Skip to content 
BRIGHAM CITY, Utah — Attorneys for Box Elder County and celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary are asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a group of residents over a rejected citizen referendum.
In a pair of court filings last week, they point to the Military Installation Development Authority as controlling law in this space, urging 1st District Court Judge Spencer Walsh to reject the lawsuit.
“The issue does not turn on whether the Military Installations Development Authority’s (‘MIDA’) Stratos Project is wise or popular. Nor does it turn on whether MIDA’s decisions concerning the project were legislative. The issue turns on whether the Commission’s decisions, which merely implemented existing law—namely MIDA’s implementing statute—were administrative. Because the Resolutions were administrative, Plaintiffs’ lawsuit fails as a matter of law,” O’Leary’s attorney, Mark Morris, wrote in a filing.
When Box Elder County commissioners voted to approve O’Leary’s Stratos Project, a group of residents sought a citizen referendum to put it to a public vote. That was rejected by the Box Elder County Attorney, who made a similar argument that the residents sought to put an administrative resolution to a public vote. The residents ended up suing over it.
O’Leary said a demand letter arrived before his change on China influence:
In its own court filing, Box Elder County argued that much of the deal for the Stratos Project was done before commissioners ever took a vote.