POLSON — Lake County recently rescinded its petition to withdraw from Public Law 280.
The federal law divides law enforcement responsibilities between tribal law enforcement and Lake County law enforcement.
The rescission paves the way for both tribal law enforcement and Lake County law enforcement to receive state funding.
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“All the commissioners and the tribal council are very optimistic with what's happened so far. I'm not ready to celebrate, we get that first check for $250,000, we know it's real — little, little celebration maybe,” said Lake County Commissioner Bill Barron.
Public Law 280, a federal law enacted in 1953, transferred certain law enforcement matters on Indian reservations to federal and state governments.
“This was a decision made on leadership back when there weren't the resources to keep the peace as well as we liked,” said Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes communications director Robert McDonald.
Lake County rescinded its petition to withdraw from PL 280 because if they were not participating in the law enforcement agreement, then new state funding for law enforcement would not be available to them.
But first, the county and CSKT must come to an agreement — legally known as a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) — to receive the funding.
“We want to get it worked out as soon as we can because that has to be in place to get the, the rest of the, the money. We get the 250,000 upfront, but to get the rest of it, we have to have the MOU in place,” said Barron.
Tribal law enforcement is responsible for tribal members who commit lower-level offenses; minor drug possession is one example.
In the past, many criminal charges were handed over to Lake, Sanders, or Missoula County — depending on where the offense took place.
Over the years, Tribal law enforcement began to take a more prominent role, mainly when it came to non-felony offenses.
“We started approaching the state about something that was called the retrocession, where they roll back jurisdiction. So in 1993, the state legislature said, Okay, we're gonna roll back jurisdiction for primarily civil non-felony cases to the tribes,” McDonald said.
Lake County petitioned the state to withdraw entirely from PL 280, stating that the costs of splitting law enforcement jurisdiction was costing the county an unsustainable amount of money, mainly when it came to housing inmates at the jail.
But with Tribal law enforcement handling more lower-level crimes, the county has rescinded its decision to withdraw.
The county will still handle more serious felony charges.
“The county will drop back and deal mainly with like homicides, major felonies like aggravated assaults, big thefts, different things like that," Barron said.
Lake County and Tribal law enforcement are now eligible to receive state funding for law enforcement — a total of $6 million over the course of several years.
