Election season is closing in Cherokee, where races for principal chief, vice chief, tribal council and school board members will culminate when voters hit the polls on Thursday, Sept. 1.

Incumbent chief Michell Hicks is trying to keep a grip on the position for a third term. If he’s successful, Hicks would be just the second chief to hold office for 12 years.

His challenger is Patrick Lambert, long-time attorney for the Tribal Gaming Commission, which regulates the tribe’s gaming operations.

This is the second round between Lambert and Hicks, who sparred in the 2007 election. That race had a contentious ending, with Hicks besting his opponent by only a handful of votes. Though Lambert challenged the outcome in the tribal court, the count stood and he was put off for another four years.

But unlike 2007, Lambert won the primary earlier in the summer, taking 46 percent of the vote. Hicks garnered 40 percent of the roughly 3,000 voters who turned out.

At the time, Hicks said he was confident in his voting base, especially given that only around half of registered voters cast ballots in the July primary.

In the vice chief race, it’s another rematch. Larry Blythe is running to maintain his seat, while current council member Teresa McCoy is trying to take his job after a loss to Blythe in 2007. She took the primary, with 39 percent of the vote. But Blythe wasn’t far behind, taking in 36 percent.

The issues that have defined this election centered around Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel and Casino, the tribe’s central money-making venture. Questions about the economy, fiscal responsibility, diversification and services to tribal members all eventually came back to the casino, and what it was doing for the tribes 13,500 members.

Per capita checks, the payouts given annually to tribal members from casino revenues, were down this year, and some questioned the wisdom of continuing to pin the tribe’s financial hopes on Harrah’s alone.

Whoever wins the post on Wednesday will deal not only with falling revenues and a still-unfinished casino expansion, but also the impending negotiations over live dealers.

Gamblers at Harrah’s currently don’t enjoy the casino experience that Las Vegas patrons do; the tribe’s contract with the state doesn’t allow table games such as craps and roulette or live dealers at poker and black jack tables.

Last week, two top Republican state senators travelled to Cherokee to discuss the idea of Vegas-style gaming there.

The General Assembly has already pledged to vote on the issue in the new legislative session that starts Sept. 12.

The new principal chief, however, would still have to navigate negotiations with Gov. Beverly Perdue, and such talks can at times be tricky.

The last attempt to bring live dealers to the casino stalled after negotiations between Chief Hicks and then-Gov. Mike Easley disintegrated. At various times throughout the campaign, Lambert has charged that Hicks mishandled the situation.

Polls open at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 1, and close at 6 p.m. Registered voters who are in line at 6 p.m. will be allowed to vote.

Cherokee tribal elections are little more than a week away, and with the economy topping the list of major issues, the salaries of tribal officials are raising eyebrows and some ire on the reservation.

Both candidates for principal chief have stumped relentlessly on debt-reduction and spending-control platforms.

Whoever wins, however, will enjoy a sizable paycheck and a generous, lifelong pension, despite enrolled members seeing their per capita checks decline last year because casino profits were down.

Current Principal Chief Michell Hicks enjoys a base salary of $142,458, plus a car and an extra 30 percent of his base pay in fringe benefits, such as health care. That adds up to a total compensation package of about $185,000, not counting the car.

Vice Chief Larry Blythe is paid $129,896, plus given use of a car and 30 percent in fringe benefits, like the chief. Total, the vice chief earns nearly $169,000.

If challenger Patrick Lambert wins the top post, however, he’ll actually be leaving a much more lucrative position.

Lambert is executive director of the Tribal Gaming Commission, which makes sure the tribe’s gambling operations, whether in the casino or tribal bingo, are on the up and up.

The TGC regulates gambling licenses, monitors casino payouts to ensure compliance with federal regulations and provides other oversight, such as background checks into managers and internal investigations.

Lambert’s base salary this year was $250,000, according to a gaming commission budget provided to The Smoky Mountain News. When you add in the fringe benefits, bonuses and vacation pay, the total comes to $446,355.

Lambert said that weighing his salary against the pay of public officials isn’t a fair comparison. Elected tribal leaders are public servants, while he is in the gaming industry, he said. It’s business versus government, and the two will never be equal, he argued.

“It’s no secret that I make a substantially larger amount than the chief does, and my salary is graded on a national comparison level with my years of experience and qualifications,” said Lambert.

Lambert believes his opponents are publicizing his pay as a tactic to divert public attention from what he considers the real issues of the campaign.

Lambert’s pay doesn’t come directly from the tribe like the principal and vice chief’s salaries.

The gaming commission gets its money from the businesses it’s regulating: it is funded by the Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise, the management entity that oversees Harrah’s operations. To a lesser extent, the commission is also funded by the Tribal Bingo Enterprise and revenue generators such as background checks and license fees that it charges the gambling operations.

Indirectly, however, both salaries spring from the same fiscal headwaters: gaming revenues.

And both are significantly higher than the average in Cherokee.

In Jackson and Swain counties, which the reservation straddles, the median household income is $36,761. Statewide, it’s $43,754.

Principal Chief Hicks makes more than North Carolina’s governor. Lambert’s base pay surpasses that of the vice president of the United States.

