans to release other tools in the near future that clarify the total cash held by the state and that compare the difference between state agency budgets and their actual expenditures, she said.
While the information presented on 'Transparent Utah' is already public, Cannon said it can be difficult to navigate for regular Utahns without an accessible website.
'We want the public to know what we know,' Cannon said.
Making government activity transparent and easy to find — whether it's nonprofit grants or officer salaries — shouldn't bother those with nothing to hide, Cannon said, and will make it possible for concerned citizens to do their own digging and reach out to their representatives with more informed questions.
'I think more information is the solution, not less,' Cannon said.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told the Deseret News that Cannon's office is one of the reasons why he thinks Utah is 'the model for DOGE.'
On the final night of the legislative session, Cox explained that his office, which implements many state programs and awards funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), undergoes 'layers upon layers' of audits each year.
'We feel like we're visiting the proctologist multiple times every year,' Cox said.
In addition to investigations from the State Auditor's Office, Cox's administration regularly responds to queries from the Office of Legislative Auditors and conducts internal audits so members of Cox's Office of Management and Budget can defend each department to lawmakers on the relevant appropriations subcommittee.
'We've been DOGE-ing before it was cool,' Cox said. 'This never happens at the federal level. You can go 50 years without having to defend a program at the federal level.'
These practices are part of why Utah has frequently been named one of the best-managed states in the country, according to Cox.
But Cox said his office continues to discuss ways the state can do more to 'make sure that every dollar that is being spent is legitimate, that it's being spent in a way that has been authorized by the Legislature.'
The work of DOGE at the federal level, including observations made by Utah's DataRepublican, have pointed to situations where taxpayer funds are made so hard to track that voters often don't know when sitting officials are sending taxpayer funds to NGOs that they are involved with.
Ron Mortensen, a retired career U.S. Foreign Service officer, and an immigration law enforcement activist in Utah, said concerned citizens like himself still struggle to find answers to their questions about how taxpayer funds are actually used once they are allocated by the Legislature.
''Transparent Utah' has a lot of data but it is really hard for the average citizen to dig down into it,' Mortensen said.
Mortensen, who visited Cannon's office this week to get help tracking down payments made to a nonprofit, suggested that the auditor's office invest in artificial intelligence tools, like Datarepublican.com, that would allow citizens to track how an organization receives funding, what it is used for and which policymakers are involved.
The auditor's office already uses AI to pull out the datasets they use to make their interactive dashboards, Cannon said. But the auditor's oversight is limited when it comes to how public funds are used by NGOs.
'I can tell you what every government agency has spent, but once that government agency gives the money to a private entity, my oversight stops,' Cannon said.
While Cannon does audit NGOs if they receive more than a certain threshold of public funds, there are some instances, like with Utah Charter Academies, where an organization receives large amounts of public funds but are not required to submit financial statements to the auditor.
This is one of the areas where Cannon sees room for improvement on the state level to increase transparency and trust in government.
Adding requirements for sitting officials to remove themselves from certain boards or organizations, or to recuse themselves from decisions where they have a conflict of interest would also be a step in the right direction, she said.
Until then, Cannon said her office believes that making potential conflict of interest accessible to voters, beyond conflict of interest disclosures, is part of their mission.
'That is also part of transparency,' Cannon said. 'I would argue the taxpayer has a right to know what those conflicts are, and be made aware of them easily.'