A state audit closes a chapter in the tumultuous saga of former San Juan County (Utah) commissioners and Bears Ears activists Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy.
The conclusion of the Utah Legislative Auditor General’s performance audit reads: “Based on our combined experience of auditing a wide variety of public entities, the actions by the two county commissioners are unique in their disregard for transparency in the handling of some of their business.
“We believe the issues we identified warrant additional measures by the county in the future to demonstrate transparency to the citizens of the county, to restore trust, to protect county officers and to ensure that commission business is open and sufficiently transparent.”
The two Democrats lost bids in November to keep their seats on the commission – tenures enabled in large part by a federal judge who in 2017 declared that the districts in San Juan County disenfranchised Native American voters and ordered them redrawn. The new lines were drawn to ensure Navajos got a fair chance at winning.
Kenneth Maryboy (Bill Keshlear)
Willie Grayeyes (Bill Keshlear)
Perhaps the seemingly unending federal litigation – for and against
President Obama’s 1.3 million-acre version of Bears Ears National Monument, designated at the
end of his term in 2016, followed in short order by President Trump’s
grand shrinkage then, most recently, President Biden’s restoration of Obama’s
version then challenged in a lawsuit last year by the state of Utah – produced a kind of
“monument fatigue.”
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, launched an initiative to manage federal public in southeast Utah in 2010.
The David and Lucille Packard Foundation provided seed money, and Round River Conservation Studies, based in Salt Lake City, and other nonprofits provided technical assistance. Gavin Noyes, then a staffer at Round River, became the executive director of UDB, guiding its direction until he left two years ago.
In those early years, much of the organization's staff comprised non-Native graduate students, young lawyers-to-be, environmental activists and passionate volunteers.
The organization honed its fundraising skills, messaging and organizational prowess, paving the way for it to spearhead the campaign that eventually proved successful in creating the monument.
Their yard signs were ubiquitous for a while in Salt Lake City.
A grand alliance of environmental nonprofits and outdoor recreation companies, beginning in about 2014, poured tens of millions into creation and administration of a long-term national campaign with an ambitious and precedent-setting goal of tribal co-management with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management of federally owned public outside of reservations and extending Indian Country sovereignty into non-tribal areas, the first being southeastern Utah.
Natasha Hale, a staffer at Grand Canyon Trust, suggested as much in May 2015. “If the tribes are successful in the (monument) proposal with the coalition of conservancy groups, it will set the platform for other protection issues outside of reservation land.”
However, Maryboy and Grayeyes, as small-county elected officials but celebrities of sorts in Indian Country and among non-Native liberals sympathetic to their cause, did little, at least publicly, to use their new platform and advance decade-long preservation goals or cement and expand efforts of the coalition.
From the outset in 2019 when the two took over as commissioners, they were continuously challenged, their competency and legitimacy continuously questioned. At times they seemed unfamiliar with legal requirements of the office, turning a deaf ear to the duly elected county attorney and state-level officials tasked with steering often-inexperienced rural county administrators across Utah away from legal and possible financial pitfalls.
They responded defensively to often rowdy, mostly white, constituents, resulting in a downward spiral of legal maneuvering, stonewalling of requests for transparency and lack of trust, pettiness, pique and peevishness. Even after San Juan County opened up after COVID-19 shut things down, Maryboy rarely attended commission meetings or anything else at the county seat in Monticello or Blanding, parts of which he ostensibly represented.
The traditional non-Western Navajo worldview of Maryboy and Grayeyes and the Mormon brand of anti-government conservatism of many of their constituents (including Navajo Mormons) were never reconciled.
They were activists working to right historical wrongs, first and always. White settlers of the 1800s systematically slaughtered their ancestors. They stole land that had been occupied "since time immemorial" by Navajos, Utes, Pueblo and other tribes and sacred artifacts that were integral to their spirituality and identity had been desecrated, looted for profit.
They believed descendants of Mormon pioneers are complicit and arrogant.
The two Navajo commissioners prioritized environmental protections and support of their traditional culture and spiritual teachings rather than, say, economic development of the poorest county in the state. Issues related to dire problems on Utah’s strip of the Navajo Nation - for example, providing household water and electricity and improving health services to those living in what amounts to Third World America - seemed less urgent.
