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Wednesday February 23, 2000
Elouise Cobell Senate Testimony
HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF ELOUISE P. COBELL AS THE FIRST NAMED PLAINTIFF IN COBELL V. BABBITT
BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
SUBJECT – INVESTING IN INDIAN NATIONS: BUILDING TRIBAL SELF-GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
BODY:
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.
My name is Elouise Cobell. I am a member of the Blackfeet Tribe, Chairperson of the Board of Blackfeet National Bank and the first named plaintiff in the class action lawsuit concerning individual Indian trust beneficiaries: Cobell v. Babbitt.
I appreciate the opportunity of presenting testimony today concerning the FY 2001 Budget as it relates to Indian Trust reform activities by the Department of Interior.
By way of background, I want to remind this Committee that Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, has repeatedly testified before Congress and in Court that resolving the trust fund mess and meeting the Government’s trust responsibility is his “highest priority.” Therefore, when we examined the President’s Budget Initiatives for Native Americans, we were surprised to see that trust reform was the very last item on the list of activities to be presented. We fear that may reflect the issue’s actual place in the Department’s priorities, despite representations to the contrary.
While we believe the amount of funds made available to the Interior Department and the Office of Special Trustee is sufficient to do the job at this time, we are concerned that these funds are not being expended wisely or effectively. In fact, funds are being squandered or misappropriated. As a result, at a future time when these funds will be needed to implement an effective trust reform program, they will not be available. Indeed, Assistant Secretary Gover has frequently threatened Indian Country by saying that in the future, funds needed to implement trust reform and to defend the government in trust litigation may be taken out of budgets for Indian social service and other programs. That is a frightening threat which punishes the victim. Of course, if that threat was realized, the victims of trust mismanagement would be victimized once again through the diminishment of vital services.
As this Committee knows, last year the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia completed the first trial of a two-phase lawsuit, in the class action case of Cobell v. Babbitt. The Trial Two Phase, for an accounting to correctly re-state the accounts of the beneficiaries, could begin later this year.
In his Trial One decision, Judge Royce Lamberth held in what he characterized as a “stunning victory for the plaintiffs” that the United States is in breach of its trust responsibilities to the individual Indian trust beneficiaries who make up the class of plaintiffs. During the Phase One trial, Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior and principal trustee delegate of the United States, confessed on the witness stand that our government as trustee has not fulfilled and continuing to violate its fiduciary duties to the Indian trust beneficiaries.
The Judge ordered the government to get into compliance with its fiduciary obligations and he promised to retain jurisdiction over the case for at least five years to assure that the plans and promises made by the government to fix the system were actually being carried out and were working. Although the Judge withheld more direct judicial intervention at this time, he indicated that he was prepared to take further action if the Government squanders its last opportunity to achieve trust reform on its own.
The centerpiece of the government’s promise to fix the system is the implementation of a new, “state of the art” trust accounting and asset management system called “TAAMS,” for which Congress has already appropriated almost $100 million. In detailed Court testimony, Interior explained the functions which TAAMS must carry out before the decision is made to proceed with the nation-wide implementation of the system. Interior announced publicly and submitted to the Court a precise and specific schedule for implementation of TAAMS and its roll out across the country once its functionality has been verified. The Court made it clear that in deciding to stay his hand for now, he did so relying on the substance and timing of promises made at trial, and other commitments.
Following a staged and misleading ribbon cutting for TAAMS in Billings, Montana last June, the Interior Department declared that “TAAMS works.” Unfortunately, that statement was not true then and is not true now. But then these are the same people who claimed “we won” after the Court’s December 22, 1999 Opinion, and then proceeded to appeal that same decision.
Before TAAMS was launched, many people — not just the Plaintiffs – expressed concerns about the TAAMS system’s ability to work and the consequent waste of time, money and set back to trust reform. These voices included high officials within the Interior Department and the General Accounts Office (more than once). As the GAO noted just last year, TAAMS was designed and purchased by Interior without the benefit of an integrated architecture for Indian Trust operations. In other words, Interior did not identify its specific business needs before soliciting bids for and selecting a system to carry out its trust management functions. To this day, it is still unclear whether Interior has adequately defined its needs, and whether the particular system which has been purchased can meet them.
The fact is, these fears have been realized. The TAAMS system is not working as represented to Congress and the Court. Its roll out from Billings on the Government’s specific timetable has just not happened.
