Two Santa Ynez Valley community groups have received a legal response in their case against the federal government challenging an effort by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to expand their reservation.

Preservation of Los Olivos (POLO) and Preservation of Santa Ynez (POSY) announced this week that they are pleased by the response related to a 2008 decision against the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) regarding a Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians application for a 6.9-acre property across Highway 246 from the tribe’s Santa Ynez casino.

In February, the groups filed a 56-page document arguing their standing to seek an appeal of the DOI’s fee-to-trust ruling and challenged the constitutional authority of the secretary of the interior — using recent Supreme Court rulings — to remove any land from state jurisdiction through the fee-to-trust process.

The groups also contended that the Chumash Indian tribe is not a tribal government.

The filing is significant in that it is one of the first times — if not the first time — that a citizens group has been able to argue the merits of its case to the Interior Board of Indian Appeals (IBIA), according to Kathy Cleary, POLO board president.

The fee-to-trust process removes land from local jurisdiction and places it under tribal authority. The sovereign tribal land then becomes exempt from local and state taxes and local planning and zoning laws

The brief includes documentation the groups believe prove the Chumash were not under federal jurisdiction in 1934, and based on a recent Supreme Court decision do not qualify to take any land into trust.

In February 2009, the Supreme Court limited the federal government’s power to take land into trust for the benefit of Indian tribes. The Justices, in a 6-3 vote, concluded the authority only applies to tribes that were under federal jurisdiction in 1934.

In its response this month, the DOI does not disqualify the POLO/POSY documentation of the tribe’s federal status, and seeks to have the case sent back, or remanded, to the DOI’S Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for research to determine the federal jurisdictional status of the Chumash.

Separately, the Chumash have opposed the remand back to the BIA, according to POLO.

However, the groups have not decided on their next course of action — whether to agree with or oppose the request to send the case back to the BIA, Cleary said.

“We should know in the next couple of weeks what to do,” she said.

Tribal spokeswoman Frances Snyder had no comment.

Posted in Govt-and-politics on Saturday, March 27, 2010 12:00 am