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Mike to gov: Lasso them cig cheats! |
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Written by Administrator
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Monday, 16 August 2010 |
Mike to gov: Lasso them cig cheats!
By SALLY GOLDENBERG
August 14, 2010
Mayor Bloomberg wants to turn the New York State Thruway into the Wild West.
On his weekly radio show yesterday, Bloomberg jokingly advised Gov. Paterson to put up his dukes against cigarette retailers on Indian reservations and start collecting the excise taxes that the mayor believes are due the state.
"I said to David Paterson, I said, 'You know, get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun. If there's ever a great video, it's you standing in the middle of the New York State Thruway saying, you know, 'Read my lips: The law of the land is this and we're going to enforce the law,' " Hizzoner said.
The mayor -- who banned indoor smoking in public spaces in 2003 -- was fuming over ongoing court battles involving whether upstate and Long Island Indian reservations can sell cigarettes free of taxes.
Many believe -- and some courts have held -- that the Indians should have the right to sell tax-free cigarettes only to other Indians, and not to the public at large. The Indians reject that claim.
Radio-show host John Gambling mentioned the famous incident in which the Senecas burned tires along the Thruway in 1997 to protest the state's collection of taxes from wholesalers who supplied Indian retailers.
That sparked a feverish reaction from the mayor.
"This is an outrage," he said. "You know, if you and I have to pay taxes, everybody should pay taxes -- and this is just a scam to get around the taxes.
"They say, 'Well, if you start taxing, it'll cost a few jobs.' Yeah, the cigarettes are killing our people."
In the most recent development in the decades-old war between government officials and merchants on Indian reservations, a federal judge in Buffalo ruled on Thursday against allowing the Senecas to continue mailing cigarettes to customers while they appeal an earlier ruling.
The decision came after the state seized thousands of cartons of cigarettes from a delivery truck making stops between Seneca Indian Nation reservations in western New York.
A state spokesman reportedly said the smokes were taken because they did not bear state tax stamps.
In 2008, Bloomberg sued cigarette vendors on the Poospatuck Reservation on the South Shore of Long Island, claiming they were robbing the city and state of more than $1 billion a year in tax revenue by peddling smokes tax-free.
A federal judge last August ruled in the city's favor, putting a temporary stop to the vendors.
The mayor does not have a problem with the Poospatuck stores selling to their own tribe members, but does not want them selling to outsiders.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mike_to_gov_lasso_them_cig_cheats_LRwTheEbf3keuAq3YupFxH
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