All of that has changed in a kind of back to the future way. Jamie Harvey, who won Maryboy's seat on the county commission, is a Navajo who has worked for years to improve the health and mental well-being of tribal members on and off the reservation. He outlined his vision of governance in an extended interview with me shortly after his election.
Like Rebecca Benally, a Navajo who lost her seat to Maryboy before that in a closely contested race, Harvey is a civically minded problem-solver, first and always. He'll work with fellow commissioners Silvia Stubbs, an immigrant from Argentina and a former longtime staffer at Utah State University who replaced Grayeyes, and newly named chair of the commission Bruce Adams to get things done.
From the outset, Maryboy and Grayeyes chose to govern, in part, through non-binding, ideologically tinged resolutions written by their longtime private attorney and Native American rights activist, Steven Boos, working out of Cortez, Colo., and his paralegal in Moab, Utah, Liz Thomas, a board member of the environmental organization Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. They were mostly approved over the objections of fellow commissioner Bruce Adams, a Republican, without advice or informed consent of virtually anyone in the county.
Interestingly, they were never named in the state's performance audit, although their identities could be easily inferred by language of the audit: "Since the two commissioners in question were not reelected in 2022, …” Also, SUWA was not ID'd as playing a role in funding Boos's legal maneuvering.
The commission that replaced the one led by Maryboy and Grayeyes wrote a stinging response to the audit: "Citizens should not have to bear the financial burden of elected leaders who choose not to follow State Statute and will not follow the law after being trained and advised. Citizens should not have to wait 4 years for elections to correct the violations and misdeeds of an elected officials."
They said governance under Grayeyes and Maryboy “caused low morale, loss of qualified employees, and years of disruption of government services” and called on auditors to further investigate possible violations of the Open and Public Meetings Act and file charges if warranted.
(Ironically, Maryboy and Grayeyes, Democrats in a Republican-controlled state, possibly got off easy because the legislative subcommittee that oversees state auditors is co-chaired by the president of the Utah Senate and speaker of the House, both Republicans. More stringent sanctions on the former commissioners or tougher rules on open government and conflicts of interest would’ve set a precedent that all county commissioners and other elected officials and state employees, mostly Republicans, would have had to follow.)
Results of the audit are consistent with years-long criticism of many of their constituents that the two conducted county business behind closed doors; that Boos was a de facto but unelected commissioner paid by SUWA to advise the two commissioners on promoting Native American issues and progressive policies in general and even write talking points for them; and that he issued threats, bullied and stymied those who sought information on how Maryboy and Grayeyes conducted county business.
In short, they believed Boos pulled the strings as puppet master and SUWA paid for the show.
Similar criticism dogged the pair as prominent leaders in the 10-year campaign to preserve Bears Ears: Big money from environmentally oriented, white-controlled nonprofits, foundations and outdoor recreation companies poured in and controlled the strategy, tactics and messages. Maryboy, Grayeyes and others vigorously responded that they, in fact, were in charge, accepting only technical and logistical assistance.
Given the pugnacious and opportunistic qualities of their political activism over several decades, Maryboy and Grayeyes probably got at least as much as they gave. And what they got was an opportunity on a national stage to amplify their advocacy of indigenous sovereignty.
Critics of the two were vilified, often unfairly, as racists in national and regional news media outlets and in numerous book-length accounts of the campaign to create Bears Ears National Monument. The slanders, which extended generically to all residents of San Juan County, were part of the sophisticated, multi-year, multi-million dollar national effort. It was never effectively challenged.
That sentiment was echoed by the Utah House Minority Leader and member of the Legislative Audit Subcommittee, Democrat Angela Romero, who was quoted in a San Juan Record report (see link).
Conservative? Proudly. But racist?
San Juan County residents ousted Maryboy and Grayeyes at the ballot box and replaced them with Harvey and Stubbs. With incumbent Adams, the current commission is possibly the most diverse in Utah; it's multi-cultural, gender inclusive and multi-lingual.
A majority now comprises two members of routinely marginalized minority groups - as it did before November's election.
San Juan Record: https://www.sjrnews.com/.../performance-audit-san-juan...
Full audit: https://lag.utleg.gov/olag-doc/2023-02_RPT.pdf
My excellent adventure into GRAMAland hits a stone wall: https://jackdog3.medium.com/my-excellent-adventure-deep...
The rise and fall of Indian Country celebrities, Maryboy and Grayeyes: https://bearsearsdivide.blogspot.com/.../bears-ears...