Norton rebuked for delays with Indian trust accounts
The Denver Post
By: Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
July 13, 2001
WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Gale Norton has come under sharp attack for delaying the accounting that two federal courts have declared is long overdue to American Indians.
In a rebuke to both Norton and Bruce Babbitt, her Democratic predecessor, a special court monitor said that despite repeated promises, the two cabinet secretaries have made little progress toward reconciling the balances in more than 300,000 badly mangled Indian trust accounts.
Citing the new report, an attorney who represents the Indians said Thursday that he will press contempt-of-court proceedings filed against Norton and Babbitt.
“What is abundantly clear is that neither Ms. Norton nor the people she brought in are competent,” said Dennis Gingold, a former Denver lawyer who is handling a 5-year-old lawsuit against the government over the accounts.
While Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, has been attacked for her positions on various environmental issues, the court monitor’s report was the first major criticism that has been leveled at her as an administrator since she came to Washington almost six months ago. And it came on an issue that she has assured Congress is one of her top priorities.
An Interior spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.
“We believe that it’s most important at this point to focus on the future,” said Stephanie Hanna, who said Norton deserves credit for “direct, affirmative actions” to resolve the trust problem.
At issue in the lawsuit is billions of dollars that the government has held in trust for Indians, some of it in accounts more than 100 years old. The accounts are supposed to contain the proceeds from mineral leases, timber sales and other activities the government conducted for Indians.
Norton’s decision this week to abandon statistical sampling as a way of reconciling the accounts may have blunted some of the new criticism. But Joseph Kieffer, appointed by a federal judge to assess Interior’s responses to court orders, painted a highly negative view of Norton’s role in the dispute.
In a 50-page report filed in the court Wednesday, Kieffer stated that Norton’s handling of the case has “caused further delay” and questioned whether some of her aides had thoroughly read the court decisions in the case.
Records for many of the 300,000 trust accounts are incomplete, and government auditors have said they had no idea how much individual Indians are owed. In response to a lawsuit filed by the Colorado-based Native American Rights Fund, two federal courts have declared that the government must provide the Indians with an accounting of all of their funds.
Both the government and Gingold will have 10 days in which to respond to the monitor’s report.
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