Balancing the Books: Davis County Controller Scott Parke on Spending, Taxes, and Accountability

A household earning $50,000 a year cannot keep spending $60,000 a year on everyday expenses and expect its savings to last forever. Sooner or later, something has to change.

County government faces the same basic reality. Having money in the bank does not mean you can afford to spend more than you bring in every year. It means you have some time before the problem becomes unavoidable.

When I came into the Davis County controller’s office, I found a roughly $12 million annual gap between ongoing revenues and ongoing spending. That was not a one-time expense for a major repair or a piece of equipment. It was a shortfall in the money needed to keep county operations running.

Addressing that gap has been my first priority. But responsible government finance involves more than getting through one budget cycle. It means looking at future obligations, improving how we deliver services, and giving residents financial information they can actually understand.

The goal is straightforward: live within our means, account for taxpayer dollars properly, and explain where today’s decisions will take us tomorrow.

What Does the Davis County Controller Actually Do?

The controller’s office is not necessarily the office people think about when they think about county government. I understand that. Accounting, financial statements, and internal controls are not everybody’s idea of an exciting conversation.

But somebody needs to care about those things. If the books are not accurate, if bills are not handled properly, or if the budget does not reflect what the county can afford, the consequences reach well beyond the accounting office.

The easiest way to explain the controller’s role is to compare it with the chief financial officer of a business. We manage the budget and accounting functions. We pay bills, balance the books, prepare financial information, and make sure money coming into the county is accounted for correctly.

In many counties, this position is called the auditor or clerk-auditor. That title can be confusing because, in most cases, the office is managing the county’s finances rather than serving as an independent auditor. There are exceptions, including Salt Lake County, but “controller” is a more useful description of the work I do.

In Davis County, the clerk and controller are separate elected offices. The clerk handles a different set of responsibilities, including elections. My focus is county finance.

Our office has 12 people and covers several functions:

• Accounting and financial statement preparation.
• Budget preparation and financial analysis.
• Purchasing.
• Tax administration, including applications for certain property tax relief programs.

That last responsibility puts us in direct contact with residents, including disabled veterans and people seeking tax relief because of financial hardship. So the job is not only about maintaining accurate records. It is also about making county services work better for the people who need them.

Experience matters in a technical office

I am a CPA, and I have spent more than 20 years working in government finance. That includes about 10 years with the state auditor’s office and more than a decade managing the budget and accounting office in Weber County before moving to Davis County.

At Weber County, I worked under Ricky Hatch in a combined clerk-auditor’s office. He oversaw both the clerk functions and the financial functions, and I managed the accounting side. Much of that work was essentially the same work I now oversee in Davis County.

My time at the state auditor’s office also gave me a strong foundation in financial statements and internal controls. Those may sound like dry subjects, but they are part of what allows residents to have confidence in their government.

I know accounting is not what everyone wanted to do when they grew up. For me, it is work I genuinely enjoy. There is real value in making sure public money is handled well.

The $12 Million Shortfall: An Operating Problem, Not a One-Time Purchase

During my first week in Davis County, I opened the books and began looking at the county’s financial position. The problem was significant: ongoing spending exceeded ongoing revenues by approximately $12 million.

It is important to be precise about what that means. A county can have cash in the bank and still have an unsustainable budget. The issue was not that every dollar had already disappeared. The issue was that we were spending down savings to support ordinary operations.

Think again about that household earning $50,000 and spending $60,000. If the family has savings, it can cover the difference for a while. The bills get paid. The bank account still has a balance. But the family has not solved its annual $10,000 problem.

There is a difference between using savings to replace a roof and using savings to pay the regular expenses of living in the house. A roof is a major, occasional expense that you can plan and save for. Ordinary operating costs come back next year, and the year after that.

That distinction between one-time expenses and ongoing expenses is central to understanding the Davis County budget.

Once we identified the gap, we had to make decisions about revenues and spending. There was no permanent solution that consisted of simply continuing to draw money out of the bank.

Who makes the budget decisions?

The county commissioners are ultimately responsible for the budget. My job is to provide the technical information and advice they need to make informed decisions.

That means laying out the numbers clearly, explaining the consequences of different choices, and identifying opportunities to reduce costs. The controller does not replace the commissioners’ judgment or their responsibility to the public.

But the financial advice has to be direct. If a decision addresses only part of a shortfall, I need to say how much remains. A smaller gap is still a gap, and residents deserve an honest explanation of it.

How One-Time Federal Money Can Hide an Ongoing Budget Gap

During the COVID pandemic, the federal government provided substantial funding to state and local governments through ARPA programs, including the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds.

Davis County received that money and put a substantial amount into the bank. Some of those one-time resources were then used to support ongoing expenditures.

I am not interested in criticizing past commissioners personally over those decisions. The important thing is understanding the financial effect and correcting the course.

When one-time money is available, it can make an operating gap less obvious. The county has enough cash to pay its expenses, so the immediate pressure is reduced. But the underlying relationship between annual income and annual spending has not changed.

If you keep drawing down savings, eventually the savings run out.

