House OKs tribal fuel tax deals

BOISE – The Idaho House has voted 55-8 to ratify fuel tax agreements with four Idaho Indian tribes, ending years of rancorous debate and litigation.

House Speaker Lawerence Denney told the House, “The tribes came and they negotiated in good faith … and we did accomplish several things that we have been trying to accomplish for a number of years. … Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is a good agreement.”

Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, said, “I do think that we have a chance to put a very contentious issue behind us.”

Opponents in the House were vocal, however. Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, told the House, “You’re elected to represent the people of the state of Idaho, not a sovereign nation, not an independent nation, not wards of the federal government.”

Harwood said the agreements, by decreeing that tribes collect their own gas taxes equal to the state’s on sales at tribal-operated gas stations on reservations, are “allowing tribal government to take money from an Idaho citizen and put it in their own pocket.”

Harwood said he hoped the state could take the tax funds, rather than let the tribe collect them and spend them on their own transportation needs.

“We need the money for the highways,” Harwood told the House. “We’re going to give away somewhere between $4 million and $6 million to an independent government, and then we’re gonna turn around and go to our constituents and say, well, we have to raise the registration on your car … so we can go out and fix these highways.”

Harwood represents the district that includes the Coeur d’Alene Reservation.

The agreements, with the Coeur d’Alene, Nez Perce, Kootenai and Shoshone-Bannock tribes, provide that the tribes will charge gas taxes equal to the state’s 25-cent-per-gallon gas tax and will raise their tax if the state raises its tax. They also require the tribes to spend their tax proceeds on transportation-related needs, and they settle specific issues about interstate trucking and transfer fees.

Last year, lawmakers passed legislation to impose the state’s gas tax on tribal gas stations – despite legal problems – if tribes didn’t reach negotiated agreements with the governor by Dec. 1. All four agreements met that deadline.

Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, said, “The thing that bothers me about the agreement is that they are allowed to use this money for such a big variety of things. … I think we won part of the war but I feel like in the end we didn’t get what we started out negotiating for.”

The issue has caused hard feelings for years as the state has repeatedly sought to tax reservation fuel sales, but has lost repeatedly in court on constitutional grounds because states can’t tax sovereign Indian nations. After the last big court ruling, Idaho had to pay back $3.7 million in improperly collected fuel taxes, plus interest, to the Coeur d’Alene, Nez Perce and Shoshone-Bannock tribes.

The new agreements are with those tribes, which operate gas stations, and with the Kootenai Tribe, in case it ever operates a gas station in the future.

Gov. Butch Otter’s spokesman, Jon Hanian, hailed the overwhelming passage of the ratification resolution, SCR 125. “We’re very pleased,” he said. “It shows that when you enter into good-faith negotiations, they can and do pay off.”

The House approval followed a unanimous vote of approval from the Senate.