During the just-concluded state budget battle, Team Cuomo was stunned by what one official called Albany’s “tribal politics.”
That was hyperbole; now comes the real thing.
Gov. Cuomo’s budget anticipates income of some $130 million from the taxation of cigarette sales on Indian reservations. But he’s the fifth straight governor to harbor such plans — and nary a nickel’s been collected so far.
When his father, Mario Cuomo, tried to collect cig taxes from the Senecas in 1992, tribesmen lit fires on the Thruway.
In 1997, they repeated the trick for Gov. Pataki — and attacked state troopers who had surrounded the reservation.
Flash forward to last year: The state was supposed to start collecting the taxes on Sept. 1. But that didn’t happen, thanks to injunctions from the courts.
And there will be more holdups still: Just two weeks ago, a district court judge extended his restraining order barring the tax collection . . . indefinitely.
The stakes are only getting higher. The Senecas — New York’s most prolific buttleggers — have withheld $228 million in casino-slots revenues in a blatant attempt to strong-arm the state.
Cuomo shouldn’t be deterred. The slots revenue and the cigarette cash are important — but the principle is critical.
The courts have repeatedly upheld New York’s right to collect the cash — the current injunctions notwithstanding — and a refusal to move forward here would be capitulation to mob coercion.
The Indians claim their reservations are sovereign nations. Funny, isn’t it, how rarely that topic comes up when the issue is Medicaid cash and other social-services payments to the tribes?
The Indians owe the money.
Cuomo needs to collect it.