Balancing State Budgets on the Backs of Indians

The $175 billion state budget shortfall can "be traced to 15 years of state tax cuts," and red states, especially, continue to slash corporate income taxes. Meanwhile, Washington State Republicans propose closing "tribal tax loopholes" to supposedly earn the state $110 million every biennium, to be used for "education, public safety and services for the most vulnerable."

So let me get this straight: states continue to cut taxes on Corporate America through "thousands of credits, deductions, abatements and incentive packages," which guts revenues for state services; while proposing to close "tax loopholes" for tribal enterprises, which would gut revenues for tribal governmental services.

Make no mistake about it, the state tax man cometh to Indian Country. Be prepared.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

Fox News' John Stossel Doesn't Know Jack About American Indians

Gabe Galanda is quoted at length in an Indian Country Today Media Network story about ignorant remarks that Fox News contributor John Stosell made about American Indians last week on live TV.

Gabe Galanda, an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and an Indian law attorney said Stossel’s lumping together of Indians, Puerto Ricans, African Americans and Irish reveals a lack of knowledge about the sovereignty of Indian nations.

“Stossel, like many Americans, fails to fundamentally appreciate that tribes are governments, not ‘groups’ of individuals as he says,” he said, pointing that American Indians are the only Americans who are indigenous to the United States and the only peoples to whom the U.S. owes a trust responsibility.

“The United States has historically done a disservice to Native Americans, by and through genocidal and assimilationist federal policies. As a result of federal allotment, assimilation and termination policies, which remain in force to this day despite Congress’ repudiation of those policies, some tribal communities are in fact worse off socio-economically than most other American citizens,” Galanda said.

In mocking Indians’ assertions about broken treaties and stolen land, Stossel shifts from speaking in the Indian voice when he says “we have treaties,” to speaking in the settler colonist’s voice when he says “we stole their land,” but it isn’t evidence of an identity crisis on Stossel’s part, Galanda said. “He’s confused. On the one hand, he recognizes the existence of Indian Treaties, bilateral agreements between sovereign nations, namely the United States and tribal governments; yet on the other, he refers to Indians essentially as special interest citizen groups.”

Despite hundreds of years of trust obligation to Indian people, the federal government has failed in virtually every attempt to ‘help’ Indians, Galanda said. With the exception of the last forty years of federal self-determination policy, federal Indian gaming, and contract preference policies in particular, the U.S. has failed in every effort to economically enfranchise Indian country, he said.

It's one thing to comfortably espouse right wing vitriol from republican pulpit Fox News. It's another to contribute "news" without having any idea what you are talking about.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

Seneca Nation Leverages Tribal Sovereign Economic Advantages to Woo Corporate America to Tribal Lands

True to business advice delivered by Gabe Galanda on March 15 at RES 2011, the Seneca Nation is inviting Corporate giants like Verizon to greenfield new operations centers on Seneca tribal lands. According to an Indian Country Today Media Network story, "Seneca Offers Land, Tax Advantages, Expertise to Verizon":

Seneca President Robert Odawi Porter wrote to Ivan G. Seidenberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon, on March 18 urging him to consider the many advantages of Seneca Nation land for future Verizon development. . . .

[T]he Seneca Nation doesn’t suffer from the same “systemic impediments” as New York’s local and county governments and invited him to visit Seneca territory to see for himself. The nation, Porter said, supports business development on its territories and throughout Western New York. . . .

Businesses that develop facilities on sovereign Indian land enjoy a number of competitive advantages, Porter said, listing a number of them:

- The Seneca Nation has civil regulatory authority over its own territory, meaning development on Seneca lands would not be subject to New York and county regulatory regimes so that projects can move forward more quickly than on non-Indian land. - Seneca has “streamlined processes” over the tens of thousands of acres of its territory in Western New York. As a result, companies who locate businesses on Seneca land won’t face “nuisance litigation from neighboring landowners as Verizon did," Porter said. - Businesses that locate on Indian land also have certain tax advantages, including in Seneca’s case, no property taxes. “As a sovereign nation, we control our own tax regimes. Culturally, we do not believe in imposing business-choking taxes on our people and development partners. As a result, your facility would not be subject to property taxes on our lands,” Port told the Verizon CEO. The IRS also allows third-party businesses on Indian land to use a shorter depreciation recovery period of approximately 40 percent for most non-residential depreciable property used in development.

Bravo, Seneca Nation, bravo!

