# Utah State Parks manager fired



## Jedidiah (Oct 10, 2014)

https://www.ksl.com/article/5001042...-under-investigation-for-fraud-warrant-states

How many of you guys have driven down these roads and said, "Wow, this road is crap. That asphalt is like two inches thick and goes past the road base so it crumbles off the edge." I was saying that literally three weeks ago on a State Park road, hand to God.


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## middlefork (Nov 2, 2008)

AI and Willard for sure. What can you do?


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## backcountry (May 19, 2016)

Utah failed in allowing this to go on for 20 years. They need to investigate the holes in their auditing after this.


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## CPAjeff (Dec 20, 2014)

Completely ridiculous these things take place.


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## KineKilla (Jan 28, 2011)

I personally know the guy, worked with him for years. He really is a good guy but it appears that he may have been making some poor decisions. 

This sort of thing is going to make my job and the job of park managers, facility managers and maintenance people a whole lot more complicated. Perhaps rightfully so.

For anyone that is familiar with construction or property management, being able to purchase small ticket items without a huge bidding process, contract review, etc. is key to being able to get things done quickly and efficiently. 

Events like this one will certainly handcuff that ability further and make it extremely difficult to get anything done without "jumping through hoops". It's unfortunate but perhaps that's how it needs to be since we are using tax payer dollars and need to be transparent and responsible in our dealings.


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## middlefork (Nov 2, 2008)

Could be as easy as having the park manager verify the work completion before the invoice is paid. But being government I'm sure it will be more complicated than that.


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## backcountry (May 19, 2016)

In this case knowing ownership of the company contracted matters as well. With the technology we have now contracting to yourself should be avoidable without excessive policy on bidding.

He may be a good guy but he's allegedly committed massive fraud with taxpayer funds which takes him out of that category for me. A family member retired from forensics accounting and his career is defined by tracking the actions of "good guys" defrauding the American public. White collar crime, and criminals, often get better treatment because of the optics of the crime yet their actions hurt broad swaths of people and undermine institutional credibility (as you stated). White collar criminals get away with a lot of what they do because of a veneer of nicety that covers up the crime and prevents full scale auditing.


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## Critter (Mar 20, 2010)

From what I have seen with the State Park system the whole department needs to be looked at from the top down. 

I also wonder why it took so long for this to actually come up. When they allow a single person to OK work up to a certain amount it is setting it up for corruption. 

I once worked for a company where I was given a check book with authorization to pay bills and contractors up to $300 per check. I very quickly saw just how easy it would of been to screw the company over at $300 at a time.

This was back when that amount was twice what the top pay was in the company


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## Jedidiah (Oct 10, 2014)

KineKilla said:


> I personally know the guy, worked with him for years. He really is a good guy but it appears that he may have been making some poor decisions.


Conflict of interest like this is basically like a gateway drug for good guys to start doing bad things. People really shouldn't be having their own side companies involved with their government day job.


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