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>http://www.seattle-pi.com/local/yaka31.shtml
>
>Yakamas stand firm as booze runs out
>Indian nation's tax on alcohol may force showdown
>
>Monday, January 31, 2000
>By CANDY HATCHER
>SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
>
>TOPPENISH -- Beer is scarce here. The popular brands of tequila are long
>gone. In these parts, if you're determined to drink, you take whatever you
>can get.
>
>Ask merchants who is to blame for dwindling alcohol supplies in
>south-central Washington and they point to the Yakama Indian Nation, which
>on Jan. 4 imposed a hefty tax on booze, beer and wine. Ask the Indians who
>is responsible, and they finger the state.
>
>Clerk Kelli Garza empties the shelves at the Washington State Liquor Store
>in Wapato in preparation for the store's move off the Yakama Indian
>Reservation. The move was prompted by a $5,000 licensing fee imposed by the
>Yakama Indian Nation on businesses that sell spirits.
>
>The tax has caused animosity and unease between Indians and non-Indians in
>the lower Yakima Valley.
>
>State liquor stores have closed; beer and wine distributors are protesting
>by refusing to replenish stock, and state officials have yet to offer a
>compromise tribal leaders will accept.
>
>"It makes everybody nervous," said Richard Paddock, who is closing his
>Wapato liquor store about 10 miles up the road to Union Gap. "If the tribe's
>capable of this, what else? What's next? Property taxes? Sales taxes?"
>
>The conflict isn't so much over the $2.40 tax on every six-pack, although
>for many, that's reason enough to fight. It's not even about the hundreds of
>people working at taverns and grocery and convenience stores who may lose
>their jobs because customers are buying booze elsewhere.
>
>The issue is more basic, a constitutional question that involves a
>145-year-old agreement between the federal government and the Yakamas:
>whether the Indians have the right to control what happens on their
>reservation, an expanse east of the Cascades that's bigger than Rhode
>Island.
>
>There, three-quarters of the residents are non-Indians, and their allegiance
>is to the state.
>
>Allen Myers, who owns three convenience stores and a Dairy Queen on the
>reservation, wants beer back on his shelves. He wants his customers to quit
>traveling across the river to shop. He wants the nonsense to stop.
>
>He doesn't understand why the Indians are allowed to tax him when he already
>pays Washington state sales tax, plus a wine tax, a master license fee and
>industrial and employment security taxes.
>
>"We pay the state thousands of dollars. We've never paid taxes to the
>Indians. . . . We have no voice in their government," said the Toppenish
>resident, who has owned Crossroads Market since 1949. "Are we supposed to
>pay two governments? Are we United States citizens or Indians?"
>
>A customer, an Indian who was listening to Myers' frustrations, looked up.
>"We wonder the same thing," he said. "Now you know how we feel."
>
>The Indians were here first.
>
>In 1855, the federal government agreed to move the 14 tribes and bands of
>Yakama Indians to one sprawling chunk of land south of the town of Yakima.
>
>In 1859, President James Buchanan signed over control of 1.3 million acres
>to the Indians.
>
>Today, the Yakama Nation, with about 8,000 members, harvests timber,
>produces fruit, operates an industrial park and a casino. It has its own
>code of laws, its own police force, its own courts. The question is whether
>Yakama laws apply to non-Indians who own thousands of acres within the
>reservation boundaries.
>
>When the Yakamas approved the tax in November, the Tribal Council said money
>collected from businesses on the reservation would be used to curb alcohol
>abuse, drunken driving and fetal-alcohol syndrome. Each of the four alcohol
>distributors would pay $5,000 in annual license fees. Each of the 47
>businesses and three private clubs that sell alcohol would be charged
>between 40 cents and $4 for every container of beer, wine or liquor sold.
>
>On the reservation, Indians have the right to make laws that benefit their
>people. In this case, councilmember Jerry Meninick said, the Indian nation
>needs help fighting alcoholism, and if that means taxing alcohol
>establishments to get the money, so be it.
>
>But the tax isn't only about curbing alcohol abuse. The Yakamas are still
>smarting over the state's efforts to catch non-tribal members buying untaxed
>cigarettes from reservation stores. They are angry about Congress' attempts
>to control Indian lands.
>
>This tax is a flex of muscle. Says Meninick: "We have the authority. We're a
>sovereign nation."
>
>Distributors disagree on how far that authority reaches. On Jan. 4, the day
>the tax took effect, they stopped delivering alcohol within the reservation
>>boundaries.
>
>Both sides have drawn lines in the sand. No one has paid the Yakamas a dime
>in taxes, so twice the tribe has confiscated beer they said had been brought
>in illegally.
>
>Two privately run state liquor stores will move off the reservation when
>they sell their inventory -- "out of respect for the Yakama Nation's desire
>to reduce consumption of alcohol on the reservation," Gov. Gary Locke said
>in a Jan. 6 letter to the tribal chairman.
>
>Convenience store owners, eyeing bare refrigerator shelves, are talking
>about closing. Angry legislators have scheduled hearings on the tax's effect
>n Yakima Valley -- hundreds of service jobs lost in a county where the
>unemployment rate in non-agricultural industries already is 10 percent. And
>Yakima County's prosecutor has called on the state attorney general to sue.
>
>The Indians, as one lifelong resident put it, have "messed with the screw
>that turns the whole wheel."
>
>Hoping to end the stalemate, Locke sent a top aide to the Yakama Nation Jan.
>25 to discuss delaying the tax for six months while tribal leaders and state
>officials work out a compromise.
>
>Kimberly Craven, director of the governor's Office of Indian Affairs, spent
>three days talking with Indian leaders about the tax. Among the discussion
>points: Locke said he'd found $4 million in Medicaid money the Yakamas could
>use for alcohol education and treatment.
>
>Indian leaders say if the state truly wanted to compromise, it would pay the
>$20,000 in license fees and negotiate on the taxes. "We come out ashamed of
>the likes of Washington state," Meninick said.'
>
>Rather than negotiate in good faith, the state pulled two of its liquor
>stores out and left the retailers to fend for themselves.
>
>The tribal council's vote was not done in the heat of the moment, he said.
>"It was a combination of frustrations, the world around us never taking us
>seriously."
>
>He scoffed at merchants' contention that the alcohol tax amounts to taxation
>without representation.
>
>"We've been here for 150 years saying that. Why the double standard?
>Congress has tried to regulate Indian commerce, economic development, even
>land use," Meninick said.
>
>Bring on a lawsuit, he said.
>
>"The big question here is under what authority would Washington state have
>any justification for a lawsuit on something that is directly under the
>Constitution?"
>
>Three years ago, Yong Kim and his wife, who had come from Korea, spent their
>life savings -- $100,000 -- to buy Allen's Market.
>
>Since then, there's been no day off, no vacation, no chance even to sleep
>late.
>
>Selling beer, soda, chips and sundries in Wapato, they have been able to
>support themselves and their children, ages 1, 5 and 9.
>
>Now, with no beer or wine delivery, sales are slacking off, and the Kims
>fear they will lose the store.
>
>"Customers are not going to quit drinking," Kim said. "They'll go to
>Yakima."
>
>"What else can I do?" he asked. "If I'm out of here, I lost everything."
>>
>----
>P-I reporter Candy Hatcher can be reached at 206-448-8320 or
>candyhatcher@seattle-pi.com

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