Deputies from Cayuga and Seneca counties seized boxes of untaxed cigarettes from two Lake Side Trading convenience stores owned by the Cayuga Indian Nation. The raids were staged simultaneously.
The stores were violating state law by selling cigarettes without charging the required tax, authorities said, according to an Associated [image-nocss] Press report.
At a news conference Tuesday, Seneca County District Attorney Richard Swinehart and Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann said the two stores were not on sovereign Indian land or on reservation land, so they must be treated as ordinary private businesses illegally selling untaxed cigarettes.
Swinehart and Budelmann said they acted against the Cayugas based on the Oneida Indian Nation's dispute with the city of Sherrill, N.Y., according to the report. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled tribes could not claim land they simply bought as sovereign. The two Cayuga stores are on purchased land.
Representatives from the Cayuga Nation said they were contacting their lawyer.
Cayuga Nation representatives Clint Halftown and Tim Twoguns were inside the store later Tuesday afternoon.
We're speechless, Twoguns told The Post-Standard of Syracuse. He referred questions to the Cayuga County sheriff.
Deputies blocked the entrances to both stores, turning customers away while other officers carried out boxes of merchandise and cigarettes for loading onto trailers. Employees were told to leave the stores.
Swinehart said deputies seized 10,000 cartons of cigarettes from the Seneca Falls store. Their taxable value was $275,000, he said.
The sale of untaxed cigarettes by Indian nations has long been a thorny issue in New York. The tribes say they are sovereign and do not have to collect state taxes. Convenience-store owners say their businesses face unfair competition, according to the AP report. Critics also say the state loses millions of dollars in tax revenues through the sale of untaxed cigarettes by Indians to non-Indians.
Gov. David Paterson's office issued a statement later Tuesday saying he was currently engaged in comprehensive negotiations with the various Indian nations in New York state with the desire to reach workable and realistic solutions that will benefit all New Yorkers.
Tax Commissioner Robert Megna, in an Oct. 1 letter to the prosecutors, said under the circumstances state officials were constrained from participating in the county investigations, though recognizing the district attorneys were free to pursue them. Megna also asked they take care not to do anything to undermine Paterson's negotiations.
The Cayugas do not have a reservation in New York.
In 2001, the Cayugas won a joint $247.9 million federal court judgment over their claim to 64,000 acres of land in Cayuga and Seneca counties. But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the judgment in 2005 and dismissed the tribe's entire land claim, saying they had waited too long to reclaim their land.
Since then, the Cayugas have been buying property in the land claim area while pursuing federal trust status for the territory, according to AP. Federal trust lands are exempt from local and state law.
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