Oklahoma: Joint Committee on State - Tribal Relations

Scott Fetgatter

Welcome everybody to the Joint Committee on State and Tribal Relations. This will be, I guess, yours and I probably last meeting together, just kind of so everybody understands that the House had chairmanship this year, the Senate will have chairmanship next year. And so there will be new chairman and vice chairman. In the upcoming legislative session appointed by this— the Speaker and the Pro Tem of the Senate. So welcome again. Today we're going to discuss the consideration of expenditure— expenditures from Tribal and State Litigation Revolving Fund. And before we get— begin, could I have staff call the roll?

Committee staff

Representative Bashore?

Steve Bashore

Here.

Committee staff

Representative Provenzano? Representative Osburn? Here. Representative West? Chairman Fetgatter?

Scott Fetgatter

Here.

Committee staff

3 present for the House.

Committee vice chair

Senate call roll.

Committee staff

Senator Boren?

Mary Boren

Here.

Committee staff

Senator Coleman? Here. Senator Gollihare? Here. Senator Rader? Senator Howard? Present. Quorum present, sir.

Scott Fetgatter

Chair sees a quorum. At this time, I would like to invite Ryan Stevens from the District Attorney's Council to give us an update on where we are at. Last meeting, if you recall, we approved $250,000 for these specific cases. And we'd like to get an update on that. If you couldn't— if you could do that at this time, you're recognized.

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Thank you, Representative. My name is Ryan Stevenson. I'm with the District Attorney's Council. I'm the assistant executive coordinator there. To my right are District Attorneys Matt Ballard and Steve Koonsweiler. And with the permission of the chair, I would actually turn it over to them for for the update on where we are currently with the 3 different attorney groups that we've been working with on this matter. With the Chair's permission.

Scott Fetgatter

You're recognized.

Matt Ballard (District Attorney's Office)

Thank you, Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to come back in front of you. I come today with some degree of good news on this. You are aware this committee, we previously met before this committee. I believe it was January 8th of earlier this year, 2026, that we were last here. And the committee approved an appropriation of $250,000. Just to give you a brief background on where we are, there are 3 district attorneys that have been sued. And I want to emphasize that these are not lawsuits that we brought. These were lawsuits brought against us regarding our following of Court of Criminal Appeals opinion in the O'Brien case. But myself, Mr. Kunzweiler, and District Attorney Carol Iske were all sued, and each of us have multiple lawsuits that have more or less been consolidated at this point. But that's a little bit of the background on who the involved parties are. So in January, this committee approved $250,000. At that time, we were aware that there was a ruling in the Northern District Federal Court in Tulsa regarding Mr. Kunzweiler's case involving the Muscogee Creek Nation in the state's favor. We were aware at that time that that matter was going to be appealed or believed that that was going to be appealed. And that has played out exactly as we expected. At that time, this committee approved contracts. We realized that this matter had escalated from something that we have very capable counsel at the state level, but it needed counsel at the national level. And that's when we hired at that time Paul Weiss firm and specifically Cannon Shanmugam to represent us. Cannon has previously represented the state in litigation in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. And so we realized that we needed to engage him for Mr. Kunzweiler's litigation. Since then, where we are with the litigation, the lawsuits against myself and Ms. Iskey have been stayed. Those lawsuits were administratively closed and stayed in June of this year. There was some litigation prior to that, but since June, those lawsuits have been stayed. Shifting to Mr. Kunstweiler's case in front of the 10th Circuit. Where we are, I believe the chairman's specific question, where we are as to that, the money that the committee previously allocated, the $250,000, we looked at that. There's approximately $16,000 remaining, so approximately $234,000 in expenditures from that. And the reason that there has been not uncertainty on that, but the way that the billing has worked, they have gone to each individual district attorney to review those to ensure that the money was properly expended, that we approved of the amounts that were billed. And then we submit those to DAC, and DAC, District Attorney's Council, is the one who actually pays those. So there is a little bit of lag there. I know, for instance, in my case, last week I had approved an invoice of approximately $2,400. I don't know if that's been paid, but those are the type— that's the way in which this is happening. So the good news is that we have been good stewards of the money that this committee has appropriated up to this point. We have not exceeded the amount, and we knew that that was a possibility. Obviously, we're not going to exceed the contractual amount. Right. The contractual amount was up to $1 million. Obviously, we're nowhere close to that, would not exceed that. But we also have managed to stay underneath the amount of money that the committee has appropriated. I say that to add this caveat, that litigation is about to heat up significantly in Mr. Kunsweiler's case. Oral argument in front of the 10th Circuit in Denver has been set for November 17th. And so Cannon Shanmugam is going to become very actively engaged in that. Cannon's also the highest billing attorney. And so we anticipate that over the course of the next 45 days, the litigation costs are going to ramp up significantly while we prepare for that significant event in front of the 10th Circuit. So that's just a quick overview of how we got here, where we are. And I'm happy to answer any questions, address any issues, and I know Mr. Kunzweiler can as well on litigation involving his office. But we appreciate the committee, appreciate your support. This is an issue we believe is appropriate and significant for the state. So thank you.