In 2025, the county’s fund balance declined by about $10 million. When the available fund balance is on the order of $30 million or $40 million, that level of annual decline cannot continue for very long.

Our concern was that, without corrective action, the county would run out of the money supporting that approach during the 2026 budget cycle. That is why action could not simply be postponed to another year.

A budget can balance on paper without being sustainable

One question that comes up is whether government budgets are already required to balance. Yes, there is a balanced-budget requirement. But there is an important distinction between a budget that balances using available savings and one that balances from recurring revenues.

If we count money already sitting in a savings account as a resource for the year, we can make the budget’s sources and uses add up. That does not necessarily mean the county’s ongoing operations are affordable.

When I talk about a balanced budget, I mean that the money coming in each year supports the expenses that occur each year. Savings can then serve a planned purpose, such as a major repair, rather than becoming the routine way we keep operations going.

That is the standard I am working toward. A balanced budget should not be an extraordinary achievement for county government. It should be the expectation.

Closing the Gap Through Revenue Decisions and Spending Reductions

Davis County went through a Truth in Taxation hearing and approved a tax increase intended to bring in approximately $6 million.

Some commissioners supported a $12 million increase to address the full operating gap through additional tax revenue. The decision was to raise approximately half that amount instead.

My response was that we still had another $6 million to address. The tax decision did not remove the need to examine spending.

We initially identified approximately $3 million in cuts, then continued working through the budget to address the remaining difference. The plan for the 2026 budget was to combine the additional revenue with budget reductions so annual operations would no longer depend on spending down savings.

The sequence matters because it shows that this was not a single decision or a single fix:

1. Identify the approximately $12 million recurring shortfall.
2. Account for the approximately $6 million in additional tax revenue approved by the commissioners.
3. Find spending reductions to address the remaining gap.
4. Build the next budget around ongoing revenues rather than continued reserve depletion.

That work requires difficult choices. County government experiences inflationary pressures just as households do. At the same time, residents expect important services to function well.

When someone calls 911, they want a timely response. They expect law enforcement and the correctional process to operate effectively. Those responsibilities are real, and they cost money.

Fiscal responsibility does not mean pretending those demands do not exist. It means being honest about what services cost and making choices the county can sustain.

I have committed to presenting a balanced budget to the commissioners. As the county prepares for two new commissioners, I have also spoken with the commission candidates about maintaining that discipline. My impression from those conversations is that they are committed to fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget.

Looking Beyond This Year: Retirement Benefits and Future Costs

An annual operating gap is urgent, but it is not the only thing that matters. A county also has to understand promises that create costs in future years.

Davis County had been offering a secondary retirement benefit in addition to the regular state retirement benefit available to many employees. That additional package included five years of county-paid health insurance after retirement and a cash payout equal to one-third of accumulated sick leave.

Benefits like those were offered by many governments 20 or 30 years ago. Many have since moved away from them. In my experience, employees often place greater value on compensation they receive now than on a benefit far into the future.

For Davis County, the additional retirement benefit represented an approximately $20 million liability, with no money specifically set aside to pay it.

I worked with the commissioners to propose changes, and we began phasing that benefit out. The purpose is to make those obligations more manageable going forward.

We also changed some of the ways compensation increases were handled to bring them closer to what the market offers.

Cost avoidance is not the same as immediate savings

There is a distinction here that deserves to be stated plainly: some changes do not reduce the amount we spend today. They prevent expenses from growing as much tomorrow.

Those are worthwhile changes, but they should not be presented as though they immediately put cash back into the current budget.

Phasing out a long-term benefit and modifying compensation practices are part of managing the county’s future cost structure. Closing the current operating gap requires its own work.

Good financial reporting should distinguish between current budget cuts, future cost avoidance, and long-term liabilities. They all matter, but they are not interchangeable.

Government finance is a little like steering a large ship. You can change direction, but the full effect takes time. That makes it even more important to begin making necessary adjustments before the county reaches a crisis.

Making Tax Relief Applications Easier for Residents

Some improvements are much more practical than a discussion about long-term liabilities. They start with asking why we are still doing a routine task the same way we have always done it.

When I arrived, our office was sending about 8,000 paper applications to disabled veterans and other residents seeking tax relief. Staff printed the documents, ran them through a folding machine, and stuffed them into envelopes.

I looked at that process and thought about how long other public agencies, including the DMV, had been using postcards and electronic services. Why could we not improve our process too?

The paper system was not especially convenient for residents either. They completed an application, mailed it back, and then had to call the office if they wanted to know its status.

That creates work on both sides. The resident has to make the call, and a staff member has to stop and look up the application.

We began working with the county’s IT department on an online application portal. The goal is to make the application process and status information available electronically, rather than relying on paper and phone calls for each step.

The intended improvements are simple:

• Reduce the amount of printing, folding, and mailing.
• Make applications easier to submit.
• Allow residents to find application status information online.
• Reduce repetitive administrative work and staffing needs.
• Lower the cost of delivering the service.

This work is being handled internally with county staff. We have capable developers in our IT department, and part of my responsibility is to identify where a better process would make a meaningful difference.

