Ferry Considers Suing Tribes Over Zoning Dispute Centers On Jurisdiction Over Property Owned By Non-Indians

Ferry County commissioners have set out to resolve a decades-old, nationwide dispute about overlapping jurisdictions on Indian reservations.

Two of three commissioners want to sue the Colville Confederated Tribes to determine whether the tribal government can enforce its land-use regulations on non-Indians who own property within the Colville Reservation.

Prosecutor Al Nielson flatly refused to go along with commissioners’ earlier plan to intervene in a tribal lawsuit to prevent Dan Hoover, a non-Indian, from subdividing land he owns in the tribes’ Hells Gate Game Preserve east of Keller. Both the county and tribal governments claim jurisdiction over Hoover’s land.

Hoover and others complain that they pay taxes to the county and have no voice in the tribal government. Tribal leaders say Hoover’s situation is the same as if he bought land in a foreign country.

Nielson is leaving the door ajar for the commissioners’ new plan to seek a more general ruling on tribal land-use authority over non-Indians. But Nielson believes Ferry County is ill-equipped to litigate jurisdictional disputes created by decades of federal Indian policy.

While Commissioners Jim Hall and Dennis Snook believe tribal land regulations threaten property values, Nielson says values may be threatened more by a lawsuit that creates turmoil in the real estate market.

The tribes so far have targeted only Hoover, but a failed county lawsuit could establish a precedent for all non-Indian owners of reservation land, Nielson warned.

“We should work on a local level to try to mediate and bring about compromise,” he said. “That’s the cheapest and the most effective way to deal with these things.”

The problem with that approach is that the county has been doing all the compromising, Commission Chairman Hall said. The tribal government already insists its zoning regulations apply to everyone.

“Our position is not to further alienate the tribe, but we can’t deal with them from a position of weakness,” Hall said. “The tribe has to be willing to deal with us on a level playing field. Otherwise, it is wasting their time and ours.”

Nielson predicted the county would have to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which muddied the water in 1990 with a split decision in a similar case from Yakima County. “Maybe the court has changed enough that, if they (the commissioners) were to get all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court it would rule their way this time,” Nielson said.

He estimates that would cost “a minimum of $150,000 and very easily much more than that.” Such an expenditure is “hard to understand” in view of the fact that the commissioners have just had to cut several county jobs to balance the budget, he said.

“We don’t have money to buy postage stamps,” said Commissioner Gary Kohler, who opposes the proposed lawsuit.

Ferry County, population 7,300, shouldn’t attempt to resolve a national issue by itself, Kohler said. Relatively few of his constituents favor the idea, he added. “We’re all for property rights, but are we all for Dan Hoover’s issues? No,” Kohler said.

Hall said he and Snook hope to receive volunteer help with the suit if Nielson won’t represent them. They think the cost might be far less than Nielson’s estimate, and note it probably would be spread over several years.

“If we never stood up for what is right because we thought it was going to cost us money, then we might as well not run as commissioners,” Hall said. “I’m not much of a gambler, but I feel that we have to do it.”

, DataTimes