Scott Fetgatter

Thank you for that explanation. District Attorney Kunzweiler, do you have anything to add?

Steve Kunzweiler (Tulsa County District Attorney's Office)

Sure. Steve Kunzweiler, K-U-N-Z-W-E-I-L-E-R, Tulsa County District Attorney. Just to supplement what Mr. Ballard had discussed, I agree with his rendition of the history. So we get a billing statement from my appellate counsel now that we're up before the 10th Circuit. And so I pulled up a billing statement that we had received August 12th, 2026, kind of give you an overview. view of kind of how they're billing this. So with Paul Weiss Law Firm, they billed through July 31st, according to this statement, $38,123, but they provided a 50% discount. So the actual billing that was provided to us was $19,061.50. And So then we get an itemized rendition of each attorney and each member of the law firm who actually handled that case. During this particular timeframe, they billed out at what they list as 17.40 hours. They had a partner involved in this matter of the law firm who billed at 4.3 hours. They had litigation Counsel and associates who billed at respectively $8.2, $3.9, and then they had support specialists at $0.5 and a second one at $0.5. But then beyond that, then they literally lay out in very particular aspects what they were doing. So for instance— Partner William Marks, indicated as far as billing was concerned starting July 1st that he provided a review of edits from substantive site checking of the 10th Circuit brief. So as Mr. Ballard had indicated, we're dealing with national litigation and a national law firm, and I would expect that they are ramping things up. So he provided on 2 separate occasions, one billing statement for him was 2.5 hours, and then separately after they'd done some approving of edits, and then he did an overview for another 0.5. But it just goes down, and we can provide those types of itemized statements if, if you are desirous of that. But that's kind of how I get it. We review that just to make sure that the lawyers who are representing us are actually billing and they can account for their time.

Scott Fetgatter

Thank you for the explanation, committee. Today, we're going to take up additional dollar amount to appropriate for these cases. I would like to say and give an apology to the committee because we haven't been able to give you a dollar amount that we were looking at. And we've had this discussion. We, Vice Chairman and I, have been trying to wrap our heads around what the ask was from the District Attorney's Council. And we hadn't been able to get that. There's $16,000, just to recap, there's $16,000 from the $250,000. That we approved in the last meeting. And we have to come up with a number so that we don't put them in a bind. We have a lot of change coming up over the next few months. So again, I apologize to you that we haven't been able to share with you a thought on what we need to do going forward. And until about 10 minutes ago, that discussion had not really been able to happen. So the Vice Chairman and I have considered what we've done in the past, what we're looking at going into the future. So just to give you on the spot, we are looking at $200,000 in an additional approval today is what we are going to be looking for. So you've— I've given you that number, and you've heard the explanations from the district attorneys. With that being said, are there any questions from the committee to the district attorneys at this time? Senator Boren, you're recognized for a question.

