Facebook Twitter Email
MARCH 12, 2001

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation will meet today with its three primary legal and political foes -- three Connecticut towns.

The meeting was scheduled last month with the help of freshman Congressman Rob Simmons (R-Conn) and will focus on the land dispute between the two parties. The towns last fall lost their lawsuit against the Department of Interior over the government's decision to take 165 acres of land into trust for the tribe.

The towns and some of their citizens don't want expansion at all but Chairman Kenneth Reels recently said the tribe will continue to ask the government to take land into trust for them. The reservation is about 2,000 acres and the tribe has been considering adding a 1,200-acre property in addition to the 165-acre parcel.

In an editorial, The New London Day offers up its suggestions as to how the meeting can be a success. The paper says the parties should each give up something: the towns, their opposition to any trust land acquisitions and the tribe, their "unlimited" desire to add land to the reservation. The paper doesn't say the tribe is already limited by the discretion of the Secretary of Interior over fee-into-trust decisions.

In a separate editorial, Lance Johnson, the managing editor of The Day, says Simmons took the towns' side in a Congressional field hearing he held last month but that he won't be able to do that today.

Get the Story:
Towns and Mashantucket leaders to sit at same table today (The New London Day 3/12)
EDITORIAL: The Ingredients For Success (The New London Day 3/11)
EDITORIAL: Expectations for meeting of tribe, towns (Lance Johnson. The New London Day 3/11)