Lambert’s compensation is based on the results of a tribal pay scale study done every few years by an outside firm, which looks at comparable jobs around the country and what people in those posts are paid.

The principal chief’s salary is decided by tribal council. Tribal council also vote on their own salaries ($70,000 a year each), and that of the vice chief.

It’s difficult to gauge whether Hicks’ or Lambert’s incomes match comparable positions elsewhere. Salaries in the private gaming sector aren’t public information, and a good many tribal governments don’t offer that information up, either.

A few tribes do have pay stats out there, mostly as a result of a public row over whether the pay is too high.

The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma currently makes $122,444, but a committee suggested this spring that the number be raised to $170,697 over the next four years. The Sisseton–Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota pay their top guy $80,000, decreased from $100,000 just this year.

For Lambert’s position, it’s even harder to determine. He maintains that a fair comparison would pit him against people such as Darold Londo, general manager at Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel and Casino. Londo’s salary isn’t public, and neither are those of many other top gaming officials, making the suggested comparisons impossible.

Recruiting firm Bristol Associates does an annual survey of gaming executives, and it reports that top spots in gaming can bring from $100,000 to $400,000 on average.

Lambert defended his pay, and said that if he won the chief’s seat, he wouldn’t keep his current job or the salary that comes with it.

“I’m a licensed attorney, I’ve got over 18 years of experience in this field, and we’ve been very successful. And the pay classification study proves that out,” said Lambert. “To me, if a man’s willing to take a cut in pay to do public service, to me I think that’s a good sign.”

Tribal council members also will have to defend their pay to voters. Their $70,000 annual payout far surpasses the $13,951 made yearly by North Carolina state legislators. In fact, only three states pay their lawmakers as much. However, it’s far below the $174,000 paid to members of the U.S. Congress.

Tribal council isn’t allowed to raise the pay of a sitting council; they can only decide what the next council should make. Usually, those raises are given in the October lame-duck council session.

Council Chairman Jim Owle wouldn’t speak directly to whether he thought the council members’ salaries were fair.

“The pay is what it is, it’s set by tribal council. It’s something that’s voted on in council, and if they think that’s what’s right, that’s what’s voted on,” said Owle, noting that any tribal member could bring a resolution to change it if they were unhappy with the pay.

Pensions for life

Salaries aren’t the only benefits afforded to tribal officials. Starting at age 50, all former chiefs, vice chiefs and tribal council members are afforded a pension that can be up to half of their in-office salary, depending on how long they served.

Tribal council in a split vote in 2009 made the decision to increase pension benefits, a controversial move in the midst of a recession.

Should Hicks lose the election and leave office, when he hits 50 in three years he’ll start getting a pension that’s worth half of his salary — or $71,229 a year for the rest of his life.

The chief’s spouses is also entitled to a lifelong pension if the chief dies, equal to a quarter of the chief’s last salary for two-term chiefs and an eighth for one-term chiefs.

The vice chief’s retirement plan follows the same rules as principal chief.

Tribal council members don’t get quite as much. When they hit 50, they’ll get between 12 and 75 percent of their salary depending on how many years they served.

Winners of principal and vice chief, the 12 tribal council seats and some school board positions will be decided during the Sept. 1 election.

Principal chief candidate Patrick Lambert is calling foul after refusing to divulge his pay information to the tribe’s internal auditors. Lambert said they were trying to expose his personal information as a political smear.

The tribe’s internal audit office told Lambert it needed to know his salary at the Tribal Gaming Commission to prepare taxes for the Cherokee Youth Center/Boys & Girls Club. Lambert is a board member. The IRS, it claimed, needed the income paid to any board member of the Boys & Girls club by a related entity.

Both the Boys & Girls Club and gaming commission are tribal operations, so that means related, said the auditor.

Lambert, however, said “no.” Of all the people who sit on that board, why, he asked, was he being singled out?

“Nobody else was contacted to my knowledge,” said Lambert. “I refused to give my W2s. There’s often times people on these volunteer charity boards refuse to give these things, and the IRS accepts that fact if the organization has used reasonable effort.”

Auditor Sharon Blankenship, however, wasn’t taking “no” for an answer. She came to the office of the Tribal Gaming Commission, looking for the documents herself.

She was rebuffed there, as well, and asked to leave after Lambert’s staff put in a call to the Cherokee Police Department. Cherokee Code says that no one but a gaming commissioner can access gaming commission files.

Lambert charges that the effort to uncover his salary is politically motivated, an attempt by the current administration to use it as a smear campaign against him. Blankenship contends that she’s just trying to follow the rules set by the IRS.

The issue came up in a special session of tribal council last Wednesday, where Council Member Teresa McCoy asked why the audit office was going after the papers now.

“I was on that board in 2010 and nobody came to my house and said, ‘I want to look at your tax papers,’” said McCoy.

Blankenship, however, defended her actions. They did, she said, get in touch with everyone and the gaming commission is the only one that didn’t provide salary information.

In the end, Lambert’s attorney turned in an IRS form, but maintained that Lambert is in no way obligated to give out his W2s.

