Native American tribes in Oklahoma will maintain tobacco offers, as lawmakers override governor’s veto

OKLAHOMA CITY — Native American tribes in Oklahoma will get to maintain their present agreements on how they share cash from tobacco gross sales with the state.

The Oklahoma House voted on Monday to override Gov. Kevin Stitt’s veto of a invoice that extends agreements on promoting tobacco for one more yr. In a bipartisan vote throughout a particular session, the Republican-controlled House met the two-thirds vote wanted to override. The Senate overrode the governor’s veto final week.

As a end result, any tribe with an present settlement on tobacco gross sales can decide to increase the phrases of that settlement till Dec. 31, 2024. Leaders from a number of of the state’s strongest tribes have been within the gallery for Monday’s vote.

The override is the most recent growth in an ongoing dispute between the Republican governor and several other Oklahoma-based tribes. Stitt, himself a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, has stated he desires to regulate the compact language to ensure tribes don’t broaden the place they promote tobacco on account of a landmark 2020 U.S. Supreme Court choice that decided the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s historic reservation nonetheless existed.

Since that call, decrease courts have decided the reservations of a number of different Native American tribes, together with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole, are nonetheless intact.

The present tobacco compacts, which permit the state and tribes to evenly break up the tax income on the sale of tobacco on tribal land, generate tens of tens of millions of {dollars} every year in income for each the state and tribes.