Pima County has been ordered to pay another $16,500 in attorney's fees to the Democratic Party for the elections public-records court cases decided in May.
That's in addition to the $228,000 Pima County Superior Court Judge Michael Miller already ordered the county to pay in May.
The Democrats requested electronic database records from the county in 2006. Two court cases resulted from the county's refusal to release the records, and one of them went to trial late last year.
In May, Miller ordered the release of the records, and the release of the same type of records for future elections.
The attorney for the Pima County Democratic Party requested more than $300,000 in fees for his work on the cases. A judge can award the fees when a person or group "substantially prevails" in a public-records lawsuit.
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In a memo to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Chief Civil Deputy County Attorney Chris Straub estimated the county's own costs at $13,800 for defending those cases, including deposition costs, transcripts and processing fees. That cost does not include attorneys' salaries because the case was handled in-house.
This brings the taxpayer liability to more than $258,000 for the county's refusal to release the records to the party.
