Department of Interior official resigns
“The long and embarrassing effort to cleanup $2.5 billion in Indian trust funds got messier with the sudden resignation of the presidential appointee in charge of reconciling the accounts and improving bookkeeping,” according to an AP news account.
“In quitting Thursday (last week), special Trustee Paul Homan accused Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit of stripping him of the authority to do his job. Interior is being ‘sued over its decades-long mismanagement of the money. Babbit faced a contempt hearing last Monday over the government’s failure to turn over canceled checks and other records for accounts held by the lawsuit’s lead plaintiffs”.
“Earlier last week, Babbit ordered a reorganization of Homan’s office to ‘enable us to make progress where it is now flagging’.”
“Homan, a former banker appointed to his post in 1995 under a set of congressionally ordered reform, fired back in his resignation letter that Babbit ‘usurped the powers, duties and responsibilities’ of his office”.
Members of Homan’s advisory board accused Babbit of making him the scapegoat for the department problems.
“It’s like me telling you to drive a car but not giving you the keys of the car, and then turning around and chastising you for not driving the car”, said Gregg Bourland, a board member and chairman of South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux.
“The funds include 300,000 accounts held by individual Indians worth $500 million and another 2,000 tribal accounts worth $2 billion. The money includes lease revenue, royalties and court settlement.
“Some of the accounts are worth a few dollars. The largest one, valued at $400 million, is a court award to the Sioux nation for its loss of the Black Hills. “Among a series of embarrassing revelations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was unable to document $2 billion of transactions in the tribal accounts over a 20-year period.
It is not known how much of that is actually missing, but it has been estimated the government could be liable for up to $575 million just in the tribal accounts.”
I recall an earlier story of how a granddaughter of a tribe who can’t make use of royalty fees she inherited from her late grandmother because Interior’s records have not been reconciled so to settle such claims once and for all. The original beneficiary died without seeing a penny of her own money. Now, it’s the grandchildren who are also likely to reach their twilight years and not benefit from royalty fees handed down to them and all because of foot dragging. And it’s supposed to be the lead federal agency for insular areas and American Indians.
A modest proposal
Al Stayman for Governor.
What! JR, have you lost your mind?
With all due respect to our local governors, including Governor Pete P. Tenorio, this would make a lot of sense.
Stayman’s a Democrat, and he could run with a local Democrat next election.
After all, he’s been trying to run the NMI for years from Washington, so why not come here and do it “in place”?
He’s got definite ideas and goals for our future–unlike a lot of our local politicians.
He’s got lots of experience in both the legislative and executive branches of government. Did I hear that he’s also a retired and highly successful businessman?
But the main reason I want “Brother” Al to become governor is so he can try to run this place after he has squashed our self-government and federalized it, run off the garment industry, killed tourism, and put us back on the welfare rolls.
Let’s see what kind of job he can do under the conditions he wants us to impose on others.
Hail to our Grief!
Welcome to the CNMI, Al. It could get to 96 degrees under the shade too!