Dancing has been a part of Native American culture for centuries, as celebration or grief or worship or even warning. But a central venue for those dances has only been a few years in the making.

The Festival of Native Peoples is unlike anything else in the Native American dance world. It brings dancers from tribes around North America to Cherokee, where they spend three days dancing, spectating and interacting with other dancers and the public.

There are, of course, Indian dances called powwows held year round all over the country. They’re fiercely competitive and titles from the events are coveted honors.

But, said Robert Jumper, manager of travel and tourism for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, they wanted this to be different.

“We actually looked at powwows as kind of a model, but powwow dancing is more of a competitive dance, and it is strictly dancing for the purpose of competition,” said Jumper. “We knew because of Cherokee culture that dance was much more than that to Indian cultures. We wanted to be able to present that in a format that people could come and see not only the Cherokee culture, but the diversity of Native American culture through that venue.”

And it is an experience different than any powwow in the country, according to Daniel Tramper.

He should know — Tramper is a fancy dancer, chicken dancer, and three-time world hoop dance champion. He’s been frequenting powwows around the world for years as a Cherokee warrior dancer and he also helped start the Festival of Native Peoples.

“It’s really just a different atmosphere at the Festival of Native Peoples,” said Tramper. “We’re not there to compete, and at any type of competition, you kind of get that intensity. But here at the Festival of Native Peoples, you don’t. Everybody’s there to experience a good time, to enjoy, to learn about new cultures and learn about new friends.”

Actually, he said, he’s made good friends from other tribes that he’s still in touch with through the festival.

He and his son have been able to visit tribes in upstate New York and join in their private dances thanks to connections they’ve made at the festival.

Besides the sense of camaraderie that the festival promotes, both Jumper and Tramper say that one of its biggest draws is the little-known cultural niceties that don’t always come out in competitive dancing or the one-off dances that show up at special events.

“Many of the dances are reenactments of what they do as far as their cultural identity as tribes at home,” explained Jumper. “Like the western tribes are hunters, nomads mostly, the woodland tribes like Cherokee, we were farmers so we didn’t have teepees or tents, so there’s a great difference in the way we lived. And when they act that out in their dances, there’s a variety of hunting scenes and living scenes. They tell stories in their dance.”

This year, the festival will feature tribes from Mexico, Alaska, Arizona and other places around the country. Organizers try to bring in different tribes each year to give audiences a diverse taste of the deep and varied tradition of Indian dance from year to year.

There is one group, however, that has returned to the festival time after time. Their popularity is such that two performances have been scheduled to satiate audience appetites for their daring feats.

They are the Totonac pole flyers, and as part of their traditional rituals, they climb — sans ropes or harnesses — to the top of a towering pole before swinging and spinning from its height’s on handmade rope swings.

It’s a heart-stopping and crowd-pleasing display, said Jumper, and one that’s done with completely traditional equipment.

The pole itself, in fact, took some research by Jumper and his colleagues to procure. It’s something akin to a telephone pole, but can’t have any of the chemical treatments doused on most telephone poles.

Eventually, Jumper said they found the perfect pole in Mississippi. But the Totonac aren’t they only group with unique, traditional accoutrements.

The groups bring their own musicians, and many of the instruments are handmade by the musicians themselves from natural materials.

“Sometimes the instrument is so unique that no one else could make them even if they wanted to,” said Jumper.

It’s things like that which make the Festival of Native Peoples a singular and rich experience for spectators, who may not have other opportunities to interact with native cultures.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” said Jumper. “You would have to go, really, all over the country to see this, and you get to experience it in one place in a couple of days. It would take you months if you try to go to their homelands and see this happen.”

Festival of Native Peoples

The festival will run from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Aug. 26 and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Aug. 27. Tickets are $10 per day and children under 6 are free. There will also be food, Native American and otherwise, and crafts and jewelry that the tribes will be displaying and selling.

Weary of criminals languishing in the system before finally facing their day in court, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians hopes to forge a new partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s office, getting their own prosecutor into federal court.

Tribal council this month called on the U.S. Attorney to deputize Cherokee’s tribal prosecutor as a Special Assistant United States Attorney, allowing him to pursue cases in federal court, where many of the more serious crimes committed on the reservation end up.

“It would provide them with a prosecutor that can handle those crimes that occur here, regardless of what kind of crime or where it happened,” said Jason Smith, the tribal prosecutor.

When someone commits a crime in Cherokee, bringing them to justice as a complicated process. Jurisdiction on the reservation can be labyrinthine.

Was the criminal a tribal member? Was the victim? Was it a major crime? Did it happen on the reservation?

It’s so complicated that Smith created a chart to remind him whether an offender should be prosecuted in tribal court or, if they’re not a tribal member or the crime is major, in federal court.

Under the current systems, prosecuting those deemed federal cases fall to the U.S. Attorney in Asheville. But the problem is that he can’t get to them all, and there are some — small-time white collar crimes and the like — that can take a lot longer to reach and fall into a sort of grey area on what cases the feds pick up and what they don’t.

So tribal members who are victimized by non-tribal members — a non-Indian husband abuses his Indian wife or child, for example — they’ve got to rely on the federal court to get their case heard. And it could take a while.

