BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – The Seneca Nation has banished a lawyer who admits to embezzling $200,000 from the gaming corporation.
The Seneca Tribal Council voted on Saturday to expel 62 year old Timothy Toohey of Lewiston from its lands.
Toohey pleaded guilty on Friday to an unlawful agreement to make money off of the Senecas’ purchase of 200 acres of land in Lewiston for a golf course.
Here is the opinion letter referenced in this news article.
From the Buffalo News via Pechanga:
LEWISTON — It’s perfectly legal for the Seneca Nation of Indians to give preferential treatment to Senecas and other Native Americans in filling jobs at the Hickory Stick Golf Course, a federal official has written.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act contains an exception to nondiscrimination laws, allowing Indian hiring preferences for “any business or enterprise on or near an Indian reservation,” according to Kevin Bearquiver, deputy director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
He wrote the opinion in response to a request from the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency.
A 1977 executive order defined “near” as anyplace within a reasonable daily commute from a reservation.
The IDA board voted Aug. 13 to ask its attorney to seek an opinion on whether the Seneca Nation’s employment preference ordinance applies to the golf course, which is owned by the Seneca Gaming Corp., but is not built on Seneca-owned land. The IDA has an interest in the issue because it granted a property tax break to the Lewiston golf course in 2007.
From the Buffalo News via Pechanga:
ALBANY — Seen as cash cows for a cash-starved state government, the Seneca Nation is expanding its latest strategy to block tax collection efforts on its lucrative cigarette operations: The tribe will target, with campaign cash, state politicians who openly oppose the tax-free sales.
The Senecas are launching efforts to help defeat three Senate Republicans whom they call “hostile to the nation’s interests” for pushing collection of what lawmakers say could be as much as $1 billion a year in lost cigarette tax revenues by the Indian retail sales.
The lawmakers, two from upstate and one from Brooklyn, challenged the Seneca representatives at a hearing Tuesday in Manhattan called by the Senate Investigations Committee to examine the Paterson administration’s policy of not collecting the taxes on tobacco products sold by Indian retailers to non-Indians.
In a letter obtained by The Buffalo News to members of the Senecas’ Foreign Relations Committee, J. C. Seneca, the panel’s co-chairman, said the lawmakers — senators Michael Nozzolio, George Winner and Martin Golden — had “expressed tremendous hostility to our treaty rights and to our immunity from state excise taxes being collected in our territories” during Tuesday’s hearing.
From the L.I. Press:
The New York State Senate hearing on the state’s non-collection of taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Native Americans on Indian Reservations brought representatives from Indian nations from all over New York State into a highly charged arena at the Borough of Manhattan Community College on Tuesday.
The hearing was chaired by state Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) and had several other senators on the committee in attendance throughout the day. Though the hearing was scheduled to end at 2:30 p.m., the full slate of witnesses and complexity of the testimony being given extended to just after 4:30 p.m., with only two brief breaks in between.
Johnson had to call for order on a couple of occasions during heated exchanges between Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) and JC Seneca of the Seneca Nation of Indians that prompted mocking rebukes from Indians in the auditorium. Golden implored the Seneca nation to help New York State given the $4 billion budget deficit the state is facing claiming that New York State will soon be in the same position as California and issuing IOU’s to contractors, vendors and employees. This was met with calls from the crowd, many of whom were yelling out “That’s not our problem” and taunting the senator as he walked out midway through the proceedings.
Here is the opinion in B.R. v. G.R. from the California Court of Appeals, First District. Interesting case….
An excerpt:
This appeal presents the issue of whether the Indian Child Welfare Act (25 U.S.C. § 1901 et seq.) (ICWA), applies when the minors’ presumed father in a juvenile dependency proceeding alleges that his adoptive father has one-quarter ancestry in a federally recognized Indian tribe. We hold that the ICWA notice provisions do apply in these circumstances, and conditionally reverse the juvenile court’s order terminating parental rights so that notice of the proceedings may be given to the tribe in question.
Here is the district court order in Warren v. United States (W.D. N.Y.) — DCT Order re Seneca Amicus Motion
Here is the opinion, relying on the federal Non-Intercourse Act for the most part — seneca-pm-court-opinion-on-ny-thruway
The highway at issue is located on the Cattaraugus Reservation.
The Maine Supreme Court ruled that Seneca Nation of Indians members doing business in Maine must acquire a state license to sell tobacco. Here is the opinion in Dept. of Health and Human Services v. Maybee. An excerpt:
Scott B. Maybee appeals from an order entered in the Superior Court (Kennebec County, Marden, J.) denying his motion for summary judgment and granting a summary judgment in favor of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department brought a civil enforcement action pursuant to 22 M.R.S. § 1555-C(8 ) (2008 ) because Maybee failed to obtain a retail tobacco vendor license in violation of 22 M.R.S. § 1555-C(1) (2008 ). Maybee contends that because he conducts his tobacco delivery business from a location within the boundaries of an Indian reservation in New York State, the courts of Maine do not have subject matter jurisdiction, and the Maine vendor license requirement is preempted by federal law. Because subject matter jurisdiction exists and the Maine statute is not preempted, we affirm.
The federal government and the Seneca Nation have responded to CECGEC’s motion for contempt in the ongoing case regarding the legality of the Seneca Buffalo casino site.
Here are the previous materials.
And here are the new materials:
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