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Governor Kathy Hochul DANA SHAW
Governor Kathy Hochul has vetoed a bill that would have provided for reinstatement of recognition and acknowledgment of the Montaukett Indian Nation, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. confirmed on Saturday.
The governor’s veto — which Thiele called “unprofessional and unethical” — is the sixth time for a bill that would have returned state recognition to the Montauketts. The measure won unanimous support in the Assembly and Senate. Hochul and her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, have now each vetoed similar bills three times.
Supporters say that passage of the legislation would have corrected an unjust 1910 ruling in which the tribe was declared extinct. That year, in Pharaoh v. Benson, State Supreme Court Justice Abel Blackmar sided with descendants of Arthur Benson, a developer, in awarding them Montaukett tribal lands.
“I have great respect for Native American nations and communities, and recognize the prejudice they have historically faced,” the governor said in a December 21 statement. “While I’m constrained to veto this bill, as the Montauketts have not yet demonstrated that they meet the requirements necessary for recognition, I pledge to continue to work with the Montauketts regarding this issue, and to treat this historic community with the respect it deserves.”
The sixth veto “is by far the most disappointing, and the one that I think stings the most,” a clearly frustrated Thiele said on Saturday. Earlier this month, he had called the 1910 ruling “one of the most racist decisions ever issued by a New York court.”
Engagement with the governor’s office began early in 2024, he said, and her representatives “gave the Montauketts a road map that they wanted them to follow. The Montauketts followed that roadmap — they provided documentation, they provided history, they provided genealogy. Every question that was asked by the governor’s office, the Montauketts responded to.”
The assemblyman, who is retiring at year’s end, said that he had personally spoken with several of the governor’s senior staff. “Expectations were raised, based on the representations that were made by the governor’s office, that we were going to be able to get this legislation signed.” Some of the conversations were as recent as the autumn, he said. “This wasn’t in a vacuum. The governor’s office has been engaged on this and every bit of information requested was provided.”
In the last week, he said, another meeting with senior members of the governor’s staff took place. “They said they were going to veto, but they gave us an opportunity to make our case again. But it was obvious that the decision already had been made.
“We presented all of the arguments we’ve presented throughout the years. There was silence on the other end — no engagement. It was obvious they had set up the meeting just to cover their bases.”
The rationale provided by the governor’s office, Thiele said, was concern that state recognition “would raise the possibility of land claims against the state … but they never asked us to provide any information with regard to that issue.”
The argument is specious, he charged. “There’s nothing in the legislation about land claims. The Montauketts have not raised any issues about land claims. There have been no fears locally, in the community, about lands claims.”
The 1st Assembly District has “some of the most expensive real estate on the planet,” Thiele noted. “Every third storefront in East Hampton is a real estate office. It’s the biggest industry we have. When the real estate industry in my district is concerned about something, they let me know. This has never been an issue for the local real estate industry.”
In fact, he said, there was overwhelming support for reinstatement of recognition, and a petition bearing more than 20,000 signatures in favor of recognition was delivered to the governor. The stated concern about land claims “is a hypothetical, it’s speculation,” he said. “It lacks a ring of authenticity. … If they’d said back in February, ‘We have this issue with land claims — can you give us comfort on it?’ or if they just said, ‘We can’t get over this issue — we can’t help you with this,’ I wouldn’t have been happy, but I could have accepted this.”
Instead, he said, Sandi Brewster-walker, the Montaukett Indian Nation’s executive director, “did hours and hours of work, provided them with all of this information, and as it turned out it was all irrelevant. They wasted her time.”
The governor’s office “raised expectations, made all of us do a lot of work over the last few months and vetoed it anyway, and said, ‘We’ll work with you again on this next year.’ We’ve been told that virtually after every single veto.
“This is one of the most unprofessional and unethical actions, in the way this was engaged with the Montaukett,” he said. “It’s insulting to the Montaukett that they would be treated this way. If the answer is no, it’s no. You don’t love it, but you don’t lead people along, waste their time, make them do a lot of work when it was never going to change the answer to begin with.”
