Upstate Citizens for Equality's motorcade Saturday to protest the state government's failure to collect sales taxes on products sold by Indian-owned retailers to non-Indians was designed to highlight a major revenue gap in the state's troubled finances.
And while we've heard a wide range over the years for how much money the state loses on such sales annually, even the smallest amount is substantial at a time when budget deficits are now exceeding $1 billion.
The governor's executive budget has pegged the figure at $120 million, which is at the low end of estimates put out there in the past.
And in addition to lost sales taxes, there's the lost business that other retailers sustain because of the unfair competition they must endure. That leads to job cuts and store closings, a further blow to the economy.
At a time when Gov. David Paterson is rightly calling on state agencies and the Legislature to make some difficult spending cuts, he offers no reasonable explanation for failing to address this matter.
If he does start defending his inaction, which mirrors the policy of his two predecessors, we certainly hope it has nothing to do with the rhetoric coming from the Indian tribes. Cayuga Indian Nation leaders and members of other tribes from around the state held their own counter-demonstration on Saturday. They labeled the UCE motorcade participants racists for even staging their protests, and said the state has absolutely no right to enforce a sales tax law against them because they are a sovereign nation.
While it's true that the Cayugas are a federally recognized tribe, two decades worth of litigation that ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court made it perfectly clear that the Cayugas' land, which they have purchased in legal transactions in accordance with state law, is not sovereign.
The governor's executive budget has pegged the figure at $120 million, which is at the low end of estimates put out there in the past.
And in addition to lost sales taxes, there's the lost business that other retailers sustain because of the unfair competition they must endure. That leads to job cuts and store closings, a further blow to the economy.
At a time when Gov. David Paterson is rightly calling on state agencies and the Legislature to make some difficult spending cuts, he offers no reasonable explanation for failing to address this matter.
If he does start defending his inaction, which mirrors the policy of his two predecessors, we certainly hope it has nothing to do with the rhetoric coming from the Indian tribes. Cayuga Indian Nation leaders and members of other tribes from around the state held their own counter-demonstration on Saturday. They labeled the UCE motorcade participants racists for even staging their protests, and said the state has absolutely no right to enforce a sales tax law against them because they are a sovereign nation.
While it's true that the Cayugas are a federally recognized tribe, two decades worth of litigation that ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court made it perfectly clear that the Cayugas' land, which they have purchased in legal transactions in accordance with state law, is not sovereign.
