On July 11, the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma publicly announced that criminal charges had been filed against Carla Carney, a former Business Committee member and current candidate in the tribe’s 2024 elections. The announcement came just 16 days before Ponca voters are scheduled to select four members for the tribe’s Business Committee in an election that has been repeatedly rescheduled.
Carney was charged with larceny, misusing public money and two counts of tampering with records. According to the complaint, she is accused of taking three laptops from the tribal complex, editing the tribe’s COMDATA account after her removal from office, removing records from one laptop and falsifying a letter stating the laptops had been returned.
Underscoring the unusual nature of this Ponca election cycle, the charges announced last week had actually been filed five months earlier in February and were already a matter of record in the District Court of the Ponca Tribe. Ponca citizens are set to elect four members to the Business Committee — the tribe’s sole branch of government — on Saturday, July 27, after March, April, May and June election dates were announced and delayed.
The Ponca Tribe posted the charges on the same day NonDoc interviewed Shannon Edwards, an attorney and former Osage congresswoman who is representing Carney in a civil lawsuit — CIV-2023-24 — regarding her removal from office last year. Edwards is not representing Carney in her criminal case.
“This is how they try and influence the election,” Edwards said of the sudden July 11 announcement of charges filed in February.
After her first election, Carney joined the Business Committee in 2018 and was elected secretary-treasurer by her fellow committee members in 2020. She previously served on the Ponca Enterprise Gaming Board and has several advanced degrees in information technology. She won reelection in 2021 and retained the secretary-treasurer position until October 2023 when she was removed from office.
In December, Carla Carney and her husband, Brenton Lee Carney Sr., were arrested and booked into the Kay County Jail on a “BIA local hold.” Edwards said Carney was arrested while attempting to retrieve court documents related to a lawsuit.
“One day, I called over to the courthouse and said, ‘I’m going to send my client over there to get a document,’ and the next thing I know she’s being arrested for not turning her laptop computer back in,” Edwards said. “And somehow the arrest — the camera that captured the arrest in the parking lot of the court clerk’s office — shows up on social media.”
In February 2024, both Carneys were charged with larceny in Ponca District Court.
Asked for a statement on the charges, Ponca Chairman Oliver Littlecook Sr. said, “No comment please.”
Carneys claim recall efforts spurred removal
Brenton Carney claims the whole saga started with a recall petition circulated in September 2023 by his brother-in-law against three other members of the Ponca Business Committee: Littlecook, Vice-Chairman Robert Collins and another unidentified committee member.
“A recall petition back last year was (signed by) enough people — they got almost 400 people in three weeks, and all they needed was 332 people — but the judge and their lawyer, they fought against it,” Brenton Carney said.Â
According to Carla Carney’s court filings, the recall petition alleged that Collins used and sold methamphetamine and that Littlecook refused to require him to take a drug test. Littecook and the unidentified committee member were also alleged to have improperly influenced their relatives’ tribal court cases and housing applications. No evidence is provided to corroborate the allegations in the appellate court filings.
Littlecook declined to provide NonDoc with records related to the recall election, which ultimately did not occur. Edwards, Carla Carney’s attorney, said Judge Marsha Harlan issued an order to restrain the recall election owing to its proximity to the 2024 regular election.
“In the meantime, they decided to remove [Carney] from office,” Edwards said. “Our position is you can’t do that. You can suspend her, but who recalls council members or kicks council members off the council are the people. You go through a recall election.”
In October 2023, the Ponca Business Committee removed Carney from the committee, and in November they declared her seat vacant.
“They haven’t let her be at any meeting since October,” Edwards said.
Anadarko appeal pending on Carney’s removal
The Ponca Constitution allows for removal of a Business Committee member from office for a felony conviction, a misdemeanor conviction involving dishonesty or moral turpitude, accepting a bribe, moving outside of Kay or Noble County, missing three consecutive meetings or by a majority vote of tribal members in a recall election. A majority vote of the business committee can suspend a committee member and trigger a recall election.
After Carla Carney was removed from office in October, she hired Edwards and sued the Ponca Business Committee and its six remaining members: Littlecook, Collins, Matilda Delagarza, Deborah Margerum, Leota White and Earl Trey Howe III. The lawsuit argues that Carney was unconstitutionally removed from office.
