Arizona, a.ka. “Arid Florida” just found out the bill for supporting power-hungry conservative autocrats, and shockingly, it’s not from the endless lawsuits brought by sore loser Kari Lake.  Maricopa County released a report showing that taxpayers there will have to shell out more than $270 million in settlements by 2024 for various lawsuits brought against former sheriff Joe Arpaio, Fox 10 in Phoenix reports.  And that’s just from cases involving Arpaio’s use of unconstitutional racial profiling targeting undocumented immigrants.

For comparison’s sake, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s entire annual budget for 2021 was around $430 million, including the money needed to operate the county’s prisons.  County officials were reviewing a proposed budget that included $38 million for settlement fees in the coming year when they were told that the total cost of all settlements on record would be closer to $273 million by the summer of 2024, when the next budget was due.

Arpaio lost the 2016 election for Sheriff after dominating elections for nearly a quarter century.  During his term in office, taxpayers incurred significant legal costs for various violations of civil rights in running the county’s detention facilities.  In 2013, a judge ruled Arpaio violated the civil rights of Latinos with a policy to stop cars that had multiple–there’s no way else to say it–“Mexican-looking” people in it under the assumption they were all undocumented.  Investigators also found that Arpaio’s Internal Affairs Department was essentially Arpaio’s personal rubber stamp, dismissing complaints without proper investigation.  Arpaio’s successor, Democrat Paul Penzone, is still trying to process more than 1,600 complaints that remain from Arpaio’s tenure.