A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Albany County to pay $1.7 million in legal costs to the plaintiffs who successfully sued to strike down the county’s 2011 redistricting map that diluted minority voting power. Combined with the county’s own outside legal expenses, the federal voting rights case could cost taxpayers at least $2.2 million — a figure that does not include all the county’s legal work or the expense of redrawing the flawed maps. County Executive Dan McCoy moved swiftly to lay the fault at the feet of the County Legislature, led by fellow Democrats, which in January overwhelmingly rejected a settlement his office negotiated midtrial that would have capped the legal fees at $750,000. But legislative leaders just as quickly pointed the finger back at him for threatening to veto an earlier settlement for up to $850,000.
In a statement, McCoy called lawmaker’s vote against his plan “a significant error” that proved costly to taxpayers. “That agreement served as a compromise between my original offer of $500,000 and the $850,000 offered by the legislature,” McCoy said. “But the legislature scuttled the negotiations and derailed the process.”
Chairman Shawn Morse, however, noted McCoy had sued them to block lawmakers from trying to settle the case on their own. The settlement backed by Democratic legislative leadership would have also delayed this year’s elections until 2016 — which McCoy called a non-starter — and never came up for a vote in early December amid concerns that it would not survive a McCoy veto.
Full Article: Albany County must pay $1.7M for redistricting lawsuit – Times Union.
The Voting News
A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
