Indian fund trustee believes his criticism of boss led to job loss
The Arizona Republic
By: Billy House
Republic Washington Bureau
August 1, 2002
WASHINGTON – Thomas Slonaker, the Interior Department official overseeing more than $10 billion in Indian Trust Accounts, said Wednesday he was told to resign this week by Interior Secretary Gail Norton “or I would have been fired.”
Slonaker, a former banking executive who was paid $150,000 a year as the special trustee of the Indian trust fund system, said he was forced to quit because he has challenged the department’s assertions that it is fixing the historically mismanaged system.
Norton advised him at a mid-day meeting Tuesday they could no longer work together and that he had to go immediately, he said. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department had no immediate reaction Wednesday night to Slonaker’s comments.
“It’s been a little bit like telling the emperor that she has no clothes,” said Slonaker, 67, of his ongoing clashes with Norton and other department officials. “Sometimes, criticism is not welcome.”
Slonaker said he and his wife, Nina, will arrive in Phoenix today; they own a home in Payson. Slonaker, a Republican, was appointed to the trustee job in the closing months of the Clinton administration.
Congress created the special trustee position in 1994 because of the department’s inability to verify how much money should be in the funds.
A U.S. District judge is expected to rule soon on whether Norton should be held in contempt of court for continued department mismanagement of the funds.
| 
