Creeks to vote on tobacco compact with state

The Muscogee (Creek) National Council will vote tonight on whether to adopt a tobacco compact with the state, though Principal Chief A.D. Ellis says he has doubts about the measure's passage.
The tribe is one of the last holdouts in signing a compact with the state, the only other tribe being the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe, which is undergoing a change in government but is likely to sign on once the change is complete, said State Treasurer Scott Meacham.
In the past, the Creek and other tribes' smoke shops funneled low-tax cigarettes reserved for the state's border areas into stores outside those border areas, but an arbitration panel that decided the matter between the Cherokee Nation, which had a compact, and the state ruled that moving the cigarettes out of those areas was a violation of the agreement.
After the supply of cheap name-brand cigarettes dried up, the Creek Nation set up its own wholesale company that received and distributed cigarettes sold through tribes in other parts of the country. Those cigarettes do not have state tax stamps on them, and this year two shipments of un-stamped tobacco were seized by the Oklahoma Tax Commission going from the tribe's wholesale company to tribal smoke shops. The state has also brought a suit in federal court against some members of the tribe who operate the wholesale company and some of the smoke shops.
The state does not have jurisdiction on tribal land that the smoke shops and wholesale warehouse in Okmulgee sit on, since it is trust land.
The name-brand cigarettes sold at the tribe's smoke shops now 
mostly bear uncompacted stamps, which have a higher tax rate than compacted stamps, with no money rebated back to the Creeks.
The tribe has rejected several compacts presented by the state in the past, and Ellis said he does not like everything the compact he is presenting, but that it is time to sign one.
"We've got to bring this to an end," Ellis said.
The full compact will likely be released tomorrow, according to a tribal spokesperson, but Ellis said the compact is very similar to that of other tribes, and would require the Creeks to shutter their wholesale operation.
The council will vote on whether to allow Ellis to enter into the compact at a 6:30 p.m. meeting today in Okmulgee.