From ICT:

Money and power drive states’ interest in Carcieri ‘fix’

Seventeen attorneys general, seeking property taxes and more state power over sovereign Indian lands, have written to the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the House Resources Committee urging them to move slowly – if at all – on any Carcieri “fix” and to include them in discussions on the Interior secretary’s authority to take land into trust for the nations.

“A March 13 story in Indian Country Today said Indian country officials are calling for a quick legislative fix so that state and local interests will not have time to make arguments to Congress that the Carcieri decision should stand. The undersigned believe it would not be in the best interests of all stakeholders, both Indian and non-Indian, to rush a legislative fix and to ignore legitimate state and local interests,” the attorneys general wrote.

The Carcieri fix would have Congress amending the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act by deleting the phrase “any tribe now under federal jurisdiction” or adding the words “or hereafter” after the word “now.”

The fix would correct a February ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which interpreted “now” to mean then – 1934. The case centered on a 31 acre parcel of land purchased by the Narragansett Indian Tribe for elderly housing. The Interior Department agreed to place the land in trust, but the state and town fought that action all the way to the high court, where the justices ruled 6-3 that the Interior secretary could not take the land into trust because the tribe was not “federally recognized” in 1934.
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