By Chris Keegan
The Sun Staff
CHARLESTOWN — Indian Affairs Solicitor Joseph S. Larisa Jr. on Monday praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear Carcieri vs. Kempthorne, noting that high court justices typically hear only 80 of 6,000 cases filed for their consideration each year.
When a party is on the losing side of an appeals court ruling, the odds are over 60 percent that they will be on the winning side “when the dust settles” at the Supreme Court, he said, during the Town Council meeting.
“We finally won one for the home team,” Larisa told residents. “If you’re gonna pick one to win, and you’ve got a choice between a District Court decision, a Court of Appeals decision... or the Supreme Court deciding to hear the case, you want the Supreme Court deciding to hear the case. That’s the one to win.”
State and local officials are appealing a decision by the U.S. Department of Interior to grant federal trust status to a 31-acre parcel off Kings Factory Road, which is owned by the Narragansett Indian tribe. Critics fear that the move will create a pocket of socalled “Indian country” in Rhode Island that is exempt from state and local law.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal, in part, over the question of whether the federal government may take lands into trust for tribes that organized after a 1934 federal act. The Narragansetts received federal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the early 1980s.
Larisa, who plans to log more than 200 hours in the case at a rate of $135 per hour, said he plans to ask the Washington County Regional Planning Council and the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition for financial contributions to mitigate legal costs for the town of Charlestown. Carcieri vs. Kempthorne will be the fifth case that the high court hears in October, he added — noting that a decision would likely be rendered three to six months after arguments are made.
In other business: ­During public comment, Charlestown Citizens Alliance President Daniel Slattery issued a “formal complaint” against Town Council Vice President James M. Mageau, and asked for sanctions against the first-term councilor.
“During the Rhode Island Presidential Primary on March 4, Mr. Mageau took it upon himself to challenge citizen volunteers who were collecting signatures at polling places for an e-mail database list,” Slattery said. “He declared their actions illegal, and had the town clerk call the Board of Elections who reported that the citizens were not breaking the law. Not getting the response he wanted, he consulted with our town solicitor, without the benefit of consulting with other town councilors.”
“...They were not involved in any activities related to the elections or any of the candidates,” he added. “There was no attempt by the volunteers to influence anyone’s vote. All they were doing was asking the Charlestown citizens if they’d like to be placed on an e-mail list and informed of town meetings and other public policy issues before the council.”
Following the primaries, Town Solicitor Robert E. Craven — who previously served as legal counsel to the Board of Elections — said that an advisory opinion he authored in 2000 prohibits activities such as canned food drives, the collection of clothing and the sale of food and beverages outside polling places. A Board of Elections official contacted by The Sun, however, said it is unclear whether the solicitation of email addresses during an election is a violation of state law. Mageau dismissed the suggestion that he should be sanctioned.
“I find it very interesting that the opinion of one person who sits on the Board of Elections is valid,” he said. “...I don’t see why you find it necessary to come here and make such ridiculous comments when you were nowhere in the area [of polling places last week]. The fact of the matter remains that there have been several decisions by the Board of Elections — one including a decision based on a complaint that I filed back in 1986 on a similar-type violation, where the board held that people could not solicit at the polls.”
“It’s a settled question, and hopefully you’ll do a little bit better research before you come in here making such obnoxious, ridiculous charges,” Mageau added.
­A majority of councilors opted not to take the owners of a junk bus at 120 Columbia Heights Road to court, over the objections of Mageau that the vehicle should be removed from the property by the order of a Superior Court judge.
Town Councilor Katharine H. Waterman said the town has previously taken bus owners Willis and Diane Seemann of Charlestown to court on the issue, but lost because Charlestown does not have an enforceable junk vehicle ordinance. A majority of councilors, including Mageau, rejected efforts to give the current ordinance “some teeth” last year, over concerns that a proposed amendment was too restrictive, she noted.
Mageau, however, said the town lost the case because it failed to prove that the bus could not be legally registered or inspected.
Town Administrator Edward M. Barrett said the Seemans have hired a company to remove the derelict coach, but are waiting for the availability of equipment. Prior efforts to remove the bus have been complicated by the presence of the vehicle’s gas tanks, which were recently removed, according to Town Councilor Harriet A. Allen — who said she cooked dinner for the couple on Saturday night.
“This is not the time to take legal action,” Allen said.