Schumer uses appointment to make statement
July 21, 2000

R. PATRICK CORBETT
Observer-Dispatch

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., lashed out at the Justice Department Thursday and put a stranglehold on the Senate’s confirmation of Dan Marcus to the department’s number three job.

Schumer and Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New Hartford, have repeatedly asked Attorney General Janet Reno re-examine her department’s unbending defense of the Oneida Indian Nation in its federal lawsuit against Oneida and Madison counties. Thursday Schumer said his pleas have been ignored too long.

The region’s federal representatives want the Justice Department to remove any threat of penalty against private landowners in the Oneida land claim.

But Schumer said Thursday, “The justice department continues to pursue things in the same old way as before,” so he imposed the most severe penalty he could by putting a technical hold on the appointment of Marcus.

Schumer said Marcus told him that removing landowners from the lawsuit “might happen in the settlement, and he said behind the scenes they are working toward it.”

The Oneida Indian Nation is suing in federal court for compensation for 250,000 acres of land in the two counties that the Indians claim was illegally taken from them by the state in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.