BUFFALO, N.Y. – Gov. Eliot Spitzer is backing off a pledge to begin collecting sales taxes from non-Indians who purchase tobacco and motor fuel on Indian reservations, opting for next year, The Buffalo News reports.

"We moved the enforcement date to April 1, 2008, to be realistic," said Jeffrey Gordon, a Spitzer spokesman.

New York convenience stores, which have sued the state in the past to enforce state law, suggest that they will continue to do so.

"Based on the governor's inaction since he took office, I can't say I'm surprised," Jim Calvin, executive director of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, told the newspaper. Earlier this year NYACS launched an ad campaign that demands the Spitzer administration to begin collecting taxes on the vast amounts of cigarettes and motor fuel sold by Native American stores to non-Native American New Yorkers.

On March 1, 2006, the New York tax department was supposed to start collecting cigarette excise taxes on sales to non-Indians made at Indian reservation stores.