BIA extends land trust fight by years

Our View: Feds extend land trust fight by years


The failure of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to make a decision on the land into trust application by the Cayuga Indian Nation is government bureaucracy at its worst.

The Cayugas have been seeking to put land in Cayuga and Seneca counties into federal trust so that its members may (A) stop paying taxes on the land and (B) open up gambling houses, and both counties have fought the proposal — at great expense — every step of the way.

The application has been mired in the BIA’s machinery for more than five years, but instead of making a decision one way or another the BIA now says that the trust application is not being considered because it’s incomplete.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said that the government “has headed our call” to block the application. State Sen. Michael Nozzolio called it “a tremendous victory.”

But because the Nation is now free to dot its I’s and cross its T’s and then resubmit the paperwork, that type of celebratory language is too much too soon.

We believe the BIA should reject the application, too, but that’s not what happened this week. What happened was that the BIA put off, indefinitely, making a difficult decision.

The failure to put this issue to rest may be nothing more than a minor setback for the Nation, and we believe local experts Cayuga County Legislator George Fearon and Upstate Citizens for Equality’s Richard Talcott are right on the ball in pointing out that this development isn’t the victory the counties had been hoping for.

If anything, it paves the way for mountains of legal bills for the two counties because a yes or no decision on the future the Cayuga’s lands won’t be settled for years to come.