San Juan County needs to move on, and the state of Utah needs to help.
This week’s ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals gave full blessing to the forced redistricting of the county commission and school board to erase a gerrymander that kept San Juan’s American Indian residents out of power.
It was an unambiguous ruling, with the county losing on all of its arguments. It delivers a finality that all county residents must accept, even if some still don’t.
But the end may also come with a balance due. As is often the case, the winning party — the Navajo Nation — is seeking attorney fees from the losing party, San Juan County. It’s been a years-long battle, and the county could have to pay $3 million, depending on what U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby decides.
That $3 million would be on top of the $1.1 million the county has already paid a Salt Lake City firm for its own counsel.
San Juan — home to a little over 15,000 people — has the lowest per capita income of Utah’s 29 counties. It will raise about $6 million in property taxes from those residents this year. How are they supposed to come up with another $3 million?
It would be cruel irony indeed if the new Navajo-majority county commission were forced to come up with a way to pay the legal bill for the fight to keep them out of office.
San Juan County still has a rough ride ahead. No county in the state faces ethnic division like it. If Judge Shelby says the county has to pay attorney fees, that division only becomes more raw.
The new commissioners have already faltered once. Frustrated by their own county attorney, they turned to outside counsel for advice. But that outside counsel hasn’t turned over records to determine if they should be made public, which feeds legitimate concerns over transparency. These commissioners should know why county government needs full sunshine.
That error still pales in comparison to the misjudgments of their predecessors. The illegal gerrymander was the old guard’s decision, but the state of Utah had more than ample opportunity to step in. Instead, it let the county’s white leadership have its way for decades.
If the county is to start fresh, it can’t start in hock. The state has no legal requirement to pay the attorney fees, but it should. The burden of San Juan County’s past is something we all should own up to.
