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Narragansetts fail in effort to win land-trust status in Rhode Island |
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Written by Administrator
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Wednesday, 22 December 2010 |
Narragansetts fail in effort to win land-trust status in Rhode Island
December 22, 2010
By JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Despite a recent House vote in their favor and a last-minute pitch by President Obama, the Narragansett Indians Tuesday night lost their bid for legislation to ensure them coveted federal trust status for a parcel of their land.
The blow came when Congress passed a huge spending bill that finances the federal government for the next four months –– but omits the land-trust measure.
That ends, for now at least, a drama that began almost two years ago with a Supreme Court ruling that the Rhode Island tribe was ineligible for federal land trust status that would have exempted a parcel of its land from most state and municipal taxes and laws.
The Narragansetts had long asserted that they planned to build housing on the parcel near their tribal settlement lands, but many local and state officials feared that the tribe would eventually seek to establish casino gambling on the site.
Tribal-rights advocates said the Supreme Court decision in the Carcieri case –– so named because the suit was brought by Governor Carcieri –– had national implications for the many other tribes deemed ineligible for land trusts because, like the Narragansetts, they had not been federally recognized when the modern trust system was created in the 1930s.
Initially, the Narragansetts and their allies won approval in key Senate and House committees of their so-called “Carcieri fix,” legislation that would have reversed the high court’s ruling.
Earlier this month, the House passed a mammoth spending bill that included the “Carcieri fix.”
But leading Senate Democrats, including Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Dianne Feinstein of California, made clear that they would try to block the land-trust language.
The House spending bill died last week in a struggle unrelated to the land-trust issue.
Over the weekend, Senate leaders produced an alternative federal spending bill that omitted the “Carcieri fix.”
That measure passed the Senate and House Tuesday, dooming the Narragansetts’ hopes for this current session of Congress.
http://www.projo.com/news/content/land_trust_22_12-22-10_RHLJOMB_v7.323856a.html |
