Consider federal contribution
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Editor,
This is in response to the fullpage letter submitted by Ron Trahan, CSKT Chairman. He said CSKT paid $50,141 in property taxes last year. Whoopee ... that is next to nothing. He talks about how their Safety of Dams, Tribal Transportation, etc. contribute to the county. He talks about the Tribe employing 1,200 people with a payroll of $44.45 million (tribal health, tribal housing, etc.).
What he doesn’t mention is that the vast majority of money spent by the Tribe comes from the federal government (taxpayers). How many of those jobs are paid for with federal grant money? Sure, they have two casinos, a hotel, dam, S&K Tech, and a couple of other businesses. But the profits (or losses) from those businesses come nowhere close to the amount of money they budget and spend every year, over $150 million a year.
Again, the majority of this money comes from the feds and state in the form of huge sums of grant money from people who pay taxes. If you compare the county budget of around $26 million for 29,000 people to $150 million or more for tribal members, the tribal budget is over 20 times higher per tribal member than the county budget is per person. I realize CSKT contributes much to the economy, but it is important to be transparent about where so much of the money comes from. So, everything Ron says in his letter may be true, but it is not the whole story.
John Meinders
St. Ignatius
