PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • February 17, 2022
Tribal representatives declared their support for a plan from the Mills Administration to make small, carefully delineated reforms, but stressed that they do not see it as a substitute for the far more expansive legislative L.D. 1626. That bill, which had a hearing Tuesday, would sweep away all the special restrictions Maine insisted the tribes accept during the final phases of the 1980 negotiations to settle the tribes’ claims to two-thirds of the land in Maine. It would make Maine tribal territory subject to federal law, not state laws or municipal regulations, and ensure all federal laws designed to benefit tribes apply in Maine. It also would liberalize rules on where the tribes can buy additional land and end the tribes’ obligation to pay sales and property taxes on their territories.