10/10/2000 SELECT BOARD Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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I Board of Selectmen Minutes—Verbatim October 10, 2000 Use of Legal Resources: Selectman Leveille: I actually asked to put this on the agenda because a couple of weeks ago we made a decision about the Tribal Council... We subsequently passed a motion, and I'm not sure if I voted in favor, but I questioned myself while I was doing it, and I questioned myself in a sense that in effect we would be very careful and very limited on how we use the legal resources that might be available to us, and that is all fine. The fact that bothered me was that we actually passed a motion saying that we would not contact our attorneys or use our lobbyists. That we would not contact our attorneys without first coming to the Board of Selectmen specifically explaining what we want to talk to them about, specifically discussing the details of any position we would agree on. I find that I think that is a very... way to handle this,and so I wanted to put it on the agenda... Selectman Marsters: David, let me make a few remarks because I also, a couple of weeks ago found out some information that I'd like the Board of Selectmen to know... As you know, we did, was basically, initially cut off our talks with the Tribal Council, and we took the course of action for them to go through the BIA process, figuring that this was their job, the BIA. It's a federal government issue, and we would let the BIA do their job. Well unbeknown to us, while we were making that decision, there were some changes being proposed with the current legislation to change how the BIA make decisions...in part of a briefing paper, it was presented or read to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on May 24, 2000. When we had made our decision to send it to the BIA, nobody on the Board of Selectmen had this knowledge that this was going on. On September 6th, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee approved a Bill, 5-611. A bill that would have a major impact regarding the procedure for acknowledging the existence of Indian Tribes under federal law. Although the BIA has been making Tribal acknowledgment under its regulations for about 20 years, Congress has never delegated authority except for those stages of such actions by the executive branch. Thus, the Bill 5-611 is an extremely important bill that will define how the executive branch 1