Smith hopes that, if he’s appointed as a special U.S. Attorney, it’ll help move those cases through more quickly. It never hurts, he posits, to have someone with a little more local knowledge and vested local interest following a case through the court system.

“It would help in terms of having closer knowledge of the cases that are going on in tribal court and in federal court,” said Smith. “Despite our best efforts, I don’t always know what’s going on in Asheville with federal cases, and they don’t always know what’s going on in Cherokee with Cherokee cases.”

Cherokee isn’t the only place with these problems. Tribal lands all over the country are faced with the same quandary, any many are in a more precarious situation.

“It’s a bad problem here, but it’s much worse everywhere else,” said Bill Boyum, chief justice at the Cherokee tribal court. By comparison, he said, the situation here is great.

Boyum pointed to tribes out West, some with reservations as large as states, that have one or two federal prosecutors trying to take on every case from an area far too massive and unwieldy for just one person.

“It’s kind-of inherent in the system,” said Boyum. “You would never have that in a state court. You have a state court in every county.”

And over the last year, special U.S. attorneys have been appointed all over the country to deal with the problem. The impetus was a big piece of federal legislation called the Tribal Law and Order Act. Among other things, it recognized that there is problem, and though the law didn’t require special U.S. Attorneys for tribes, it strongly recommended them.

In North Dakota, special U.S. Attorneys were appointed as part of a bigger push to build trust in tribal law enforcement that was waning. Elsewhere, they’ve been appointed just to deal with the growing backlog of cases that harried prosecutors don’t have enough time to handle.

The Eastern Band has been having conversations, both in the government and the community, about what a boon this would be to the effort to decrease crime on the reservation.

But they’re still waiting for the federal government to act.

Don Gast, the U.S. Attorney in Asheville who handles Cherokee cases kicked to federal court, said that he wasn’t ready to comment on what Smith would do, if appointed, or how the system would work — who would take which cases, how would cases be prioritized?

He did, however, say that his office is working on a decision. He’ll be making an official announcement “in the near future,” he said, but didn’t specify when.

If he is appointed, Smith said he would probably need another hand or two to keep up with the tribal caseload. He stepped up to lead prosecutor from the assistant prosecutor role when former tribal prosecutor Roy Wijewickrama won a spot as a district court judge last November. His former post still hasn’t been filled.

Smith has been using contract lawyers to shoulder the caseload, but taking on federal cases, too, would probably create the need for more contractors or another prosecutor altogether.

He’s waiting for the official announcement, though, before thinking too much about its ramifications. Being deputized to try cases in federal court would be better for the tribe, even if someone else had to be hired to pick up the slack in tribal court.

And now it’s just a waiting game, while the U.S. Attorney’s office decide if they’ll honor the tribe’s request.

A family whose land was seized last month by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will now have their day in court, after they lodged a protest with tribal council last week.

The tribe had reclaimed the land, citing a technicality in the landowner’s will. The will lacked two signatures.

Tribal council voted 10 to 2 last month to take back the land. But the family has come forward with new evidence, an affidavit by a person they say was a second witness to the will. In light of that, Tribal Attorney General Annette Tarnawsky recommended that the issue be moved out of the political arena and into the legal system.

“I would request at this point, if that affidavit is being used as new evidence, I would request that a court rule on this,” said Tarnawsky, noting that there is case law in North Carolina that has dealt with similar issues.

But tribal council still spent more than an hour deliberating and debating the issue before finally deciding to absolve themselves and send it instead to tribal court.

In that hour, it was not only the issue itself that was debated, but a slew of other problems that it illuminates.

Several members returned to this month’s session complaining that they had little time to look over the documents of the case before they had to vote. The case had 12 pages of evidence, but those packets were only given to council members a few minutes before the vote.

“My concern is that council acted without looking at the information,” said Big Cove Council Member Teresa McCoy. “It’s a dangerous, dangerous thing to do.”

Snowbird Council Member Diamond Brown voiced a public apology to the family for the quick decision made last month. He voted to reclaim the land in July, but changed his opinion after speaking with the family and getting more information.

Even Principal Chief Michell Hicks stepped in to the council house to weigh in on the touchy issue.

“There has got to be a process that clarifies the specifics of the will,” said Hicks. “We’ve got to get that in place. We don’t want to see any family in this situation, but our duty is to uphold the law.”

Hicks added that, in this particular situation, he thought it deserved a hearing.

Tract of value to the tribe

The land in question is a 200-acre tract in Cherokee County, which just so happens to be adjacent to land the tribe bought last year to build a secondary gaming establishment.

The tract is part of the reservation, and like all reservation land is collectively owned by the tribe. But land rights can still rest with individual tribal members, and in this case the land rights belonged to Gladys Wright until she died in 2009. She thought she left those rights to her four children.

While Wright was an enrolled member, her children don’t meet the blood degree. They were entitled to land rights for the remainder of their lifetime only, and after that it would have  reverted to the tribe anyway.

