Officials ready to tackle county duties
Caleb M. Soptelean
Manley, Carolyn Hall, Dave Stipe and Lyn Fricker.
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POLSON — Lake County District Judge James A. Manley swore in district court clerk Lyn Fricker, Lake County Schools Superintendent Carolyn Hall and County Commissioner Dave Stipe on Wednesday, Dec. 21.
“They come and they go, but Lyn’s still here,” Manley said of Fricker’s career in the district court office that began in 1992.
The three were elected in November, Fricker and Hall without opposition.
In remarks after he administered their oaths of office, Manley said, “We do really have a good county government for a county this size. I don’t think it’s ever run as smoothly in the 40 years I’ve been here. It’s because people get along.”
Following the ceremony, Stipe, 60, took questions from the media.
Stipe said he served as a county commissioner from 1993 to 2005. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s changed in 12 years,” he said. County commissioners Gale Decker and Bill Barron were county schools superintendent and sheriff, respectively, when Stipe served previously, so he’s familiar with them.
Stipe talked about the top issue he thinks the commissioners will face next year: whether or not the state Legislature will allow Lake County to stop felony prosecutions and incarcerations for Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal members in accord with Public Law 280.
That agreement dates to 1962 when the county and state entered into an agreement with the tribe to do felony prosecutions, Stipe said.
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes took over misdemeanor prosecutions in 1992, Stipe said.
The county commissioners may ask a local state legislator to carry a bill that would end Lake County’s involvement in prosecution of tribal members, Stipe said.
“Can we afford to keep doing this?” he asked.
“When the (former Kerr) dam was taken off the tax rolls, we started thinking about what we could do about it,” said County Attorney Steve Eschenbacher, who attended the ceremony. He said that tribal members make up 83 percent of the felony cases handled by the county.
Earlier this year the county sued the Montana Department of Revenue for not sending CSKT a tax bill for the dam. A hearing date has not been set yet in that case, which is scheduled to be heard by a judge from Columbus, Montana.
Eschenbacher said the county is slated to lose $800,000 a year in property tax if that situation isn’t changed.
In addition, “we have an ever shrinking tax base because of land being put into the tribal trust,” he said. In that scenario, the tribes can petition the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take county land off the tax rolls, Stipe said. “Forty-five percent of county land is in tribal trust,” Eschenbacher added.
Stipe said the county also continues to receive less federal funding for Payment In Lieu of Taxes and timber receipts than it has previously.
Eschenbacher said the county finance director Scott Beggs recently completed one year of research about properties that aren’t being assessed correctly for property tax. The research, which utilized Google Earth, resulted in a change to 64 properties.
Stipe said he didn’t know of a solution to the problem of a property owner getting hit with a bill representing anywhere from two to 10 years of taxes other than waiving penalties and interest.
