The Cayuga Indian Nation of New York has paid back property taxes to Cayuga and Seneca counties in a move local officials are describing as a strategic ploy to have its lands taken into trust.

The Cayugas have an application with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs asking the government to take its land into trust, which would effectively give the tribe sovereignty. But the BIA has stated that it cannot accept any lands into trust that are not current on taxes.

Cayuga and Seneca county leaders are opposing the trust application.

"This issue is not the taxes past due, but the taxes that will never be paid, if the land is taken into trust," said Seneca County Board of Supervisors Chairman Robert Shipley, in a press release issued Thursday.

For more on this story, read Friday's edition of The Citizen.