Naked City

There's still no sign of the fugitive polygamist leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the "prophet" Warren Jeffs, whose flock is building a new compound in the West Texas town of Eldorado. But even with Jeffs on the lam – dodging felony charges in Arizona that he arranged a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a 28-year-old married man, and one federal count of unlawful flight – legal troubles continue to plague his religious organization. On Aug. 4, Utah state Judge Denise Lindberg postponed appointing new trustees to oversee the 65-year-old United Effort Plan trust, which controls the estimated $100 million in FLDS members' assets – including most of the real property and single-family homes occupied by FLDS members in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., where the polygamist religious sect has been headquartered for more than 70 years. Jeffs and his cronies were removed from their fiduciary duties in response to a motion filed by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who was seeking a temporary restraining order against the UEP in an attempt to stop Jeffs from liquidating and/or transferring funds from the trust into private hands. Judge Lindberg did, however, grant the accountant charged with temporary control over the trust additional power to defend the UEP against civil lawsuits and the authority to collect nearly $1.2 million from FLDS members to pay an overdue property tax bill.

And on Aug. 11, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a petition with the Arizona State Board of Education, alleging "systemic and egregious mismanagement" of the Colorado City Unified School District by the school's FLDS administrators and board members, and asking that the board place the CCUSD into state receivership. Arizona lawmakers this spring passed a law allowing the SBOE to revoke local control over a school district in response to state officials' concerns that FLDS members running the CCUSD were channeling taxpayer funds intended to support the Colorado City public schools into the pockets of Jeffs and other high-ranking FLDS members. During FY 2004-2005 the school district "exhausted all available funds," failed to pay its teachers, and has yet to repay a $1.4 million loan it took from state lenders, Goddard wrote. Additionally, the district "has spent and continues to spend excessively and irresponsibly on administrative items," including its 2002 purchase of a $200,000 Cessna airplane, he wrote. The CCUSD has 15 days to respond to the allegations; the SBOE could hold a hearing on the matter as soon as next month. (For more on the FLDS, see "Meet the New Neighbors," News, Aug. 5.)