Money OK'd for challenge of special election
By Marley Shebala
Navajo Times
WINDOW ROCK, Dec. 24, 2009
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T he Western Agency chapters received $150,000 from the Navajo Nation Council's Intergovernmental Relations Committee for legal fees to contest the Dec. 15 special election.
On Tuesday, the IGR voted 8 in favor and zero opposed to take the $150,000 from the speaker's budget.
The committee's funding for legal assistance for Western Agency chapters came after the delegates recalled and voted down an earlier appropriation of $482,329.70 from the speaker's budget for legal fees, discretionary assistance, and expenses for meetings and travel for the council and its standing committees.
The amount that the IGR had put into legal fees was $81,529.70 and was to be used to hire an outside attorney to appeal the tribal court's Dec. 14 decision to reinstate President Joe Shirley Jr. The court voided the council's Oct. 26 action that placed Shirley on leave.
On Monday, the IGR voted unanimously for Chief Legislative Counsel Frank Seanez to draft legislation to transfer more than $400,000 from the speaker's office for an attorney to represent the council in its appeal.
The committee's decision to recall and voted down its reallocation of $482,329.70 came after an executive session with Seanez on Wednesday.
On Oct. 26, the council ordered Shirley to be placed on leave while Attorney General Louis Denetsosie reviewed investigations of the business dealings involving OnSat, a telecommunications company, and BCDS Inc., a manufacturing company.
In November, Denetsosie's office reported to the council that a "team" of attorneys found that there was enough evidence in the investigatory reports to warrant a special prosecutor to further investigate and possibly prosecute Shirley and other high-ranking officials.
On Monday, representatives of Western Agency chapters asked the IGR for $150,000 for legal fees.
Council delegates and some residents of the Western Agency said Monday that they will not stand by and watch the 88-member council be reduced to 24 and also let the line-item veto be established.
About 20 residents joined the delegates at a press conference Monday morning to criticize Shirley for not coming to their chapters to hear their concerns.
They especially wanted him to explain how the council reduction and line-item veto would work and how it would benefit them at the local level.
Of the 18 chapters in the Western Agency, unofficial results of the special election show that 12 voted down the council reduction and 11 opposed the line-item veto. Total votes were: 3,445 against reduction and 3,296 in favor; and 3,473 against the line item veto and 3,257 in favor.
On Wednesday, Health and Social Service Committee chair Thomas Walker Jr. (Birdsprings/Leupp/Tolani Lake), who sponsored the Western Agency request to the IGR, said Tim Nelson, 50, of Leupp, filed a complaint at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
Nelson had announced at the Monday press conference that he was a filing a complaint against the election because the ballot did not specify how Navajo law would change.
His argument was that Title 2, section 102 (A), which states that the council consists of 88 delegates, should have been part of the ballot language because that's the law that would have been amended by the Dec. 15 election.
On Wednesday, Navajo Election Administration Director Edison Wauneka said that as of Wednesday morning there were no complaints filed against the election.
Wauneka said that the deadline to file a complaint is at 5 p.m. on Dec. 28.
On Thursday, the election office and Navajo Nation Office of Hearings and Appeals were both closed for the holidays.
