Where art thou, Hopkins Twp. legal battle vs. Tribe?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thaddeus Morgan, the attorney for Hopkins Township in the matter of the Nowak property being taken into trust by the Gun Lake Tribe, Sunday morning replied to my e-mail inquiry, with a terse “No.” This means the township and Morgan have not severed their relationship.

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” article. It is an editorial by the editor.

Conspicuous by its absence of late has been any information about the relationship, if any, between Hopkins Township and attorney Thaddeus E. Morgan of the Fraser Trebilcock firm in Lansing, who was hired to fight the federal government to allow the Gun Lake Tribe to take the Nowak property into trust.

The Hopkins Township Board two years ago voted to hire Morgan to represent it in its fight to stop the Gun Lake Band of Potawatomis from taking into trust a 130-acre parcel near the corner of 129^th Avenue and 12^th Street, known as the Nowak property.

The parcel, zoned agricultural, is located just to the north of Arnsman Equipment across from the tribe’s casino at the U.S.-131 expressway exit at Bradley.

There are differing accounts about how much in public tax dollars the township has spent on this legal adventure. Township Clerk Eric Alberta not long ago reported the amount is about $15,000. However citizen critic Robert Beck asserted in a public meeting last fall that the bill was $22,800.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, agreed to the Gun Lake Tribe’s request to take into trust the Nowak property and about eight months ago the move seemed to be official.

Despite repeated inquiries of the township and of the Fraser Trebilcock legal firm, there has been no comment as to whether the matter has been settled, if there is any further action or if Morgan and the township have severed their relationship.

Township Supervisor Mark Evans has insisted that losing the Nowak parcel at 12^th Street and 129^th Avenue will result in a loss of $2,482.37 in annual tax revenue for one site and an additional $243.46 for the other. Evans also contends the township is losing $4,383.19 in tax revenue annually after the Jiak Foundation camp and $416.87 at an adjacent site were taken into trust by the tribe several years ago.

The Gun Lake Tribe indeed paid taxes on the Jijak property for one year while making the request to have the land taken into trust, but before that it had been tax free because it was being used until 2010 by the non-profit Mel Trotter Ministries organization.

Evans produced a written communication that added up the total property tax losses and pegged them at $7,525.89 for 2018. However, the $4,800 from Jijak was not taxed after 2011 because it was taken into trust by the federal government, making it non-taxable since then.

It is disappointing to note that the township and its legal firm will no longer talk about this matter, even though it involves the expenditure of public money.

But it’s all moot. All five members of the Township Board will run unopposed in the August primary. So those citizens who have believed hiring an attorney for a lost cause at public expense is wrong have handed their local officials a blank check to carry on.

It reminds me of one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote that in the end we may not remember the harsh words of our enemies, but we will remember the silence of our friends.