I do not raise the old mailing process to criticize the people who handled it. They were carrying out the system that existed. The opportunity is to improve that system so their time, and the public’s time, is used more effectively.

Using AI in County Finance Without Giving Up Human Review

Technology offers opportunities beyond online forms. We have also been experimenting with artificial intelligence to automate some routine accounting work.

I am excited about those possibilities, but there is a difference between seeing potential and declaring that a system is ready to operate without oversight.

Bank reconciliation is one example. We have been testing AI to help with that process. The results are getting close, but they are not yet where I would want them to be for unattended use.

Even as the technology improves, I expect staff will still need to review the results. Automation can perform parts of the work without removing our responsibility to make sure the work is correct.

The useful question is not whether AI sounds impressive. It is whether it can reliably improve a particular process.

Automating routine invoice processing

Another system we are looking to implement would take incoming invoices, scan them, assign accounting codes, and route them for approval.

That is a sequence of repetitive tasks that otherwise requires manual handling. Automating those steps could reduce the amount of staff time needed to move an invoice through the process.

The objective is to lower the administrative effort involved in routine transactions. It is not to eliminate approvals or stop paying attention to how county money is spent.

These projects also connect to the larger budget discussion. If we can reduce the labor required to provide a service or complete an accounting task, we can reduce staffing needs and the cost of operations.

But the projects remain at different stages. Bank reconciliation is experimental. Invoice automation is something we are looking to implement. It is important to describe the work accurately rather than treating every idea as a completed result.

Security and internal controls still come first

I am an accountant, not an IT expert. My role is to help establish the direction and identify the operational needs. Our technology staff bring the expertise required to build and secure the systems.

That partnership matters because our office handles taxpayer information. Moving a process online does not reduce our obligation to protect that information.

We need the appropriate security and controls in place. A more convenient process has to remain a trustworthy process, especially when residents are providing information for a tax relief application.

Financial Transparency Should Produce Understandable Answers

One of the technology opportunities I find most exciting is making county financial information easier to use.

Financial statements matter. I have spent much of my career preparing and reviewing them. But asking a resident to work through a roughly 160-page document to answer a straightforward question is not an especially useful form of public service.

Consider someone who wants to know how much money the county golf course is making. That person should not need an accounting background just to locate and understand the relevant information.

My vision is to make financial data available through a system where someone can ask an ordinary-language question and receive an understandable answer drawn from the county’s data.

That is a goal, not a claim that the entire system is already finished. But it points toward the kind of transparency I want us to provide.

There is a difference between making a document available and making its contents accessible. The formal financial statements still have a role. The opportunity is to help more residents use the information inside them.

Better access would also support accountability for budget decisions. Residents should be able to understand what commissioners are choosing, where money is going, and what those choices mean for the county’s finances.

Transparency is most useful when it helps people ask better questions and understand the answers.

Finishing the Improvements Already Underway

Modernization does not always require buying an entirely new system. Sometimes it means using the capabilities the county already has.

Davis County installed a new accounting system several years ago. Some features that could make project tracking easier had not yet been activated.

One of my questions was straightforward: if those tools can help us do the job better, why are we not using them?

We are working to turn those features on and incorporate them into our processes. That takes time. Staff need to understand the changes, and the new functions need to become part of the way the office actually operates.

That is why implementation matters as much as the initial idea. A feature that exists in software does not help the county much if nobody uses it.

I have a list of roughly eight to 10 improvements I would like to complete over a four-year term. The priorities include finishing the tax relief portal, advancing appropriate automation, improving financial access, and making fuller use of our accounting system.

The operating shortfall had to come first. But maintaining a sustainable budget also requires continuing to improve how the county does its work.

Accountability Means Earning Trust, Not Assuming It

I entered the Davis County controller’s office through a special election to complete an unexpired term. After a little more than a year in the position, I was seeking a full four-year term under my own name.

I did not have a Republican primary challenger. This is a specialized office, and the field of people interested in government accounting is relatively narrow. Several interested candidates had already participated in the special election.

Still, being the Republican nominee in a fairly Republican county is not a substitute for explaining the job and the work being done.

I do not want residents to support me simply because of the party designation after my name. They should know what the controller’s office does, what problems I found, what changes are underway, and why I believe I am suited to continue the work.

That is part of being accountable to the people who put you in office.

The controller’s race may sit low on the ballot. It may not attract the attention of a commission race. But the office has an important responsibility: helping ensure that hard-earned tax dollars are accounted for and spent appropriately.

Most people do not think about government finance every day. They do care about keeping taxes low, receiving dependable services, and having confidence that their money is being handled responsibly.

Those expectations require more than a budget that gets through the next year. A compensation decision, a retirement promise, or a recurring spending commitment can affect the county three, five, or 10 years into the future.

Residents deserve to see that longer-term picture. My commitment is to balanced budgets, transparent budgets, and clear explanations of where county decisions will lead.

That is the work: address the immediate shortfall, manage tomorrow’s obligations, improve the systems, and keep explaining the numbers. It may not be glamorous, but it is essential to a government people can trust.#politicit #utahelections #utpol