Mary Boren

Thank you, Mr. Chair— or Vice Chair. Can I direct my questions to the DA or do I direct them to you all?

Scott Fetgatter

On the House side, we direct them to them and I just recognize you.

Mary Boren

Is that okay with you? Okay. Thank you for being here. Thank you for presenting your information. So is there a reason why y'all weren't wanting to give a specific ask? Is that putting y'all in a bind to ask for $200,000? Y'all just didn't want to ask for a number? Why is it that we're— why is the legislative committee picking a number and hoping that y'all are okay with it?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

So at the last meet— excuse me, at the last meeting that we had, in addition to the $250,000 that was approved by this committee to go ahead and be transferred over, we also got approval from this committee to enter into the contract for up to $1 million, to not exceed $1 million, excuse me. When we were dealing with the attorneys, as Mr. Ballard pointed out, the more local attorneys, the Oklahoma attorneys, they understood how this process worked, that we would have to come to y'all when we needed those or when we were asking for those expenditures. They were able to give us some leeway, some grace period with when we got the money to them. Moving to the national level, We are not going to have that leeway. We are not going to have that grace. Those national firms, specifically Cannon and Associates, they're going to want their money when they want their money. So when we were entering into requesting this meeting, the question was, of the contract up to $1 million, the first question was, how can we even access that? Do we need to come back before the committee each time? Once it became apparent that we did, then it was— I mean, we were having to estimate at that point how much is going to be used, how quickly, because we haven't actually ventured into that yet. As Mr. Ballard pointed out, it's what we anticipate is about to be ramping up as they begin oral or preparation for the oral arguments in November. Anything else?

Matt Ballard (District Attorney's Office)

No, I think that's accurate. We're in a bit of a position where, I mean, the reason we have these attorneys is I don't practice regularly in front of the 10th Circuit. I've never done an oral argument in front of the 10th Circuit. And so we're trying to figure out from our end what that looks like. I know contractually what we're ultimately, you know, the maximum amount we're We're obligated to and noted to stay underneath that. But in terms of workflow for a national firm, that's just something that we're not very familiar with. And so we're trying to estimate that as best we can for the committee. It's just difficult for, you know, somebody that practices primarily in state court to estimate how many hours a national attorney is going to prepare for and spend. In preparation for a 10th Circuit argument. So that's the difficulty from my end, just on a personal level. That's the difficulty that I have. And we're trying to do that as best we can for the committee. And I apologize that we're not able to give you more concrete information. Certainly, if we had that, I would love to be able to provide that. And so I apologize for any lack of concrete information that we're able to provide.

Steve Kunzweiler (Tulsa County District Attorney's Office)

And I will supplement that. So some of the difficulty that we've engaged with is not really knowing what was going to happen with Mr. Ballard and Ms. Iskey's cases. The contemplation obviously was Kuntzwater's case is going to go up to the 10th Circuit, and it seemed as though that was a possibility that they could jointly be looking at that. I think the district court probably properly looked at it and said, hey, the issue is pretty much the same, so let's just stay and let's see what's going to go on with the Koonsweiler case. What I cannot anticipate is, other than getting an appellate brief ready, once you're up in front of the 10th Circuit, as Mr. Ballard indicated, Mr. Stevenson, when you're bringing those people, they're going to be traveling. I don't know how to estimate what their costs are going to be associated with prep time to being in front of the 10th Circuit and what the issues the 10th Circuit may be dealing with. The concern I always have is 10th Circuit may not even want to make a specific ruling. They may say we need more information, and they could remand it back to the federal district court, and then now we're back down before Judge Frazell, and that would be something I really can't anticipate or expect to cost. We're kind of at the expertise of these folks that do this national-type litigation, and ideally it would be nice to just make your oral argument and then we're done. 10th Circuit makes whatever ruling they make. We're very confident that if the ruling is for the state, that the Muscogees will be appealing that. We're very confident that if it's against the state, that we'll be appealing it up to the U.S. Supreme Court. So we very much believe this is going to be a U.S. Supreme Court case, very much like the Castro-Huerta case that came also out of Tulsa County. And so when we were asking, I think, and trying to spitball as best we could what the expense would be, our best comparison was Castro-Huerta. And And the value we see in that is we're using the same lawyers, so we feel we have a level of confidence in their capabilities. They have been successful before the Supreme Court, and we're hopeful they'll be successful before the 10th Circuit.

