St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Want Obama Administration to Revisit "Commutability Guidelines"

Last Jan 8, former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued a Guidance Memorandum which cited “commutability” as a new standard for denying off-reservation trust applications for gaming purposes. It caused uproar in Indian Country and resulted in our local tribe’s Chairman Armenta testifying before the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee against the new guidelines.

The day after the new guidelines were issued The next day, James Cason, then associate deputy secretary of the Interior, sent rejection form letters to 11 tribes who had applications pending, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, claiming the distance the tribal members would have to drive would have a negative impact. Interior randomly selected 100 miles as the cut off point. It was for their own good thought interior…..they were concerned about the well-being of the tribe.

I wonder why we don’t place commutability restrictions on our employees...our congressmen and congresswomen? Shouldn’t we require them to not have to travel thousands of miles across the country away from their families to go to work? It would be for their own good wouldn’t it?

Anyway, before the new arbitrary guidelines were passed down last Jan, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe’s application for a casino site at the Monticello racetrack in the Catskill Mountains where it planned to build a $600 million casino resort had been in the works for nine years and was in the last stages of completion.

After Carson issued his denial of the application the relationship between the Mohawks and their developer, Empire Resorts, broke down. The tribe then declared that they would play the waiting game. They would wait until a new administration would come into power, one that would hopefully have an open ear to the complaints by the tribes who believed that the guidelines were an attack on their right to self determination.

I guess they believe Mr. Obama may be their guy.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribal officials recently traveled to Washington to hand deliver a letter to Interior Associate Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel Davis.

“The Guidance Memorandum. …is regarded as one of the most reprehensible administrative breaches of good faith perpetrated on Indian tribes in the Self-Determination Era. This is certainly our tribe’s view and a view that is shared by a number of other tribes,” the tribal council wrote in their letter.

“We therefore join Indian country in requesting Secretary (Ken) Salazar to immediately withdraw that policy because it was an invalid substantive change in the rules for taking land into trust which failed to comply with the notice and rulemaking requirements under the Administrative Procedures Act. Accordingly, the department should rescind all of the determinations on fee-to-trust applications, including ours, that were made based on this invalid rule, and the department should reconsider these applications in accordance with the existing valid regulations set forth in (the statutes).”

The tribe has renewed its relationship with Empire Resorts but have told them that any agreements would need approval by the community through a referendum and the community must be part of the decision making process.

“The meeting with the assistant deputy secretary presented us with an opportunity to start telling our story and so that in itself was positive. As long as the guidance policy remains in place, everything is speculation and all we’re trying to do is focus on getting that impediment out of the way,” Ransom said.

“At this stage, everything is preliminary,” Chief Barbara Lazore said. “But we felt it was important to tell our history of the past 14 years, which was dismissed at the stroke of a pen by the previous administration.”

The tribe’s application had met all the statutory requirements, including a Finding of No Significant Impact, a positive Section 20 Two-Part Determination, unprecedented public support from the state legislature and surrounding communities, and a tribal-state compact executed by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

In its letter to Davis, the tribal council also stated that they believed that the benefits of their planned casino outweigh any perceived negative impacts on reservation life that the new guidelines were intended to prevent. The casino would ease the 35 to 40 percent unemployment rate; helping to provide a stable economic base for on reservation jobs and social services.

They feel the 100 mile rule is ludicrous given the fact the Mohawks have a long history of traveling far distances as ironworkers who built many of the most famous bridges and skyscrapers in the northeast. They feel they don’t have to worry about losing touch with the reservation by going over 100 miles to work.

The tribe also noted that council the recent U.S. Supreme Court Carcieri ruling that tribes not under federal jurisdiction in 1934 are ineligible for trust land does not apply to them since the tribe has been recognized in treaties going back to the 18th century.


Source:
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/42802322.html