The House Committee on Natural Resources voted on July 12 to clear HR-1157, a bill that would allow the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to take a 1,400-acre parcel called Camp 4 into federal trust.
Camp 4 has created tension between the tribe—which already owns the land but claims it’s necessary to put into federal trust for member housing purposes—and the county, which has expressed concern over water usage, gaming terms, and reimbursement for lost property tax.
Those concerns were among the topics argued—and some resolved—across seven meetings between tribal representatives and a Santa Barbara County ad hoc subcommittee. At the county Board of Supervisors’ March 15 meeting, however, board members voted to suspend the county-tribe negotiations, planning to reconvene sometime in August.
Meanwhile, HR-1157 kept moving forward—but not without resistance from local elected officials.
On July 5, ad hoc subcommittee members Doreen Farr and Peter Adam wrote a letter to the House committee urging its members to defer action on the bill, saying congressional action “would send a troubling message to all acting in good faith and to the community that has supported this process.”
Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) also discouraged action on HR-1157, even speaking at the House committee’s July 12 meeting, where the committee members voted on the bill.
“These are issues between neighbors who live alongside each other, who must work together to find a path toward future generations, and a local resolution to these issues is the best way forward to help ease some of the local tensions and provide the best long-term outcome for the future of our community,” Capps said at the meeting.
Capps added that though the county-tribe negotiations have often been “contentious,” local forces should be able to resolve the issues involved with Camp 4 without being “pre-empted” on the federal level.
Still, Capps’ vote was the only dissenting one—HR-1157 passed through the House committee 29-1.
The bill still has a long way to go—next to the full House for a vote, then to the Senate, and then to be signed off by the president. But Chumash Chairman Kenneth Kahn said the House committee’s action, the first federal action on the bill since it was introduced more than a year ago, is an important step toward obtaining land for tribe member housing.
“It was very emotional for us because the housing need is serious,” Kahn told the Sun. “It’s not a new issue. It’s something we’ve been dealing with for many years. We need housing to be able to prosper as a community.”
Kahn said he hopes to see the bill reach the President by the end of the year, though “anything could happen.” He added that the tribe will continue to negotiate terms with the county even as HR-1157 moves forward.
“The tribe is not going to stop with the fee-to-trust process, nor are we going to stop pushing the legislation,” Kahn said. “But what we will do is continue to work with the county on trying to find a common sense solution that will benefit the tribe and the entire community with mitigation factors for Camp 4.”
This article appears in Jul 21-28, 2016.