Committee vice chair

Senator Boren, for a follow-up.

Mary Boren

Thank you, and I appreciate that explanation, and I'm— I feel I feel like I need to apologize because I don't think I was clear enough on my question. My question was, how come we don't see a specific request or recommendation originating from the district attorney's counsel for $200,000 instead of us having to have some kind of conversation over here based on what you all said? It seems like it's a pretty simple step to say, based on all of that ambiguity and uncertainty, why isn't there a specific ask for $200,000 on some kind of letter or request, or why isn't this a formal request as opposed to, you know, me seeing personally as a member of this committee, I'm sitting looking at an agenda. Yes. And all I have is discussion and consideration of expenditure from the State Tribal Litigation Revolving Fund. And there's no number. And then— and so then when I show up today, what I just heard from our side is we were— there was, I think the chair said we were having a hard time finding out what the number request was. And he said it about 3 times. We don't know what the request or the ask was. And then y'all basically said the same thing. So it's weird to be approving $200,000 in legal fees when nobody's asking for it formally. So can y'all address that?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Senator, speaking just completely freely, I mean, I think it was our anticipation to come in here and even ask For more. By which I mean, I anticipate that we will be asking for more once that group, I mean, that's why we asked y'all to approve the contract last time of up to $1 million. It wasn't until, I'm gonna say less than a week ago, approximately a week ago that we realized it's not a situation of just how we access these funds. That it's actually going to be coming back before y'all and asking for money going towards that million-dollar maximum amount each time, that we would actually take this process again. Up until that point, we thought it was just a question of how do we access the funds that have already been approved, not effectively how do we stair-step to it. So it wasn't a situation where all of this time we've just been waiting to find out. I think our question had to change leading up to this meeting. Does that help answer your question?

Scott Fetgatter

We have another question, so we'll come back to you if that's okay. Representative Osborne, you're recognized.

Mike Osburn

If, if I'm correct, and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I understand you saying is we approved this money the last time we had this meeting. You are simply accessing what we have already approved. Is that correct?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Yes, Representative. At the last meeting, there were 2 different things that were approved, that $250,000 that we have talked about, that of that we have $16,000 left, and the contract that we're now talking about, y'all approved of up to not exceeding $1 million, and that's what we are talking about now. With that amount that y'all have approved, how do we begin, how do we get access to those funds? Yes, sir.

Scott Fetgatter

For a follow-up. Thank you, Mr.

Mike Osburn

Chairman. And so really what we're doing here is taking a draw off of money that has already been approved?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Yes, sir.

Committee vice chair

A question from Vice Chair then. Okay, so you said kind of anticipated timeframe. Are we already scheduled, or is this case, the Koonsweiler case, scheduled on 10th Circuit docket for oral arguments, or is it just anticipated that it would be? And what is that date for that docket?

Steve Kunzweiler (Tulsa County District Attorney's Office)

Yeah, I was just conferring with District Attorney Ballard. Thank you for the question. Oral arguments are currently scheduled for November 17th before the 10th Circuit.

Committee vice chair

And then through there, then I'll waive. Senator Boren, do you have a question? You're recognized for a question.

Mary Boren

Thank you, and I appreciate Representative Osborne's clarification. I understood that it was a draw request. I still I don't understand why the request is not formalizing— is being formally asked for as— and I think it's because there was confusion on the process. That's what I'm getting. Okay, that helps me. Is there something that we can do to make it a little bit more clear about how to request for a draw for the remaining $500,000 that's going to be left in the account?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

I mean, mostly now knowing that this is the process, that to access those we'll need to come back before the Board is really the information that we needed. Or come back before the committee, sorry.

