Cass County Board takes stand against Leech Lake ordinance
I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
June 9, 1999
By Devlyn Brooks
The Cass County Board Monday became the first local government in the region to take a stance in opposition of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe's recently enacted Tribal Employment Rights Ordinance.
Citing a concern as to how TERO's proposed fees and hiring practice requirements would affect the cost of county construction projects, the Board directed all county departments not to execute any contract or comply with any order that recognizes the sovereign authority of the band in respect to the TERO ordinance.
What this means, Cass County Administrator Bob Yochum said Tuesday, is that no county department is allowed to proceed with any action for which TERO fees could be assessed and that they are to pay no requested TERO fees.
In addition, the Board's resolution asks state agencies to consider doing the same with any state contracts that would come under the auspices of Leech Lake's TERO ordinance.
Yochum said Tuesday the resolution will remain in effect until the county receives from the state attorney general's office advice concerning the legality of TERO. Upon receiving that advice, he said the county will reintroduce the resolution for discussion.
For instance, he said, the county's road construction this summer will be postponed for the time being because most of the construction is contracted out. And because TERO fees would apply to those types of contracts, road construction projects will not be executed until the attorney general's office issues advice to the county.
"We hope to have a preliminary response (from the attorney general) in the next couple of weeks," Yochum said.
Leech Lake tribal attorney Joe Plumer said Tuesday that the Board's action was unfortunate and was the result of bad information.
"Our original intentions were to work cooperatively with local units of government," Plumer said. "We don't want to get into a legal battle with Cass County over TERO's (legality). We would much rather come to the table and discuss this rationally."
The TERO ordinance sparked a major controversy in May when Leech Lake officials announced it would begin to enforce rules concerning fees on construction projects inside the reservation's boundaries, and the rules concerning preferred hiring practices of American Indian workers on those projects.
According to a memo by the band's recently hired TERO Director Mark Rogers, the tribe enacted the ordinance last year and began to enforce it shortly after his hiring earlier this year.
According to the ordinance, any private or public construction project occurring within the boundaries of the reservation that costs more than $200,000 would be assessed a 3 percent fee payable to the tribe's TERO office. Projects costing $10,000 to $200,000 would be assessed a 2 percent fee, and projects costing less than $10,000 would be assessed a flat fee of $25.
The money, according to the ordinance, would be used to support the tribe's TERO office and also for job skills training and education for Leech Lake's band members.
After the tribe's announcement of its upcoming enforcement of TERO last month, many concerned with how the ordinance would affect them started voicing various concerns about the ordinance.
Private business owners have said they fear another tax on any future improvements could drive them out of business, having an opposite effect of what TERO's proposed goal is. For instance, Teresa Bruns, who owns Morning Start Resort on Cass Lake, lost most of her resort to a fire this spring. To rebuild it will cost her thousands of dollars, but presently she is hesitating because she doesn't know what effect TERO will have on her building costs.
Cass County officials have cited several examples of how construction projects already planned to take place this year would cost thousands of dollars more with the addition of TERO fees. In addition, without knowledge of TERO, Yochum said the county never budgeted money for TERO fees, and so the money would have to come from other county funds.
Another major concern is the possible construction of a new Cass Lake-Bena middle school, which was already in the planning stages before TERO was announced by the tribe.
Although the state Legislature did not include funding for the project in this year's bonding bill, should the project be funded in the next session, there could be major problems.
At a proposed $11 million, the school project would be assessed more than $320,000 in TERO fees. And being the school district didn't know about the TERO ordinance, the fees were never figured into the project and were not approved by the district's voters. That means either the district will have to scale back the design of the school to include TERO fees and still meet the approved $11 million limit, or the TERO fees would have to be paid by other district funds.
Leech Lake officials, however, contend that if other government units would just be willing to come together and hear each other's perceived problems, they could work cooperatively on the implementation of TERO.
Plumer added that the Leech Lake Tribal Council adopted TERO about six months ago because it saw a gross under hiring of Indians for construction jobs, and that the ordinance was an effort by the band to reduce the 45 percent unemployment on the reservation.
That is the goal of the TERO office, Plumer said, despite the fear the new ordinance will curtail economic development.
"We don't want to be a bad neighbor," he said.
Comentarios