Court filings by Ponca Tribe attorney Joe Keene, an Osage lawyer and brother of Osage Congressman Billy Keene, say Carney was removed from office for missing three consecutive meetings of the Business Committee.
Edwards said the absences were of “secret meetings” and claimed Carney was not notified of the meetings beforehand. Littlecook testified in Ponca District Court that Carney was notified.
“We contend she did receive the notice,” Littlecook said, according to court records. “Why would other people be aware and know and she not come?”
In Ponca District Court, Harlan ruled in favor of the Business Committee by finding that the court had no jurisdiction to hear civil suits brought against the committee.
“The tribe is not structured as a three-branch government. It vests all authority in a seven member Business Committee elected by a vote of the adult membership,” Harlan wrote. “Although the Ponca Tribe has created a judicial system, it is not a second or equal branch of government, but rather its authority is directly granted and authorized by laws and ordinances enacted by the Business Committee.”
She also held that the Business Committee was the proper forum to hear Carney’s case, citing a 1984 resolution giving the committee “an inherent intratribal area of jurisdiction” over “civil disputes against the Ponca Tribal Business Committee and its election board.”
Edwards criticized the ruling’s deference to the Business Committee when the committee itself was accused of acting unconstitutionally.
“They kick you out. They don’t have authority under the constitution to do that, but if you want to complain, you need to go to the council and tell them they don’t have authority to kick you out. The ones that just kicked you out,” Edwards said, turning to sarcasm. “Yeah, that’s going to work out.”
The case is currently on appeal in front of the Indian Appeals Court for the Southern Plains Region, a federal Article I appellate court made up of three judges.
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‘Damn, they changed it again?!’
While Carney awaits action in the Indian Appeals Court on the litigation regarding her removal, repeated delays of the Ponca Tribe’s 2024 election have confused and irritated some citizens of the 3,500-member tribe based in White Eagle, located just south of Ponca City in Kay County.
Although few filings are publicly available, Edwards suggested that the delays appear to be linked to a separate lawsuit: CIV-2023-23, Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma v. Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma Election Board.
While the litigation involves who will serve on the Ponca Tribe Election Board, Littlecook said earlier this month that “nothing else” related to the lawsuit would be publicly released by the tribe’s court, which is governed by the Business Committee.
With only some filings publicly available, the full scope of the suit’s controversy is not discernible. It was filed in 2023 before Carney’s suit over her removal from office, and it involves a dispute between the election board and the Business Committee.
According to a March 27 Facebook post by Littlecook, the tribe’s attorney originally ruled that neither he, nor Collins, nor Carney was eligible for the 2024 ballot owing to a provision of the tribe’s constitution that prohibits Business Committee officers from seeking reelection when they fail to meet financial audit deadlines.
Edwards said that Carney and Collins successfully appealed the attorney’s ruling — arguing that prior officers were the ones who had failed their audit obligations — and they were deemed eligible for the 2024 ballot. Because Littlecook did not appeal the ruling, however, Edwards said he remained ineligible.
As CIV-2023-23 played out this spring and summer, multiple government bodies and officials issued orders delaying the tribe’s election date from March to April to May to June and now to July 27.
Some Ponca citizens have expressed frustration with the delays in the Ponca People for Responsible Citizenry Facebook page.
“DAMN, THEY CHANGED IT AGAIN?!” one man commented on a June 12 post about the latest delay.
When one person expressed their frustration with delays by saying, “This is why I have no care to vote,” election board member Brandon Kemble responded.
“I understand your frustration and discouragement. Your participation in our Ponca tribal election is vital to the continuity and future success of our tribe,” Kemble wrote. “A well informed voter guides our tribal government to a prosperous future. If we don’t cast an informed vote, we have only ourselves to blame for unproductive leaders.”
(Update: This article was updated at 9:14 p.m. Thursday, July 18 to clarify that Business Committee members may vote to suspend another member which triggers a recall election to determine if they are removed from office.)
Read the criminal complaint against Carla Carney
Read the district court order dismissing Carney’s lawsuit
Read Carney’s appellate brief
Read the Ponca Tribe’s appellate reply brief
Read Carney’s appellate response brief