Scott Fetgatter

Yeah, I think it's been communicated with the district attorneys that the committee Um, is probably not, um, comfortable with just floating $1 million out there to spend on legal fees, and then it just gets used up. I mean, I'm not an attorney, so I don't, I don't understand the inner workings of that. So, so it's kind of, it's kind of been the, the precedent that they would come back and we would make sure that Everything was being paid and then give them some ability to continue forward. With that being said, you know, we can have a further conversation amongst ourselves as a committee right here in this room today if we feel like $200 is too much or not enough or what do we need to do. We can have that conversation. Thank you. With that being said, I mean, I feel like the Vice Chairman and I have been pretty open in our dialogue as far as that process goes. Leader Bashore, you're recognized.

Steve Bashore

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. In your opinion, considering the national litigation upcoming, Just next month, in a few weeks, how far will $200,000 go up until, let's just say, February? Is that even a fair number to give you, in your opinion?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Can we have just a moment to confer?

Steve Bashore

Sure, and I'm not just saying lower that, I'm just asking, would it be, do you anticipate we possibly need to access a little more to get us through?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

I believe I am ready to answer. You're recognized. Thank you. Both District Attorney Ballard and District Attorney Koonsweiler have talked about kind of the documents that we have that they— we are more than willing to let this committee see or give copies to this. Basically what we've been looking over here is at the time detail accounting for the hours that are going through this, looking at both periods of what we'll call non-intensity versus those when it starts to ramp up. I anticipate that we'll have gone through the $200,000 by the time the November 17th date rolls around. I mean, just seeing how it does ramp up, seeing when it comes time for either these briefs to be due, when it comes time for these items to come up, just how much goes into it, and how much of an increase that is, and seeing as the oral argument will be the most important thing that has happened on this case so far, I would estimate that Yes, it would be used by the November 17th date, if I had to estimate.

Scott Fetgatter

So you think that goes through, that gets you through November 17th? We're, I think, anticipating we have a lot of change coming over, you know, the next 90 days. So What would the ask be to get you through to the end of January?

Scott Fetgatter

Okay, we'll stand at ease a moment. Okay. Back to order here. So what we're going to do is— it's great that you guys gave us an ask. You came up with it in about 3 minutes. I think it's fair to say that we should have been able to get to this point before now. With that being said, I'm going to open up to questions from the committee. On the new request of up to $500,000 before we take a motion, if there are any questions. The Chair has a question to start. Could you give us a brief explanation of how you came up to $500,000 so quickly?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

So basically what we put All of those 3 minutes of conversation together based on was looking at the May 31st billing layout of where hours were spent. That is when the brief in chief was due. What up until this point has been the biggest item up until that November 17th, that was the biggest, for lack of better terms, the biggest ticket item that was in this litigation were those briefs. Okay. That amount for that month was just north of $125,000 when everything is said and done. We looked at all of the— looking at all the descriptions of what had to happen during that period of time. We anticipate that the amount for the months leading up to what I anticipate October and And half of November leading up to those oral arguments will be something similar, if not more than those. As we've said, the oral arguments will be elevated a higher mark than the case in brief— sorry, the case in chief, the brief in chief. After that, anticipating it to come back down to the less intense months and looking at some of the billing from those months, less than $20,000 during periods of non-intensity, that's kind of where we use as our gauge for looking at these. Does that somewhat answer your question?

Scott Fetgatter

So there's been another question That I've had is in the previous meeting, the way you all have laid it out is we approved 2 things, but it was in my head that the 2 things were a part of one issue, the approval of up to, not to exceed $1 million and $250,000. So my question is, does the $250,000— Yes. In your opinion, at this point, is that part of the $1 million or is that outside of the up to $1 million?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Yes, Representative, it is our understanding, as we said here, that the $250,000 that was approved last time went towards that $1 million maximum, where at this point the maximum that we would be asking from this committee for that towards that contract would be $750,000.