However, when the chief asked Tarnawsky to buy the property for the tribe for the proposed gaming establishment, that’s when the will was examined and the questions over its validity emerged. Those questions, in turn, made it impossible to buy the land since it lacked clear title.

“I would have loved to have bought this property and not had an issue,” Tarnawsky said.

And that brought up yet another issue: the absence of legal counsel at tribal council.

Tarnawsky is the attorney general for the tribe, but she answers directly to the principal chief.

Painttown Council Member Terri Henry pointed out the inherent flaw in that system — what happens when tribal council needs its own legal advice? What if the advice it needs conflicts with what the chief or the rest of the executive branch wants?

“We essentially have a person who reports to him [the chief] standing up and advising the council,” said Henry. “We do not have a lawyer in this chamber to represent and report to the council.”

And, she concluded, they need one.

After the lengthy deliberations had concluded, however, the council made only one decision: to allow Gladys Wright’s four children to defend their mother’s will in tribal court.

And out of that single decision came a host of new issues that are sure to resurface in the future. As it turns out, the rules determining what makes a will valid or invalid aren’t exactly clear.

Although the Cherokee Code defers to state law for declaring a will valid or invalid, the Cherokee Charter, which legally trumps the code, doesn’t.

And then there’s the tradition of oral wills that is longstanding in Cherokee and has before been recognized by tribal council. The tribe also accepts wills from other states, where the rules might be different.

That lack of clarity, said Tarnawsky, makes the whole situation murkier and brings to light a larger issue that, she said, the tribe needs to deal with.

“It really needs to be a decision of council and a decision of the Cherokee people what you want to do,” said Tarnawsky on the broader issue of what constitutes a will.

A family is protesting after they say the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians seized land they claim is rightfully theirs.

When Gladys Wright died in 2009, she left all of her property to her four children. But last month, Cherokee Tribal Council voted to take 200 acres that once belonged to the family and put it under tribal ownership. The land, located outside Andrews, has long been part of the Cherokee reservation, known as the Qualla Boundary. Only enrolled members of the tribe are allowed to own land, or the child of an enrolled member.

Wright is a tribal member, but her children are not, so she could not leave the land to them outright. But she could grant her children a life estate, meaning they could own and live on the land for their lifetime, but could not pass it on when they die.

When a first descendant dies, or if a tribal member doesn’t leave a will, any trust land reverts back to the tribe.

The complicated nature of land ownership means that wills leaving property to heirs comes to tribal council for approval. Most of them are pretty routine and are often settled and voted on in less than five minutes.

Most of them, however, don’t concern a 200-acre tract where the tribe has expressed interest in building a satellite casino — as is the case with Wright’s land.

The tribe claims Wright’s will granting her children a life estate on the property wasn’t properly executed, and it was in its rights to take back the land.

Wright’s children and critics of the move say the tribe capitalized on a technicality: it only had one signature.

The will itself was pretty clear that Wright wanted the land to go to her children. But Wright’s final will had only one witness signature on it, and North Carolina State Law requires at least two.

Elizabeth Poscich, one of Wright’s daughters who lives on the property in Cherokee County, said she was blindsided by the decision.

“I didn’t even know this had happened,” said Poscich. “A concerned citizen called me and told me.”

Poscich said she thought everything had been settled, especially since the will had been probated in Kentucky, where Wright died, and stamped and accepted by the tribal clerk of court nearly a year ago.

Last year, too, tribal council passed a resolution about buying the land. Poscich said she was never contacted, but some of her siblings were not keen to sell.

The tribe has been eyeing the land for a hybrid gaming facility — not quite a casino but more than a bingo hall.

And to build the gambling center, the tribe needs the land. It purchased around 400 acres of adjoining, non-trust land last year, but gambling activities can only be conducted on land that was part of the original Qualla Boundary.

Though the family sees it as a technicality, Tribal Attorney General Annette Tarnawsky explained to tribal council members that the tribe defers to state law when it comes to the validity of wills. And without two signatures, it can’t be valid.

At the time, Council Member Diamond Brown voted to reclaim the property for the tribe. But he now says he wishes he’d had more time and more information before casting that vote.

How are people supposed to know, said Brown, that they need two signatures? Wright’s will only had a printed line for one witness, and the tribal court accepted it. Who was supposed to tell her she needed more?

“If you notice, it [the will form] does not have a place for two witnesses,” said Brown. “If I went in there and did the same thing and gave all my bequeath to my children, well I think I’m legit, I think I’m on the up and up.”

And because the will was accepted by officials in Kentucky and at the Eastern Band’s own tribal court, Poscich and her family thought the same.

There’s something else that, in hindsight, worries Brown as well. Over the years, Welch had drawn up several other wills. And the most recent incarnation before the disputed will did, indeed, have two signatures.

Tarnawsky told council members that it didn’t mention property in Cherokee County, though.

“It does not say Cherokee County, but it does say ‘all my property,’” said Brown. “It’s plain to see that she wants her children to have that land. I know they want the land, but from what I gather from what I read from all the wills, her children have the right to it.”

The chief, however, stands by the choice made in council.

