LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – A county commission in northwest Nebraska will decide as early as next week whether to recommend that the state shut down four beer stores blamed for widespread alcoholism on a South Dakota Indian reservation.

But at least one of the three commissioners said he doesn’t believe that stopping the sales in Whiteclay would solve the problems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Advocates on both sides made their case Thursday before the Sheridan County Board of Commissioners. The public hearing in Rushville was scheduled to hear public input on whether the county should ask the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission not to renew the beer stores’ liquor licenses.

Sheridan County Commissioner Jack Andersen said he’d consider the testimony, but argued that closing the stores wouldn’t keep reservation residents from drinking or traveling farther south into Sheridan County.

“I just don’t see how closing the stores is going to help the problem,” Andersen, of Lakeside, said in an interview before the hearing. “Closing them would be about the stupidest thing we could do.”

Whiteclay’s stores sold the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer last year.

Andersen said he was concerned that, without the stores, some people on the reservation would drive into Sheridan County to buy alcohol and drink behind the wheel on their way home.

He said those who argue about the large number of beer sales in Whiteclay don’t consider that it’s 2 miles south of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a reservation town with roughly 3,300 people. The full reservation, which is geographically larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, has an estimated population of about 28,000.

The three-member commission isn’t expected to act until at least Tuesday, but will decide whether to make a recommendation to the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission about whether the stores’ licenses should be renewed.

In November, the liquor commission ordered the Whiteclay stores to reapply for their liquor licenses amid public pressure to reduce panhandling, public drunkenness and violence and concerns about adequate law enforcement in the area. The stores now have to demonstrate that they can meet state requirements such as providing adequate law enforcement.

Cliff Rininger of Rushville, a retired science teacher who worked on the reservation, said he was concerned that closing the stores could lead to an increase in people driving intoxicated on county roads. It also could give more power to bootleggers on the reservation, he said. Rininger said the tribe should legalize alcohol, as it has attempted to do in the past.

“It’s a bad situation, but I don’t know that closing Whiteclay is going to solve anything,” he said.

John Maisch, an Oklahoma law professor who advocates closing the stores, said the argument about highway dangers is “speculative, at best” and cited studies that say traffic fatalities decline when access is restricted.

Commissioner James Krotz said the hearing was scheduled after the liquor commission announced that it would require the Arrowhead Inn, D&S Pioneer Service, the Jumping Eagle Inn and State Line Liquor to renew their liquor licenses. Normally, the licenses are renewed automatically.

Krotz said he wouldn’t discuss the commission’s decision until after it was finalized.

A spokesman for the reservation’s tribal government said no one in his office had been told about the hearing. Kevin Yellow Bird Steele, the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s public relations director, said tribal leaders have appealed to state and local officials to close the beer stores numerous times in the past and saw no changes.

“They’re going to give them those licenses,” Yellow Bird Steele said. “Nothing’s going to change. It’s always the same.”

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