Scott Fetgatter

Okay, I just wanted to clarify because I think earlier in the week there may have been some confusion on that, but it was my understanding we took the agreement of the contract prior to appropriating the $250,000. Are there any other questions from the committee at this time?

Committee vice chair

Yeah, I'll follow up on that. So the— we talked about the $1 million not to exceed. Is that imposed on the law firm, or is that imposed on us as the, the clients in the case, such that the law firm, are they going to stop whenever They hit $1 million in billing, or are they going to continue on and they've deemed that that's the extent of the fee that they would charge for this through the potential Supreme Court appeal— appellate review?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Yes, Senator, to the last part of your question, that was the amount that they cited that their fees would not exceed to get us through that point. So yes, that, that is what they said the amount is they will not go over.

Committee vice chair

So if this does go to Supreme Court appeal, I mean, we're talking we're already going to have potentially $700,000 in it to 10th Circuit. We're not going to have to come in and renegotiate anything. Well, that extra $300,000 will cover Supreme Court resolution. Okay.

Committee vice chair

So we talked about timeline. Here is November 17th is oral arguments. What is the— and this is what I didn't ask before because I probably didn't think that y'all had a good answer because it's unknown. What's the expected timeline for the 10th Circuit to rule on it? And then what would be the next steps that have cost during that?

Ryan Stevenson (District Attorney's Council)

Spitballing over here. February, March for the date, uh, uh, hear back from the 10th Circuit during that time. That was kind of part of our calculation. I anticipate that would be those lower periods of time, 'cause at that point, I mean, I'm sure there'll be some work being done, but at that point, it's a waiting game. So I anticipate they would be much lesser amounts. Like I said, just quickly going through here, a period of not as much intensity, you have sub-$20,000 months.

Steve Kunzweiler (Tulsa County District Attorney's Office)

And if I could add on to that, McGirt, its origins actually was Murphy versus Carpenter, then it became Murphy versus Royal. When it got to the 10th Circuit, I think Justice Gorsuch was on the 10th Circuit, and we were assured, well, this is never going to get past the 10th Circuit. The 10th Circuit sustained the argument of McGirt, which then necessitated going up to the Supreme Court. And there was built— there were delays, because then Gorsuch got appointed to the Supreme Court. He had to recuse himself from consideration of whatever got up in front of the Supremes. It took a lot longer than I even thought. I mean, there was a period I thought, you know, just like I— Yeah. mentioned the co-counsel here, my fellow DAs. I thought, all right, well, they're surely not going to come down with a decision before February. That's my best estimate. But then given the history of Murphy v. Royal, Murphy v. Carpenter, McGirt, I mean, we could be maybe into June. Just don't know. It's an interesting, complicated question, to say the least. I'm making my decision as far as prosecution based upon a long, drawn-out Court of Criminal Appeals decision in O'Brien, City of Tulsa versus O'Brien. They provided the authority for me to make my decision to continue prosecuting non-Tribal members who are committing crimes on a Tribal reservation that's not their Tribe. That decision from the Court of Criminal Appeals was— it took a while for them to come down with that decision. So it's— I agree with Ryan. I'm just spitballing for you, but I really can't give you an honest answer. It could get very complicated.

Committee vice chair

Well, and it's more of a statement. And, you know, as the chair referenced, there's going to be some changeover in 2 weeks. This committee is going to have at least 30% new members and then budgetary from there. The downside is legislators get sworn in on the 18th and we don't have organization day until January— November 18th. We don't have organization day until January 3rd. So there will be that almost month and a half time period where there can't be any action because there will not be official members of this committee during that time. So we are probably going to have to err on some side of where this number comes down without trying to hamstring the people that will have to vote on this in the future as those considerations. Again, no question in there, but just a statement from why I'm trying to figure out what the timeframe is so that we're not binding future legislature towards— Okay. Further questions from the committee? Senator Boren, you're recognized.

