S-1751.1  _______________________________________________

                    SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 8019

          _______________________________________________

State of Washington      54th Legislature     1995 Regular Session

By Senators Oke, Owen, Snyder, A. Anderson, Haugen, Bauer, Gaspard, McDonald, Swecker, Roach, Strannigan, Palmer, Hochstatter, Morton, West, Rasmussen and Spanel

Read first time 02/16/95.  Referred to Committee on Natural Resources.

Requesting federal assistance to facilitate the implementation of judicial decisions concerning the harvest of fish and shellfish.

    TO THE HONORABLE BILL CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:

    We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully represent and petition as follows:

    WHEREAS, The United States Congress has in this new session entertained, debated, and passed legislation that would prohibit federal mandates upon states without the coincident provision of the means necessary to implement the mandates; and

    WHEREAS, To extinguish conflicting claims to lands lying West of the Cascade Mountains and North of the Columbia River, the United States entered into a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Washington Territory in 1854 and 1855; and

    WHEREAS, These federal treaties became binding on, indeed, a federal mandate on, the State of Washington upon its entry into statehood; and

    WHEREAS, In these treaties, the United States "secured" the tribes' "right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations . . . in common with all citizens of the Territory . . ."; and

    WHEREAS, In 1974, federal district court Judge Boldt held, and the United States Supreme Court later affirmed, that said clause entitled the treaty tribes to harvest up to fifty percent of each run of anadromous fish passing through ancestral tribal fishing areas; and

    WHEREAS, In December 1994, federal district court Judge Rafeedie interpreted said clause to also include the tribal harvest of shellfish on ancestral tribal fishing areas, including shellfish on privately owned land; and

    WHEREAS, This federal treaty provision, this mandate, will cost the State of Washington untold millions of dollars in areas that potentially include the following:  Administrative costs necessary to develop and implement a dual shellfish management program; the negative economic impact to the state's commercial shellfish industry; compensation required to be paid for the "taking" of private property; and the costs of policing and meting justice to those who may now take the law into their own hands;

    NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully implore the United States government to provide the State of Washington all due and necessary assistance to implement the aforementioned mandate, including, but not limited to, funds necessary to implement administration of dual shellfish management, compensation for the losses wrought upon Washington's economy; the funds, if necessary, to compensate private landowners for taken property rights; and any additional funds required to maintain law and order in Washington.

    BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately transmitted to the Honorable Bill Clinton, President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and each member of Congress from the State of Washington.

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