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The Utah attorney general is fighting a court order requiring the state to pay more than $5.5 million for outstanding debts to the accountant appointed to run a polygamous sect's communal property trust.
Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook because there is no evidence Shurtleff "acted in bad faith or committed fraud" when the state took over the trust in 2005.
"The record shows the Attorney General has consistently worked to ensure that the beneficiaries' interests would be protected and the fiduciary would receive payment of his work," the motion filed this week reads.
The attorney for Bruce Wisan, the accountant appointed to run the trust, said Shurtleff's move comes too long after the judge's August ruling.
"The time to reconsider and/or appeal has passed," said Jeff Shields.
Trust administrators say they're at the end of their financial rope as they fight the Warren Jeffs-led sect in court without a significant source of income. Third District Judge Denise Lindberg agreed the state should step in so the trust management wouldn't collapse.
"It's almost a loan from the state because we intend to pay it back when we're able to sell some property," Wisan said Friday.
But he's at a court-ordered standstill, and it's unclear when or if a land sale might happen.
The trust, which holds nearly all the homes, businesses and land in the sect's home base of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was taken over six years ago amid allegations of mismanagement by trustees in the polygamous sect.
Though they continued to live in their trust-owned homes, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints never fully participated in the trust following the takeover, and in 2008 began filing lawsuits to fight the sale of land they considered sacred.
Since then, Wisan and the other contractors, workers and attorneys running the trust and representing the management in court say they have been paid only a fraction of their due, which was to come from home occupancy fees and other trust proceeds.
Early this year, a federal judge ruled the takeover had been unconstitutional and the trust should go back to the FLDS. The Utah Attorney General's Office appealed, and, following a brief but fierce judicial standoff between Lindberg and U.S. District Judge Dee Benson, a federal appeals court decided to keep Wisan in charge for now but barred him from making any major changes until the appeals court makes a decision.
The case, however, may not reach a courtroom until spring.
Twitter: @lwhitehurst
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