Mary Boren

Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair and Mr. Chair. I'm looking at the contract that we approved, and I don't see where it says that it goes up until filing with a request with the Supreme Court. So could y'all Show me where the language is. This, to me, this matters because if y'all have a contract that puts an ultimate cap of $1 million, then I sure wouldn't want to obligate the state for something through the Supreme Court if this contract could be interpreted to include a Supreme Court appeal all the way through.

Matt Ballard (District Attorney's Office)

Yeah, so I can tell you that the $1 million and that going to the Supreme Court, those came from conversations that we had with Cannon Shanmugam and Will Marks, his partner, that's where we had that. And the reason, when there's uncertainty on our behalf, there's also uncertainty on theirs. And I think what Mr. Kunzweiler indicated, the reason you don't see that in attorney contracts is they're not— they don't know what happens. Does— we anticipate if it proceeds as everybody believes that it will, and Cannon and Wilmarx are very good at what they do, they anticipate that it will proceed in a particular way. Is it possible it gets remanded for an evidentiary hearing or something else, or justices are recused, or things like that happen? So that's why there's not a contractual guarantee of that, but the contract amount will not exceed $1 million, and that was based on their anticipation that that would get us to the Supreme Court. And so that's where those conversations, and that's where that amount came from. Okay. Came from. So you're correct, that is not in the contract itself.

Scott Fetgatter

Representative Bashore, you are recognized.

Steve Bashore

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Excuse me. So regardless, since the state did not bring this litigation upon themselves, this litigation was brought to the state, let's say we do reach the million-dollar maximum, the state still has to be represented Pending this case, let's just say, goes to the Supreme Court, regardless, the state has to answer, correct?

Matt Ballard (District Attorney's Office)

That's correct.

Scott Fetgatter

You're recognized for a follow-up.

Steve Bashore

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So regardless, I understand and we appreciate you being conservative and understand completely you have not experienced this, this type of case especially. Actually, no one has. From Oklahoma, to my understanding. So I empathize with you there. I understand where you're coming from. So if it's appropriate, Mr. Chairman, at this point, I would like to make a motion that we consider the council's request of $500,000 to get them to this point. And once we get to that point, we will come back and look again, review.

Scott Fetgatter

It's a proper motion. Motion on the floor to approve $500,000. Is there a second? I have a motion and a second. Will there be any debate?

Committee vice chair

Senator Boren, you're recognized for debate.

Scott Fetgatter

Mr. Vice Chairman, you're recognized.

Committee vice chair

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate the motion and second that was on there. Also appreciate the debate from our colleague in Norman. You know, as stated, we were looking at a lower number, but then as we talked about, there's gonna be a larger timeframe in here where we cannot meet, just this committee's not gonna be formed. So I looked at some other numbers. I agree. I think we probably should err on the side of safety on this. We want to ensure that we have representation that's not going to skimp. But also on that, you know, we gave the DA's Council over $87 million last year in their appropriated budget, and we trust them to spend that $87 million across the state. I think that they're looking in and being diligent on the expenditures here. I encourage you to continue doing that. But the $500,000 to see this case through to a possible resolution at the 10th Circuit, you know, more than I was anticipating spending, but I think with the timeframes probably would be beneficial at this point. And so I would say that encourage everybody to vote in favor of it. To the last debate, though, I do think there needs to be some more transparency on this. You know, even as the vice chair of this, not being able to see those bills prior to and look at where it is. I'm not saying that we need to second-guess where attorneys are spending their time and where the experts know that they need to be. But in the transparency and consideration of spending taxpayer dollars, I would hope that in the future, we have that openness a little bit more readily available.

Scott Fetgatter

Any other debate on the bill or the motion? With that being said, I'll ask the staff to open roll.

Committee vice chair

Senate call roll.

Scott Fetgatter

With 6-1 vote, we will declare the motion to have passed. Representative Osborne, you're recognized.

