The Office of the Utah State Auditor today released its report titled: A Limited Performance Audit of Independent State Entity Transparency.
As a result of serious issues identified at the Utah Communications Authority, the Office assessed entity compliance with reporting requirements for public meeting notices, meeting minutes, meeting recordings, and OPMA training for nine independent entities.
Compliance with OPMA increases transparency and accountability to stakeholders and encourages proper public oversight. Several independent state entities regularly do not comply with aspects of OPMA. The report makes seven recommendations to independent state entities to improve compliance with OPMA to increase transparency and accountability.
The Office recommends that each of these nine independent entities should ensure that they are in complete compliance with OPMA and that entity officials should receive the required training in OPMA compliance each year.
In addition, the Office recommends that the Utah Dairy Commission, which exhibited the most serious disregard for OPMA, should clarify its relationship with the Dairy Council of Utah & Nevada and they should refrain from conducting inaccessible meetings out of state.
The full report may be found on the Office’s website,auditor.utah.gov, specifically http://financialreports.utah.
