Is SUWA too cozy with county commissions?

In the weeks before election, former San Juan Co. attorney prods AG to investigate pro bono legal services provided to Navajo commissioners.Since their election to the San Juan County Commission in 2018, Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy have relied on an outside lawyer for guidance on how to serve as elected leaders in a divided county resistant to change.

The battle spilled into social media and the courts in recent weeks, where Laws has made his concerns public and is pressuring Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes to open an investigation. With incomplete evidence, Laws’s Facebook posts allege the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and an affiliate group Rural Utah Project bankrolled Boos’s legal services, worth $250,000, in a secret effort to buy off the commissioners.

On Thursday, the Legislative Auditor General opened a “government compliance review” of Grand and San Juan counties in response to concerns that outside activists have an outsized influence on their commissions. And the next day, Laws sued the county, alleging that it has not fully complied with his document requests in violation of Utah’s public records laws.

A court did order the county to pay $180,000 worth of legal work Boos conducted on Grayeyes’s behalf after concluding county officials improperly removed Grayeyes from the 2018 ballot. Grayeyes and Maryboy’s victories in 2018 marked the first time a Navajo majority held San Juan’s three-member commission and were made possible by a court-ordered redistricting that was more equitable to Native Americans. Diné and other tribal members make up about half the county’s population, yet Native Americans had remained on the periphery of the county’s political leadership for decades.

In his latest role, Boos has advised Grayeyes and Maryboy on various aspects of serving as elected officials, such as responding to document requests, seeking information from county officials and contracting services. Boos guided them, for instance, when the commissioners drafted numerous resolutions, including one calling for the restoration of Bears Ears National Monument — a reversal of the previous County Commission’s vehement anti-monument stand.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

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