Now this is clever: The Seneca Indians, smarting over Gov. Paterson’s latest attempt to collect taxes on their booming illicit cigarette trade, this week announced they’d retaliate by slapping their own tax . . . on the New York State Thruway.
It’s an “illegal business,” too – or so the tribe would have it.
The Senecas announced Tuesday that they’re planning to build toll booths on the section of the Thruway that runs through their Buffalo-area reservation – and charge drivers $2 for the privilege of passing through.
Clearly, they aren’t about to surrender their tax-free tobacco empire – which pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars a year – without a fight.
But while the tribe may couch its behavior in high-sounding terms like “sovereignty” and “treaty rights,” all they’re really showing is a breathtaking contempt for the rule of law.
The US Supreme Court ruled 15 years ago that states have every right to collect taxes on reservation cigarettes sold to non-Indians – the vast majority of the Seneca trade.
And their Thruway nonsense runs afoul of a 1954 agreement – upheld by a federal court – in which the state paid for the right of way.
Indeed, to hear Seneca leaders talk, you’d think they were already in open rebellion: “Our concern as nation leaders justifies taking any and all prudent actions to protect and defend the nation’s economy and the way of life of the Seneca people,” declared the tribal president, Barry Snyder – himself a big-time cigarette retailer.
And “prudent actions,” for the Senecas, are sure to include organized violence.
After all, the last time the state tried to enforce the tax, in 1997, bands of Senecas set fire to tires piled on the Thruway and brawled with state troopers who came to clear them away.
This time, the Seneca tribal council has already approved the hiring of 100 “emergency response personnel” – ostensibly to prevent “interference” with tribal activities.
Back in ’97, of course, then-Gov. George Pataki responded to the violence by caving in – setting off another dozen years of tax evasion that enriched criminals, starved state revenues and put the squeeze to law-abiding retailers.
Paterson can’t afford to make the same mistake.