Judge orders land-claim dispute back to courtroom
June 22, 2000

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By R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

UTICA — U.S. District Court Judge Neal P. McCurn called off the tortured Oneida Indian land-claim negotiations Thursday and pulled the case back into his courtroom.

McCurn said representatives of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, New York state and Madison and Oneida counties shoulder most of the blame for the failure of a year and a half of mediated talks.

McCurn brought the parties together in his chambers June 9 for a last-ditch effort. It failed, largely on the issue of sales taxes.

The Oneidas of New York, Wisconsin and Canada are suing Oneida and Madison counties for compensation for 250,000 acres they claim were taken illegally from their ancestors.

The Oneidas, the counties, the state and the U.S. Justice Department have been at the bargaining table since early 1999 trying to forge an out-of-court settlement.

Madison County Board of Supervisors Chairman Rocco DiVeronica said Thursday he is disappointed but not surprised by the judge’s action.

Those singled out for blame by the judge Thursday immediately defended their negotiating positions.

Oneida County Executive Ralph J. Eannace Jr. said, “I’m shocked by his pointing fingers, especially at the counties. Our attitudes and efforts have not changed. We are still trying to work out a settlement.”

DiVeronica said the counties have been fair and consistent throughout the talks and should not be held responsible for their collapse. He said the counties’ central demand has been that the Oneidas “hold us whole” by paying sales taxes on goods sold on Indian land.

Michael McKeon, Gov. George Pataki’s press secretary, said McCurn’s “comments are uninformed.”

He said if the judge had not been ill and absent from the June 9 session, “He would have known the state went to extraordinary lengths to solve the sales-tax issue, to the point that it would have foregone its share of the sales tax.”

Dick Lynch, a member of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York Men’s Council and chief operating officer of its business enterprises, said, “There is blame associated to all the parties. We can respect that.

“We would have been happier with a resolution through the (mediation) process,” but the Nation is ready to follow McCurn’s order.

He would not say what went on in the June 9 talks, but Men’s Council member Chuck Fougnier was more voluble during a meeting with the Observer-Dispatch editorial board Wednesday.

Fougnier said the Nation offered to give Madison and Oneida counties $1.5 million a year for 20 years to offset alleged sales-tax losses. He said that was a 50 percent increase over their last offer, yet the counties still rejected it.

“It still was not enough,” DeVeronica said.

Oneida Men’s Council member Dale Rood said Wednesday that an out-of-court settlement could have resolved issues of sales and property taxes to local communities, the size of an eventual Oneida reservation and could have spelled out the relationship between the Oneida Nation and local governments.

DiVeronica said those questions still are going to have to be settled because “these governments (counties and Oneida Nation) are going to have to live together after this.”

Lynch would not rule out the possibility of a settlement during the trial phase.

“We’re going to have interaction with the other parties and hopefully through that process a settlement can be reached,” he said.

McCurn is not so sanguine.

He said in his order Thursday, “Any further formal mediation efforts would be pointless because ... the N.Y. Oneidas are not, to any degree, willing to subordinate their own self-interests in an attempt to arrive at a fair settlement.

“The same is true of the counties and the state,” he added.

McCurn did not set a trial date in his order, but said, “(T)his litigation ... undoubtedly will take years to run its course.”