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

"Dueling Sovereigns: Collecting Taxes in Indian Country"

Gabe Galanda and Anthony Broadman will be co-presenting, "Dueling Sovereigns: Collecting Taxes in Indian Country," at the 25th Annual Coming Together of Peoples Conference at the University of Wisconsin Law School on March 25, 2011.

State and tribal regulations arguably come into the most direct conflict at tax time. Efforts to streamline the federal tax code could lead the IRS to treat tribes more similarly to states, and some states would like to implement on-reservation sales taxes to ease their budget crises. What case can be made for the interests of each sovereign, and who has been winning when they collide?

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda and Anthony Broadman are partners at Galanda Broadman PLLC, an American Indian majority-owned law firm. Gabe is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California. He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com. Anthony can be reached at 206.691.3631 or anthony@galandabroadman.com.

The Business Case for Private Investment and Development in Indian Country

On Wednesday, at RES 2011 in Las Vegas, Gabe Galanda presented a paper titled, "The Business Case for Private Investment and Development in Indian Country" (updated March 31, 2011). The paper was commissioned by the U.S. Interior Department's Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development, for presentation to representatives of Corporate America in attendance at RES.

There has never before been a better time to develop businesses on Indian lands or otherwise in partnership with tribal governments. The Great Recession has taken a disastrous toll on state and local governments. State tax revenues have plummeted, causing state and local governments to cut programs and reduce workforces. Local development impact fees have spiked. Tax assessors are assessing property and excise taxes with reckless abandon, as many state legislatures having withdrawn various tax exemptions and incentives that were designed to catalyze local business development and job creation. Obtaining building permits now takes even longer. It is getting more and more difficult, if not impossible in some jurisdictions, to develop new businesses in traditional commercial sectors.

But while state and local governments struggle to make ends meet, tribal governments have largely avoided economic catastrophe. Fueled by the $26.4 billion Indian gaming industry, Indian Country is generally faring much better than neighboring local economies since the recession took hold in 2008. Ironically, not having property tax bases to begin with, most tribal governmental revenues have remained stable. But tribes are not getting complacent; they recognize that the Indian gaming industry will not sustain its exponential growth over the last decade. The inevitable legalization of Internet gaming and, in some jurisdictions, commercial land-based gaming, will eventually put a major dent in Indian Country’s bottom line. As such, tribal governments are more than ever looking to diversify their economies.

Where tribes bring a staggering array tangibles like land and location, and intangibles like sovereignty, relaxed red tape and tax exemption, their corporate business partners bring proven industry expertise and new capital to the reservation. Whether through a joint venture between a tribe and a non-Indian business, a tribal land lease to a non-tribal company, or a tax credit investment – all of which are contemplated below – there are an abundance of very advantageous reservation development deals for Corporate America to symbiotically explore with tribes at this time in our nation’s history.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

See, the State Tax Man Cometh

Last month, Indian Country Today Media Network has published a column by Gabe Galanda, "The State Taxman Cometh." Consider now this headline, "Tax man eyes Indian tobacco sales."

The state's top tax collector said the state is ready to quickly end tax-free cigarette sales by Indian retailers to non-Indian customers.

New York State is awaiting a ruling from a federal appeals court on the long-simmering tobacco tax issue, said Thomas Mattox, who was confirmed Tuesday by the State Senate to the tax commissioner's post.

"We're prepared to enforce immediately," Mattox said after being unanimously backed by the Senate Finance Committee for the tax post. . . .

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is counting on $130 million in revenue by ending the tax-free Indian tobacco sales. The state wants to collect the tax "upstream" at the tobacco wholesale level so that the taxes already would have been paid to Albany by the time cigarettes reach Indian retailers.

Expect to see many more news stories about state and local tax collectors seeking to balance state budgets on the backs of Indians.

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.

Arbitration in Indian Country: Taking the Long View

Gabe Galanda has published “Arbitration in Indian Country: Taking the Long View”, in the current edition of the American Arbitration Association's Dispute Resolution Journal.

By agreeing to private arbitration, however, tribes do not cede litigation or settlement leverage to non-tribal opponents who know tribes are increasingly fearful of litigating and losing again in state or federal court and thereby creating bad law for all tribes.

He will be speaking from that paper at Seattle University Law School on March 18 at a symposium, “ADR’s Role in Resolving Indian Disputes: A Tangled Net or A Connected Web?”

Gabriel "Gabe" Galanda is a partner at Galanda Broadman PLLC, of Seattle, an American Indian majority-owned law firm.  He is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of Covelo, California.  He can be reached at 206.691.3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com, or via galandabroadman.com.