Why would you buy a carton when you could pool your money and get a pickup load and bring them back home? he said.
Donna Simon, a tobacco seller from Post Falls, said her store is one that suffers.
We4re not trying to put everyone out of business, she said. We just want everyone to profit.
But Pischner worked to make other points, too. He said smoking has killed two of his friends and left another facing serious surgery. And he and one of two others to support the measure insinuated that tribal stores are more likely to sell tobacco products to minors.
But tribal leaders refuted that, and Challis GOP Rep. Lenore Barrett said experience shows non-tribal tobacco sellers have been caught doing the same thing.
Barrett and Pocatello Rep. Elmer Martinez tried to kill the bill Wednesday in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, but they were outvoted by those who want to pass it and others who had more questions than answers by the end of the two-hour meeting.
Barrett said she thought the bill crossed tribal sovereignty lines, was impractical as it was written and was a tax increase.
I don4t propose to raise taxes on anybody or anything, she said.
And at first, it looked as if her motion would pass.
EchoHawk, who is now teaching law at Brigham Young University but still a special counsel for the Sho-Bans at the Fort Hall Reservation near Blackfoot, outlined the history behind the issue and laid out some of the reasons the tribes aren4t faced with the tax today.
In 1974, after the state Tax Commission tried to collect the tax on the Coeur d4Alene Reservation, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled the state had no jurisdiction. In the years that followed, the Sho-Bans and others began economic development projects based on these tax immunities.