“…[The] probate documents failed to comply with the Cherokee Code’s inheritance law,” said Hicks in a statement, though he conceded that the case highlighted a problem that could affect more than a few enrolled members. “As principal chief, I believe it’s imperative that every enrolled member feel confident and secure that their wishes for passing on their possessory holdings will be upheld and carried out.”

In response, the tribe will now offer will services to members for free starting October 1, hiring attorneys to draft new wills and review existing documents for any member who shows interest.

Poscich and her family, meanwhile, are coming to Thursday’s Tribal Council meeting to fight the ruling. Diamond Brown said he’ll support the family, along with Council Members Terri Henry and Teresa McCoy. Henry and McCoy were the only council members who didn’t vote for the measure. They moved to table it until the family could come to speak in their own defense.

Harrah’s Cherokee casino bought nearly half a million dollars of liquor over the past year, netting almost $50,000 in profits each for the ABC stores in Sylva and Bryson City — which had the privileges of being the casino’s suppliers.

But despite the numbers on paper, it is hasn’t proved quite the windfall the two towns hoped.

“It was nothing like they said it was going to be,” said Monty Clampitt, chairman of the Bryson City ABC board.

“People thought there would be a world of money flowing in all of a sudden if we did this,” said Kevin Pennington, chairman of the Sylva ABC board. “I think it was a little surprising that there was not near as much money coming in.”

The casino began serving alcohol to customers last year. The Cherokee reservation was — and still mostly is — dry. The tribe made an exception for the casino, but lacked an ABC store of its own. So it turned to the ABC stores in neighboring Sylva and Bryson City to buy from.

Since the reservation lies partly in Jackson and partly in Swain counties, figuring out which store had dibs on being the casino’s alcohol supplier got complicated. Ultimately, the stores in Bryson and Sylva launched a joint venture with the sole mission of filling bulk liquor orders for Harrah’s and decided to split any profits 50-50.

Both towns hoped it would be a lucrative deal for them, since profits from the ABC stores go straight to town coffers.

But neither town has seen a penny yet, despite being more than a year into the operation.

“We haven’t gotten any of it yet. None,” said Pennington.

The joint venture has cleared $100,000 in profit so far, so at first blush it’s not clear why that money hasn’t been meted out to the towns along with the regular ABC dividends.

But Clampitt and Pennington said the profits to date have been used to build up working capital and inventory.

Roughly half the profits are tied up in inventory — $50,000 in liquor is stacked on pallets and shelves in the back storeroom of the Bryson City ABC store, ready and waiting to fill the weekly orders coming from Harrah’s.

Another $50,000 is sitting in the checking account, a cushion to ensure smooth cash flow, Clampitt said.

Since the state warehouse will only ship to local ABC stores once a month, they have to buy the liquor up front.

Harrah’s makes out a shopping list of what it will probably need, but its actual order may vary, so it could be weeks before the inventory moves off the shelves.

“You can’t tell a customer what to buy,” Clampitt said.

But with inventory and reserves now built up, profits made from here on out will be paid out quarterly. Sylva and Bryson City can each expect checks for $11,600 to arrive any day, a payout from the second quarter, Clampitt said.

Cherokee forays into ABC store of its own

No sooner than Bryson and Sylva’s joint venture has started paying off, however, and the end is in sight. Cherokee is well on its way to an ABC enterprise of its own and within the year will stop buying from its neighbors.

From the beginning, Cherokee has wanted to setup its own ABC store, selling the liquor to Harrah’s itself and keeping the profits for the tribe rather than sending them down the road to Bryson and Sylva.

The logistics of starting one haven’t been easy. The tribe ultimately needed a special bill passed by the General Assembly allowing it to start its own ABC venture, so it can order directly from the state warehouse without going through the Sylva or Bryson stores as middlemen.

The Sylva and Bryson stores weren’t planning on riding the casino’s liquor gravy train forever.

“I figured it wouldn’t be long before the tribe got it worked out,” said Larry Callicut, town manager of Bryson City.

“I was not at all surprised when the Cherokee said they can just buy stuff directly from the state,” Pennington added.

Delayed gratification

It will be several more months, and possibly even a year, before the new Cherokee ABC board is up and running, however. There’s a complicated computer system to set up, a staff to hire and a place needed to hold all those waiting pallets of liquor.

“They’ve got some organizing planning and what not to do,” Clampitt said.

Once that’s done the Sylva and Bryson joint venture will become obsolete. It would make sense to shut down the operation and close out the books, liquidating all that inventory and cashing out the checking account.

At that point, the two towns could expect a final payout of $50,000 each.

That’s a good chunk of change for small, cash-strapped, recession-burdened towns to clear. It’s better than nothing, Clampitt supposed, but it wasn’t exactly free money.

“It’s been a whole lot of work,” Clampitt said.

The Bryson ABC store lends its staff to the joint venture serving the casino. It takes labor to manage the inventory: keep up with what’s running low, place monthly orders with the state, parcel out weekly shipments to the casino and all the related bookkeeping.

They also personally deliver weekly orders to the casino — a perk afforded to their special customer. (Run-of-the-mill bars and restaurants have to do their own pick-up.)

The Bryson ABC store gets compensated for some of those hours. In June, for example, the store billed the joint operation for $607 worth of its employees’ time.

