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He was joined by Coeur d4Alene leader Ernie Stensgar, Blaine Edmo of
the Shoshone-Bannock tribe and former Attorney General Larry EchoHawk
in opposing the bill.
Tribal store managers and leaders from other tribes attended as well.
Not only could the tax be devastating to tribal economies, they said,
but it could end up cutting money for reservation services (paid for
with tribal cigarette taxes) in favor of state services that may not
even be offered on reservations.

Former state Rep. Don Pischner, who now represents a group of tobacco
retailers, proposed and pitched the bill, which would make tobacco wholesalers
pay the tax on all cigarette packs they distribute. Now, tribal sales
are exempt, and though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the state can4t
tax tobacco sales within the tribes, it is legal to make reservation
stores charge the tax to non-tribal customers.
Pischner4s bill would address this by creating a complex formula for
estimating how many cigarettes are actually sold to tribal members,
and the stores would receive a rebate on those.
Pischner said it4s not fair to the tobacco retailers near reservations
to have this competitive disadvantage, and he said cartons of cigarettes
often sit unsold on store racks in northern Idaho.
Why would you buy a carton when you could pool your money and get a
pickup load and bring them back home? he said.

Donna Simon, a tobacco seller from Post Falls, said her store is one
that suffers.
We4re not trying to put everyone out of business, she said. We just
want everyone to profit.
But Pischner worked to make other points, too. He said smoking has killed
two of his friends and left another facing serious surgery. And he and
one of two others to support the measure insinuated that tribal stores
are more likely to sell tobacco products to minors.
But tribal leaders refuted that, and Challis GOP Rep. Lenore Barrett
said experience shows non-tribal tobacco sellers have been caught doing
the same thing.
Barrett and Pocatello Rep. Elmer Martinez tried to kill the bill Wednesday
in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, but they were outvoted
by those who want to pass it and others who had more questions than
answers by the end of the two-hour meeting.
Barrett said she thought the bill crossed tribal sovereignty lines,
was impractical as it was written and was a tax increase.
I don4t propose to raise taxes on anybody or anything, she said.
And at first, it looked as if her motion would pass.
EchoHawk, who is now teaching law at Brigham Young University but still
a special counsel for the Sho-Bans at the Fort Hall Reservation near
Blackfoot, outlined the history behind the issue and laid out some of
the reasons the tribes aren4t faced with the tax today.
In 1974, after the state Tax Commission tried to collect the tax on
the Coeur d4Alene Reservation, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled the state
had no jurisdiction. In the years that followed, the Sho-Bans and others
began economic development projects based on these tax immunities.
Now, many of them rely on their own cigarette tax each reservation has
a different level of taxation, and each applies it differently.

By 1980, when the U.S. Supreme Court said there was no obstacle to taxing
cigarette sales to non-Indians, the tobacco businesses had provided
enough income and jobs on reservations plagued by high unemployment
and poverty that the Legislature forbid the Tax Commission from collecting
them.
The reasons, EchoHawk said, were the same as they are today.
. Jobs unemployment was, and is, much higher on the reservations than
anywhere else in the state.
. Tribal governments provide the primary services on reservations, including
roads, schools, police and more.
. To change the law would be to upset the apple cart.
.The need for services, the need for jobs would still be there on the
tribal reservations, he said.
He and the tribes called for a legislative study committee to look at
how revenues and services play out on Indian lands.
The American Indians who spoke covered ground the committee hadn4t in
its earlier discussion of the bill, but the majority Pischner thought
he had might have held together if the tobacco wholesalers hadn4t spoken
against the bill.
Idaho Wholesale Marketers Association lobbyist Karleane Allen said the
changes have her members confused, even after talking to the state Tax
Commission.
We don4t know how to do it, she said.
Rexburg Republican Rep. Dell Raybould made the motion to hold the bill
for a week. It passed 11-7.