FRANKFORT — A proposal by two groups to prop up the system of tobacco warehouse auctions and federal price supports has run into resistance from some members of the state Agricultural Development Board.

        The board's project review committee deadlocked 3-3 Thursday on a motion to recommend to the full board that it delay action on the plan to use tobacco-settlement money to support the auction system.

        Also, aides to Gov. Paul Patton and Agriculture Commissioner Billy Ray Smith raised questions about the plan.

        Burley tobacco growers and warehouse owners have asked for about $11 million from the Agricultural Development Board to pay two years' sales commissions for the declining number of growers who sell at warehouses instead of contracting directly with cigarette companies.

        The full board, appointed and headed by Mr. Patton, is scheduled to meet in Bowling Green next Friday. If approved, the grant would be the board's largest.

        The grant's applicants are the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association and the Burley Auction Warehouse Association.

        Leaders of the two groups argued Thursday that the grant is needed to preserve the federal program of auctions and price supports for tobacco. Without it, they said, tobacco companies would rule the market.

        But as the committee neared voting, John-Mark Hack, director of the governor's Office of Agricultural Policy, said the applicants advanced a false notion that the existing program will die unless the grant is approved this month. Tobacco sales begin next month.

        “Protecting the price-support program is probably a political agenda everybody in Kentucky shares, but I think the agenda before you is whether this is going to accomplish that,” Mr. Hack said.

        Mr. Hack and one of his aides, David Bratcher, raised questions about the application, including why it wasn't submitted earlier and whether the grant would create two classes of burley growers and unjustly benefit those who sell at auction.

        Harvey Mitchell, Mr. Smith's chief of staff, said Mr. Smith also is concerned about “changing rules in the middle of the game.”

        Danny McKinney, chief executive of the growers' co-op, acknowledged that the application should have been filed months ago, but said other alternatives were considered and “people don't like change.”

        Mr. McKinney predicted that tobacco companies would pay 3 cents to 5 cents more per pound for contracted tobacco.

        Last year, contracting growers got about 10 cents per pound more, about the same as what the warehouses say was their average commission.

        Mr. Hack said warehouses are offering rebates to some growers.

        Mr. Mitchell said Mr. Smith, the independently elected agriculture commissioner, said the warehouse commission structure “will have to be addressed” before the department “can be comfortable” with the grant.

        Committee member Vicki Yates Brown argued that the board needed to first examine a legislative study of the tobacco program and contracting.

        The application is for $10.7 million to pay sales commissions, plus 5 percent to the co-op to administer the program, for a total of $11.2 million.

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