But the Bryson board also donates some of the labor and overhead to the joint venture. It doesn’t pro-rate a portion of its utilities to the Cherokee operation, for example. Nor does it bill for the labor of unloading the truckload of orders coming from the Raleigh warehouse each month.

The two stores have finally paid themselves back for start-up loans taken from their own bank accounts to get things up and running — namely building up the necessary inventory.

The stores also had to purchase a $15,000 computer system for the joint Cherokee venture. The state ABC system is particular about the software used by all the stores, requiring a certain type of program that interfaces directly to the state warehouse, not only for placing orders but also allowing the state to track the whereabouts of every bottle of liquor.

The state wouldn’t let Bryson’s ABC store use its existing computer system, since the Cherokee venture was technically considered a new standalone enterprise, Clampitt said. So both stores dipped into their own funds to buy the computer system, cutting into profits they would have made otherwise.

Pennington said he was skeptical from the start.

“It was such shall we say a unique situation to start that combined store, I personally never felt like it was done for the best interest of the people of Jackson County to begin with,” Pennington said.

Pennington said he actually advocated against it, but the state ABC people made them do it.

“It wasn’t our idea at all,” Pennington said.

As for the $15,000 computer system? Bryson and Sylva ABC boards have already written that off and deducted it from the Harrah’s profits. But it would be nice to get a little something back for it when the joint venture is shut down,  Clampitt said. He hopes they could sell it to the new Cherokee ABC board.

Coincidentally, a countywide alcohol referendum on the ballot in Jackson County next year could lead to a new ABC store in Cashiers, which if passed, might just need a computer system as well.

Why so complicated?

Liquor sales in North Carolina are a tightly regimented affair. All liquor coming in to the state makes its first stop at warehouse in Raleigh. Local ABC stores in turn order from the state warehouse, a means of controlling the sale and distribution of liquor to the public.

Local stores act as middlemen. They get the liquor at wholesale prices, then mark it up to resell to customers, both to the general public and to bar and restaurant owners. The state dictates how much of a markup is allowed, about 25 percent.

After covering overhead and salaries, local ABC stores turn the remaining profits over to the local government, either the town or county, or in some cases both.

In the current political debate, the word ‘debt’ has become ubiquitous. Cherokee is no exception, where discussion of the debt of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians — and how, precisely, to dispose of it — has dominated the election season since it began this spring.

With one month to go until the election for chief, vice chief and tribal council, voters are standing up at every public forum to ask questions about the debt while candidates are touting their plans to eradicate it.

Meanwhile, the finance department for the tribe has gone on a massive public information campaign: opening a forum on the tribe’s website, starting a hotline where people can e-mail questions and get an answer back from a finance officer and leafleting the reservation with brochures entitled things like “A Closer Look at Tribal Debt.”

One question seems to underlie the whole discussion: how much, exactly, is the debt?

Answers from different sources have been many and varied, and depend very much on where you stand politically. The incumbent chief and vice chief claim the tribe’s debt is manageable. The challengers claim it has ballooned out of control.

It’s often said that numbers don’t lie, and with tribal debt, these are the raw numbers as of June 30, the end of the last fiscal year.

The tribal government has two debts it’s paying off directly: $57.2 million is still owed on the $107 million school complex and $10.8 million is still owed on the Sequoyah National Golf Club.

There’s also an $8.9 million series of loan guarantees that the tribe backs for the Cherokee Historical Association’s line of credit, the Tribal Bingo Enterprise and Balsam West, a broadband enterprise the tribe has a stake in.

If you take the position of the tribe’s finance department and Principal Chief Michell Hicks, that’s all the debt the tribe has — $76.9 million.

But then, of course, there’s the casino debt.

The casino is undergoing a massive expansion project, for which the tribe’s casino enterprise has secured a $650 million line of credit. So far, the enterprise has tapped $494.3 million of it.

Deputy Financial Officer Kim Peone expects that not all of it will be spent when the expansion is complete, and she doesn’t consider that tribal debt at all.

The casino is an entity of the tribe, but is run by a separate group called the Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise. The gaming enterprise, not the tribe itself, is responsible for the casino’s half billion in debt.

But here’s where politics comes into play. The current administration running for re-election is adamant that tribal debt shouldn’t include casino loans.

And it’s true that, if the casino defaulted, the bank wouldn’t come looking for the tribal government’s assets.

“We’re not ignoring the impact that a default would have on this tribal government and the services that we provide to this community,” said Peone. “But the casino debt is not guaranteed by the tribe, it’s guaranteed by TCGE.”

From that perspective, there’s $76.9 million in debt. Meanwhile, the tribe’s designated account it makes debt payments from has just over $134 million in it.

Simple math tells you that the tribe could pay the debt off today, but according to Peone, choose not to because that money is earning more interest than the debt is costing.

“Currently, the interest rate on that loan is less than the funds that we’ve invested in,” said Peone. “From year-to-date, that fund has earned 4.5 percent as opposed to 2 percent in a loan.”

On the current schedule, she plans to have both the school and golf course loans paid in full by 2014.

