After months of conversations and attempted diplomacy, Rep. Scott Fetgatter said Wednesday that the Oklahoma Legislature will not be proposing a new tobacco taxation compact with the Muscogee Nation despite growing frustration about Gov. Kevin Stitt’s insistence it accompany agreements with the tribe on motor vehicle tags and turnpike tolls.
“I spent all session trying to bridge the gap on these issues,” said Fetgatter (R-Okmulgee). “We negotiated. We put everything in that the governor’s office asked for. We had everything in that the tribes had asked for. We had agreement. The governor ties all three issues together — Turnpike Authority, motor vehicle and tobacco — and that’s why we can’t get the support from the governor, even though his staff told us that the governor supported model compacting and with the Legislature, the governor made it very clear that he wouldn’t support (this) unless any tribe that entered into a tobacco compact also had a Turnpike Authority and motor vehicle (compact).”
Fetgatter said he had been working to develop a new model tobacco compact that could be signed by multiple tribes, but he said there would not be enough votes in the State Senate to pass a tobacco agreement and override a gubernatorial veto. The issue was tabled by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on State-Tribal Relations on Wednesday.
As for what happens next, Fetgatter said Stitt told him he is holding firm on the connection of tobacco tax agreements to motor vehicle tags and turnpike tolls.
“I mean, we won’t have a compact with tribes that don’t have an agreement with [the Turnpike Authority] — as well as a compact on tags — is the way it was left with me, which means that these compacts, several compacts, have already expired,” Fetgatter said. “There are more coming up for expiration. The state, as of right now, is in violation of state law because we can’t supply the black stamps for Native American citizens purchasing tax free from their smoke shops. So, I mean, it’s a little bit of a mess.”
Fetgatter criticized the political rhetoric at hand, something Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) tasked the Okmulgee County lawmaker with tamping down in a new House role focused on “tribal and external affairs.”
“My appointment to my position was to stop having fights with the tribes and to try to figure out how we have better relationships with the tribes,” he said. “With all the sovereignty in the state of Oklahoma and the sovereign state, we should be the best state in the union. There’s a lot of power in state of Oklahoma if we will just sit down at a table and have conversations and respect one another and cut the race baiting and all those comments out that are escalating. Just sit down and talk and learn to trust each other. Right now, we can’t do that.”
Indeed, Stitt unloaded on the topic during his weekly press conference Wednesday.
“The fact we have the Creeks up here lobbying, trying — the chief is up here walking the halls with his attorney and all of his people, trying to go to the Legislature,” Stitt said. “They’re going to momma because daddy said, ‘No, I’m not going to do a tobacco compact until you get realistic about the tags.’ I cannot in good conscience as a governor of Oklahoma allow you to drive illegally on the roads and sell tags in Guymon and Guthrie and Edmond. That’s what you guys need to be writing about is, why are we allowing people to print fake tags and sell them all over the state? That should frustrate everybody when it comes to roads and bridge funding. Turnpike funding, everything comes out of that. It goes to education. I’ve got to be fair to everyone across the state. I don’t pick winners and losers.”
Muscogee Nation Chief David Hill issued a statement Wednesday saying that “while a legislative solution no longer looks possible, we still appreciate the work that’s been done.”
“We have spent a good amount of the last two weeks meeting with our partners in the House and the Senate regarding state-tribal matters and have done so with mutual respect and understanding. That’s been refreshing, and we have found many who support a legislative path, rather than continue to go nowhere with the governor due to leverage based tactics that are unreasonable and deviate from the issue at hand,” Hill said. “We maintain that tobacco and motor vehicle compacts are two separate issues that have no business being tied to one another. We have negotiated in good faith to reach an agreement on a tobacco compact, and we have stood firm in our commitment, after signing a tobacco compact with the state, to explore agreements on motor vehicle and tolls. We owe that to our business owners, taxpayers and the Oklahoma economy, which have all been unjustly affected by this back and forth, with no certainty in sight.”
Stitt disagreed vehemently, bringing up “race” — instead of political classification — as Fetgatter had feared hours earlier.
“When you see a Creek tag, a license plate, none of that money goes to the state of Oklahoma for roads or bridges or anything,” Stitt said. “And then our law enforcement doesn’t know who that is. Then they can drive on the turnpikes — I think their bill is up to over $5 million that they owe the state of Oklahoma. Let’s make turnpikes free for everyone before we decide to have this race pay and this race doesn’t pay. That to me — this is America. We should treat everybody exactly the same, it doesn’t matter your background or where you come from.”
Asked about his push to strike a compact agreement with the Legislature on Tuesday in a House hallway, Hill referenced Stitt’s tweet that day claiming Muscogee citizens are “likely not paying their tolls on the turnpike.” It included a graphic saying the tribe owes $5.9 million in “turnpike fees” to the state.
“Someone sent me a meme I guess he put out today about tribal tags where (he said), ‘They just want free tolls.’ But I have a Pikepass on my vehicles, our whole fleet, we’ve got Pikepass. So that number, $5 million, that’s not accurate. They can’t tell us the actual number,” Hill said, then describing his conversations with Stitt’s office on compacts. “If we get tobacco, I’d be willing to come back in two days — and I told them — to discuss motor vehicle and turnpike. He wants all three of them.”
To close out his remarks on the topic Wednesday, Stitt turned his ire toward media companies.
“The fact that we’re silent on this because they’re big advertisers and they’re pushing money into running commercials?” Stitt said incredulously. “Ask yourself why you can’t run these articles in your newspapers and on your television stations because your editors aren’t letting you. Ask them. Ask them that.”
During Wednesday’s Joint Committee on State-Tribal Relations meeting, lawmakers approved the appropriation of $175,000 for use in the legal defense of Rogers County District Attorney Matt Ballard and Okmulgee County District Attorney Carol Iski. The two DAs have been sued by the U.S. Department of Justice — and the Muscogee Nation — for prosecuting tribal citizens within Indian Country reservation boundaries in eastern Oklahoma.
