Shawnee, tribes fail to agree on sales tax

Listen to this article

SHAWNEE – In a closed meeting at the Citizen Potawatomi National Cultural Heritage Center on Monday, Shawnee officials and representatives from four area tribes reached no decision regarding the city’s sales tax request.

“We agreed to get together again, but we didn’t set another meeting date,” said City Manager Brian McDougal, adding that he has to ask the city’s Board of Commissioners about what the city should do next in regards to the matter.

The city commission is not scheduled to meet again until April 7, but McDougal said he’s hopeful that a special session will be called.

Shawnee has requested that the nations start collecting sales tax from non-tribal members on their properties and remitting it to the city. The CPN is the only nation with a retail business in the city, Firelake Discount Foods at 1570 Gordon Cooper Dr. However, the tribe says the store is not located within city limits.

Representatives from the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma met with Shawnee officials, including Mayor Wes Mainord and McDougal.

The tribes were not pleased with the meeting, Citizen Potawatomi Nation Chairman John Barrett said in a statement.

“From the perspective of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, the meeting was little more than a cosmetic attempt to make the city appear reasonable in the public eye because they offered to negotiate,” Barrett said. “The negotiation was entirely one-sided. The only choice left to the CPN was to meet the city’s demands for tax collections or be sued in federal court. Each tribal leader present countered Mainord with statements of fact that the trust land of their nations is not in Shawnee and not subject to the city’s governmental authority.”

Before the meeting, the city presented the tribes with a letter referencing court cases that stated that federal law permits states and cities to require Indian retailers on reservations to collect and remit tax from sales made to non-Indians or to Indians who are not members of the tribe governing the reservation.

“Sovereign immunity does not excuse compliance with an injunctive order of the court issue against government officials,” according to the letter.

The city never intended to disrespect the tribe’s sovereign immunity, Mainord said in a statement.

“We recognize the contributions of the tribal nations to our community and the economic development they have brought,” he said.

He said there has been no decision made as to whether the city will begin litigation against any of the tribal nations.

Barrett said that the tribe disagrees with the city’s stance.

“Mainord flatly refused to acknowledge the very concept of tribal sovereignty and tribal jurisdiction, a tenet of federal law since the 1830s,” he said. “When told that the land on which the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, the Sac and Fox Nation, the Absentee Shawnee tribe, and the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma tribal governments operate is deeded to the United States and held in trust as federal land that is not part of the city of Shawnee, he said only ‘we disagree.’”

McDougal said the tribes and the city each presented information about their entities’ finances. The nations discussed how tribal sales tax collected at their businesses is used to fund tribal operations. Shawnee officials discussed how sales tax is used to fund city operations.

He said there was no remedy discussed regarding the city’s request for the sales tax money, such as monthly payments by tribes in lieu of sales tax collections, which is seen in other cities in the state.

“We are pleased that these tribal leaders were willing to meet with us,” Mainord said. “The dialogue is important, and I think we all learned something from the discussion.”