Indian Affairs Secretary Arthur Allison won Senate confirmation Wednesday despite questions about allegedly illegal cigarette sales at his family’s store on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico.

The Senate voted unanimously for Allison’s nomination. He is the first Navajo to hold the cabinet-level job of leading the Indian Affairs Department, which coordinates programs involving tribal governments and the state. 

Earlier in the day, Democratic Sen. Dede Feldman of Albuquerque was the sole dissenting vote against Allison’s nomination in the Rules Committee. She expressed support for Allison but said New Mexico could lose millions of dollars from a national tobacco settlement because of the sale of unregulated cigarettes on tribal lands. The Legislature has used those tobacco revenues, totaling almost $40 million annually, to help plug recent budget shortfalls.

“I hope you will take a leadership role in working out some of these issues,” Feldman told Allison during a committee hearing on his confirmation.

Republican Gov. Susana Martinez appointed Allison last year. He has owned a Farmington-based security services company since 1997, and served as chairman of the board of the Dine Development Corp., which is the Navajo Nation’s holding company for businesses that it operates. 

During Senate debate, Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, praised Allison and said he “will do what is right at the end of the day” for the state and Native Americans.

In the committee, questions were raised about cigarette sales at the Allison family’s Star Ranch Store near Farmington. Lawmakers grappled with legal issues of tribal sovereignty and the state’s authority to regulate and tax tobacco sold on tribal land to non-Indians. 

The attorney general’s office says the store sold cigarettes prohibited in New Mexico and sold untaxed cigarettes to non-Indians.

But a lawyer assisting Allison at the hearing, Pete Domenici Jr., said the state lacked jurisdiction to regulate such sales because of tribal sovereignty.

Allison provided a document to the committee showing that he transferred ownership of the Star Ranch Store to his son last July.

Assistant Attorney General Nan Erdman told lawmakers that the state had enforcement powers over sales of cigarettes on tribal lands to non-Indians. State tax investigators routinely check retailers and they found that the store was selling cigarettes, including Seneca brand, which is not certified to sell its products in New Mexico. Cigarettes also were sold to non-Indians without state tax stamps, which are to be affixed by distributors to allow New Mexico to track tobacco sales.

She said the state can’t take action against a store on tribal lands but has used information gathered in its investigation to try to ensure distributors and tobacco manufacturers comply with New Mexico law.

Erdman said investigators also have found prohibited cigarettes being sold at stores on other tribal lands but she didn’t know whether the Star Ranch Store continued to sell those cigarettes. A reporter for The Associated Press was able to buy Seneca brand cigarettes at Star Ranch Store last summer — a month after the attorney general’s office notified the governor’s office that Allison’s store was “aiding and abetting the sale of contraband.” 

Allison has said the Navajo Nation imposes a tax on all cigarettes sold at the store.

———

Follow Barry Massey on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bmasseyAP