This is evident by reviewing Secretary Babbitt’s Interior Budget in Brief, Departmental Highlights. It reveals some curious contradictions. For example, without apology or explanation, the document states (DH-15): “This Spring, BIA expects to begin deploying TAAMS at additional locations (beyond Billings), commencing with its title plants.” (underlining supplied).
Compare that information to last year’s promises which Interior widely touted in a dog and pony roadshow to Congress, the Courts and the public. Interior’s power point presentation committed to the following “TAAMS Implementation Tier Schedule by Area Office” (Defendants’ trial exhibit 321):
Thus, by Interior’s own admission, the TAAMS program is NOT working.
At best (assuming that Billings is working, which may not be the case), the roll out is at least six months off and there is no evidence to predict for success in the future.
The Budget in Brief, Departmental Highlights tells us that 193,000 of 285,000 accounts have been “converted” to TAAMS. There is no explanation of what they mean by “converted” and no mention whether and how that data is presently capable of being used and whether TAAMS is operating in seamless interface with other BIA data bases and is functioning as the system that was presented in the TAAMS dog and pony show. However, it is refreshing to see that the Interior Department in its Budget in Brief, Departmental Highlights avoids saying that “TAAMS works.”
Turning to the budget request raised additional questions. Of course, we applaud the funding increase for certain trust management functions, e.g., real estate, probate, etc. However, we question whether and how the $6.9 million reduction in OST funding “reflects progress towards meeting Secretary Babbitt’s commitment to trust management reform.”Other budget information tells us that the $6.9 million reduction results from a decline in one-time computer systems acquisition costs. Until Congress determines what are the problems with TAAMS and what it will take to solve them, those funds may well be needed to do the job.
We believe it is important for this Committee to find out just what is going on with TAAMS and its previously announced schedule and take steps to staunch the flow of waste in order to conserve the resources for an effective trust reform project.
We strongly support the funding and use of funds for trust reform but we fear that money wasted now will be lost forever. This is our position now, and it was our position last year, even though some Interior Department officials deliberately and deceptively claimed in Court and elsewhere that we opposed the funding. Nothing could be further from the truth. We only want to assure that the money is not wasted. It takes restraint not to say, “we told you so.”
The Interior Budget in Brief, Departmental Highlights states that Interior has made significant progress in reforming its trust management systems (DH-14). The Departmental Highlights refers to TAAMS as an illustration. We have already pointed out that the Departmental Highlights (DH-15) confesses that TAAMS has not met any significant milestone in TAAMS deployment. But what is as significant as that confession, is what Interior does not tell Congress in the Departmental Highlights.
For example, one of the most critical major milestones for TAAMS is the independent validation and verification (IV&V;) of TAAMS scheduled for August,1999. Without this IV&V; demonstrating successful performance of TAAMS, further deployment of TAAMS would and should not be implemented. The Departmental Highlights is curiously silent on the matter of verification. One would imagine that if the IV&V; were successfully performed as scheduled, we might have heard about it and BIA might have trumpeted its success to Congress in the “Improving Trust Management” section of Departmental Highlights. But it is nowhere to be found.
Was IV&V; successfully performed in August, 1999 as promised? Congress needs to know. So do the public and taxpayers. If TAAMS does not and cannot function as required, the time to cut our losses and invest in a system that works is now.
Another critical element in the TAAMS milestones is “data clean-up.” Has BIA loaded correct, “clean” data into TAAMS or does BIA continue to use data that they know is wrong or suspect may be incorrect. The Departmental Highlights is once again silent on this critical point.
It could well be that Interior is once again, as Judge Lamberth notes, “puffing to Congress” about the success of the TAAMS project which is the keystone of Interior’s trust reform. Is TAAMS “working” or is it a failure and in shambles? We urge Congress to find out the truth as part of its authorizing, appropriating and oversight functions, before countless millions and what little time is left in this administration is wasted on a hopelessly inadequate trust management system. We urge Congress not to allow this administration to simply pass on its failures to the next.We believe that adequate funds have been made available to the government for handling trust reform, defending the class action suit, and finding, preserving and producing the documents and records necessary for both the litigation and the performance of trust duties. But we do not know if the funds have been fully used as provided by Congress or whether they have been used effectively. Again, this is information that you, as Congress, need to have to guide your decisions.
The individual Indian trust beneficiaries have been denied justice for decades. These are some of the most impoverished people in America, and yet our Government is still playing cruel games with them. The delays, stalling, retaliation and dissembling are a blight on the honor of this Country. This Congress has expressed its concern, and this Congress can do something to make trust reform a reality.
