As Salt Lake City's top lawyer for three decades, Cutler braved the failed "Citygate" cabal that spurred a form-of-government change in 1980, preserved prayers in city-council meetings in 1993, crafted the contentious 1999 sale of a chunk of Main Street to the LDS Church and fortified the city's successful 2002 Olympic bid.
Cutler "flunked" retirement the first time around, leaving Salt Lake City in fall 2002 for a brief job-free stint before joining West Jordan in July 2003.
Last week, the 67-year-old finally hung up his city attorney "cleats" for good.
"I found a career in the public sector rewarding because I'm able to practice law and do what is right," said Cutler, who plans to start an 18-month legal-service mission for the LDS Church in July in Germany. "That's not an opportunity a lawyer has every day."
Still, Cutler butted heads through the years with business interests and civil-rights advocates who sometimes disagreed with his sense of "right."
The Salt Lake City attorney beat back a challenge from church-state separatists, securing the right of city councils statewide to open meetings with prayer. He famously argued in the early 1990s that the council's prayer was not religious. The Utah Supreme Court didn't buy that logic - saying it demeaned religious people - but used other reasoning to bolster civic prayers.
He won a fight with merchants who sued the city over a 1970s Main Street beautification project, which slapped fees on businesses located within a special-service district. He also defeated a move by business powerhouses and some members of the Utah Transit Authority Board to put TRAX on State Street, where construction wouldn't interfere with Main Street stores, banks and hotels.
"The [Utah] Supreme Court sided with us," Cutler said, "and we have light rail on Main Street - where it belongs."
He sparked the most heat when he negotiated the city's sale of Main Street between North Temple and South Temple to the LDS Church for a pedestrian plaza. The city retained a right of way for public access through the plaza, but allowed the church to regulate behavior and ban protests there.
Free-speech advocates, including the First Unitarian Church and the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the easement made the plaza a public forum, where expression could not be limited. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, overturning a lower court's decision that favored the city.
"I'm unrepentant. I still think we were right," Cutler said. "I've got a 93 percent success rate in my appeals. It was one I lost."
In the end, though, he won. The LDS Church secured the ability to boot smokers, pamphleteers and protesters from the plaza when it swapped land for a west-side community center for the city's easement in a deal brokered by then-Mayor Rocky Anderson.
Cutler saw a "dramatic" shift in capital governance after becoming one of many city officials embroiled in the "Citygate" scandal.
Before 1980, the city was run by five commissioners and a mayor, but all had executive powers, collectively bargaining for funds for their respective departments. The police chief and two commissioners secretly plotted to have the personnel director report directly to the police chief so that he could control employee pay and boost cops' salaries.
"They were going to fire me because I was in the way," Cutler said. "They wanted to play this behind-the-scenes manipulation - Nixonian politics."
Switching to a strong mayor and seven-member council system, with district instead of citywide seats, was necessary and "beneficial," he added. More women, minorities and west-siders became involved.
"There was a broader-based, true democracy," Cutler said. "Someone could walk an entire district and get elected."
Former Mayor Deedee Corradini credits Cutler with Salt Lake City's successful 2002 Winter Olympic bid. To get the Games, the city had to take on the expensive legal liability that comes with them. The attorney arranged for the state to shoulder the cost.
"It was Roger Cutler who worked through these very technical legal issues" that other U.S. cities have struggled to figure out in attempts to land the Games, Corradini said. "He is one of the best, if not the best, city attorneys ever."
West Jordan was glad to have him, City Manager Gary Luebbers said.
During his nearly five-year tenure, Cutler - who will see his deputy, Jeff Robinson, take over his post- oversaw a comprehensive reworking of the city's code and resolved a number of threatened lawsuits.
"People in the government business still say, 'I can't believe you got Roger Cutler,' " Luebbers said. "It was a real coup for us. . . . Roger brought more than the average person to the job."