Casino debt part of bigger picture

But opponents say you can’t remove the tribe from the casino; they’re inextricably linked.

For starters, profits from Harrah’s Cherokee Casino accounts for roughly 90 percent of the tribe’s operating budget. If more of those profits were diverted to making debt payments, the tribe’s budget for providing services to enrolled members — such as schools and medical care — would be impacted.  

Patrick Lambert, a challenger for the position of principal chief, said he thinks it’s impossible to separate casino debt from the tribe.

“It’s all tribal debt,” said Lambert, pointing out that the tribe’s operating budget would plummet precipitously were anything to happen to the casino debt.

This is Lambert’s second time going for the chief’s seat, and though he lost by a slim margin in the 2007 election, he defeated Hicks in the July primary. He is a lawyer for the Tribal Gaming Commission.

Lambert said he is concerned, too, about just where the tribe is investing its money to get such good returns, asking if such investments are too risky.

“I think it’s pretty clear on debt. I come from a background of small business, and so I understand about debt and borrowing and those type of issues,” said Lambert. “Debt is a necessity, but it’s also something you can’t let get out of control. We need to control the spending so we can start applying more of the revenues we do have to overall debt.’

Right now, said Peone, the tribe puts 8 percent of every dollar it spends to paying off its non-casino debts.

The casino pays $20 million a year on its debt, plus more on interest.

Both principal chief candidates have promised to pay down the debt if they are elected, though that could be plus or minus a few hundred million depending on what you consider “the debt.”

The current administration is out to prove that the tribe is on sound financial footing, especially compared to other municipal governments.

The opposition is calling for a check on spending and reigning in the debt.

And when voters visit the polls September 1, it may be the best numbers that win.

A flash flood struck the Cherokee fish hatchery last week, pummeling fish in the raceways with a wall of water laden with mud, rocks and branches.

It wiped out hundreds if not thousands of trout and left a massive clean-up job for hatchery workers.

“We had dead fish all over the raceways,” said Robert Blankenship, manager of the Cherokee fish hatchery and stocking program. “A lot got washed out.”

Some were swept down stream and lived, based on fishing reports below the hatchery, but many others suffocated under mud or were struck by debris.

Blankenship estimated the creek the hatchery sits on swelled to four to five times its normal size. A worker who lives at the hatchery heard rocks tumbling down the mountain as the wall of water hit around midnight last Thursday, Blankenship said.

The flashflood flattened 75 feet of chain link fence surrounding the property in the Big Cove community. There is no data on the amount of spot rainfall the area must have received.

Just how many fish were lost won’t be known until clean-up is completed and workers can do an inventory.

Cherokee’s hatchery is a $1.2 million operation, raising 400,000 trout a year from eggs. The tribe’s waterways are the best stocked in the state — 13,000 trout per mile compared to only 800 per mile on average in waters stocked by the state of North Carolina.

And that’s not going to change, Blankenship said.

“We put out three big truckloads of very nice fish Friday,” Blankenship said. “We are going to continue to keep the river well-stocked.”

The hatchery will buy fish if necessary in order to keep pace with its stocking reputation, Blankenship said.

Cherokee is well known not just for its quantity, but size of trout. Blankenship makes sure trout bound for fishing waters are least 12 inches, but regularly stocks trophy trout over two pounds, some reaching nearly four pounds and up to 26 inches long.

Cherokee has worked hard to build its reputation as a top fishing destination in the Southeast — it’s a regular stop for fly-fishing TV shows and recently hosted the U.S. National fly-fishing competition — and will fight to keep that standing.

“The Cherokee fishing program is alive and well,” said Matt Pegg, director of the Cherokee Chamber of Commerce. “The team at the hatchery has worked very hard to restore the facility and will continue to do what they have always done to ensure the fishing program in Cherokee is strong.”

Steve Mingle, owner of River’s Edge Outfitter, has been fielding phone calls at the shop from people asking about the hatchery disaster but has put their fears to rest.

“I told them the fishing was still good,” Mingle said.

Each trout lost in the flash flood represents time, money and energy. It takes 10 to 12 months to raise a trout — from an egg in the incubation tank to a catchable fish.

Eggs are hatched in an indoor facility, and kept in tanks until they reach three to four inches. Those fish weren’t harmed, which bodes well for long-term production. It’s also good news for the five different fly fishing tournaments being held in Cherokee next year.

Meanwhile, however, the clean-up is ongoing. After hauling away piles of dead fish, hatchery workers are using track hoes to scrape a foot-and-a-half of muck off the bottom of the raceways.

That means lots of juggling trout around, shifting them from one run to another as each one gets a clean out.

The surviving fish had to be sorted out anyway though, Blankenship said. The hatchery keeps fish segregated by size, so when it’s workers can easily net liked-size fish on stocking days. But the flash flood overtopped the raceways, and fish of different sizes were mixed up.

“We got 2-inch fish mixed in with 12-inch fish,” Blankenship said.

Blankenship said he hopes the tribe’s insurance will cover the losses. They may also be eligible for federal farm disaster aid that covers crop losses.

“We are going to explore all avenues,” Blankenship said.