Mike Osburn

I have a question that I I should have asked before, but I'm going to ask now. As a refresher, where do these funds come from? Did they come from an appropriation? Do they come from the tribes? Where do these funds come from that we're talking about today spending?

Scott Fetgatter

Thank you. Thank you for the question. The tribal litigation fund was set up, I believe, in 2021, and it was an appropriation from the legislature. I believe that there is some confusion. The governor had tried to use some of the gaming funds To the tune of around $3 million a few years ago to sue the tribes with. This is a fund that is appropriated. The current balance in the fund is $9,415,907.37 of the original $10 million that was appropriated. So, it's not something that— in fact, That has been utilized a lot at this point since the creation in 2021. $9,415,907.37. Yeah. Okay, okay. With that being said, I'm going to move on to the next item. Uh, district attorneys and the council, we appreciate your all's help in coming to some kind of, uh, agreement today on what we could do. Um, with that being said, we're going to move on to the second agenda item, which is the consideration of Intergovernmental— an intergovernmental cooperative agreement between Oklahoma County and the Kickapoo Tribe. Um, we have Chief Marcus Williams with us. If you would, uh, go back there, we will recognize you. Thank you. Good morning. If you'll hit the button on the right on your microphone, there should be a light, the red light lights up. And we appreciate you coming today. If you could give us a quick overview of the agreement, we would appreciate it.

Danny Williams

Thank you for the opportunity to be here, the time to kind of speak on this real quick. Just a quick overview of what this is, is The Kickapoo Tribe is a small tribe, eastern Oklahoma County, part of Lincoln County, part of Watomie County. We already have interlocal agreements with our other partners that we work with on a daily basis. Oklahoma County is the only one that we do not.

Danny Williams

We are not in McGirt County, so we have a lot of checkerboard land that we deal with. One foot you're on trust land, the other foot across the street you're on state land. So There's a lot of things that happen, and jurisdiction is always a question.

Danny Williams

Sometimes when things are happening in real time, we don't always know, and we just need to make sure that when there are arrests made, that they're proper, they're legal, and we have the proper authority to even do it.

Danny Williams

We have sometimes, even on our trust lands in Oklahoma County, a lot of non-Native people are committing those crimes that without these agreements in place, we would have to call Oklahoma County to come make the arrest. And there's no reason to really call them out there if we're already there and we have the ability to handle some of these things. We just have to have some of these agreements in place. The Bureau of Indian Affairs does give our officers special law enforcement commissions to handle some of these things, but not all of my officers have them because they take months to get those. And so In these circumstances, we heavily rely on the interlocal agreements, and that would be the purpose of what this would be for, to also include serving tribal summons from our courts, such as victims' protective orders. A lot of our tribal members don't live on trust lands in Oklahoma County.

Danny Williams

They also reside on state land, but they do come seek services from our courts. such as VPOs, et cetera, et cetera, that we need to serve those, but we can't serve them sometimes because they're on state land in Oklahoma County.

Danny Williams

In my opinion, the sheriff has no obligation to serve tribal summons from our courts on state land. So we would also use this to take care of that as well.

Scott Fetgatter

Thank you for that explanation. Any questions? Any questions for the Chief? Seeing no questions, do I have a motion? I have a motion. Do I have a second? I have a motion and a second. Will there be any debate? Staff, please open the queue.

Committee staff

Leader Bashore. Aye.

Committee vice chair

Senate call the roll.

Scott Fetgatter

7-0 vote in favor of approving the agreement. Chief, we appreciate your time and coming up here today and, uh, look forward to having more relations between state and our tribal nations in the future.

Danny Williams

Me too. Thank you for your time.

Scott Fetgatter

Members, at this time, that is all of our business. The 3rd item on the agenda will not be addressed today. And so with that being said, I appreciate you all letting me chair the committee for the past 2 years. Look forward to seeing how this thing moves forward. And with that being said, Mr. Vice Chairman, thank you for all your help. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And we are adjourned.