Perhaps the most persistent campaign controversy in Salt Lake County Council politics this season had to do with incumbents' attendance -- an issue best characterized by a "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" radio parody produced by Democrat Paul Pugmire in west-side District 2 to ding his opponent, Republican Councilman Michael Jensen, for missing "one-third" of formal council meetings.

But "poor attendance" claims surfaced elsewhere, as well, including in east-side District 4, where Democrat Jani Iwamoto used them against GOP incumbent Mark Crockett.

Unfortunately, fact-checking those numbers proved surprisingly difficult (despite having the council's meeting minutes posted online). The county keeps no attendance tally that the public can request through open-records laws.

Instead, The Tribune had to compile its own database by pulling up records from every council meeting online -- available at www.slco.org by clicking on the County Council link -- and keeping track of who was absent. The task took about two hours, but yielded a spreadsheet that compared the attendance of all nine council members.

Turns out, Jensen had missed about 29 percent of formal council meetings and only 15 percent of council work sessions.

The allegation against Crockett (that he had missed 35.48 percent of council meetings this year) also was overstated. The actual number was closer to 30 percent. And during his entire four-year term, he had missed 22 percent of formal council meetings and 8 percent of work sessions.

Jensen won his re-election; Crockett lost.

--JS