Unlike Utah, Arizona is tough on political corruption. Symington was indicted for criminal conduct that occurred even before he took office. Before him, Evan Meacham was impeached and removed for misusing state money while governor. Indeed, Utah was not swept up in a national trend to fight public corruption. Gunnarson says the absence of any successful prosecutions under Utah's anti-corruption statutes hampered his review of the Corradini case.
Local prosecutors are often loath to prosecute fellow, local officials.
It's one reason Congress has enacted laws enabling federal prosecutors to combat state and local political corruption. The U.S. Attorney's offices in some states, Massachusetts for example, even have special units to fight federal, state and municipal malfeasance. The heart of the federal case against Symington was his lying on loan applications in connection with his crumbling real estate empire. That same kind of bank fraud is one of a list of suspected criminal missteps on Corradini's part. The mayor appears to have lied on a Zions Bank loan application in 1992, a loan she needed to help extricate herself from the swirling Bonneville Pacific controversy.