Norton-backed task force stops work on key issue
by Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
The Denver Post
WASHINGTON – For years, lawyers pressing the massive lawsuit over Indian trust accounts managed by the Interior Department have blamed Justice Department lawyers for the fact that the case was never settled out of court. Now, it appears that the Bush administration also is having serious troubles with department lawyers. That became apparent last week even as Interior Secretary Gale Norton bragged about a joint task force she created with Indian leaders to sort through issues about the trusts, which the Indians contend contain up to $10 billion they are owed for federal leases on their lands dating to 1887.
The government says its records are incomplete and it doesn’t know how much the accounts contain. Earlier this month, the task force abandoned efforts to resolve what some call a central issue in the debate – what standards should apply to Interior’s management of the accounts.
According to notes of the task force meeting maintained by the National Congress of American Indians, Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles blamed the Justice Department. “I don’t know that we’re ever going to get something that will be OK with Justice,” the NCAI quoted Griles as saying. Philip A. Hogen, an associate solicitor for Indian affairs, said Interior officials tried. “We talked long and hard with (the Justice Department), but at the end of the day we were not able to speak with one federal voice,” he said. Mia Merrick, a spokeswoman for the Indians who sued over trust management six years ago, said the collapse of the talks illustrates that “the Bush administration was more interested in defending itself from litigation … than fulfilling its responsibilities to Indian people.”
Tex Hall, president of the NCAI and a task force member, said the group plans to continue its meetings and discuss other issues. “I think it is a setback,” he told the Indianz.com website. “It’s really disappointing.” Without the guidelines, the tribes cannot agree on restructuring the trust programs, Hall said. Dan DuBray, an Interior spokesman, said the administration wants the talks to continue despite the “disagreement over one element” of the dispute. “I think that we’ve come a long way,” he said.
Norton has been touting the task force’s work and handing out a six-page list of achievements the department has made under her leadership. The first quote on the list is from Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Ignacio. “I do commend you on your work trying to bring this mess with the trust fund management under control,” the senator said. “It is not something you caused. You inherited it.” It’s not easy being green The folks at the League of Conservation Voters may have let their anger over Sen. Wayne Allard’s attempt to label himself an environmentalist affect their memory. In a recent news release, the league dismisses the Republican senator’s claim to have passed legislation making the Great Sand Dunes National Monument into a national park as “false.”
It “wasn’t a fight and didn’t actually create a park,” the league declared. For starters, it was Allard’s bill that Congress passed. And environmental groups supported it. And though it’s not a park yet, it will be when the government completes its acquisition of the 100,000-acre Baca Ranch. Not a fight? Someone at the league must have missed that war of words between Reps. Scott McInnis, R-Grand Junction, and Joel Hefley, R-Colorado Springs, on the House floor.
Hefley, a senior member of the parks committee, fought the bill every step of the way, so McInnis used Allard’s Senate-passed version to end-run Hefley. It added 155 square miles of dunes and wildlife habitat to the federal monument’s boundaries. And it locked millions of gallons of water away from developers, which some say was the real point of the bill. The irony few have noticed is that Allard and McInnis committed some of the same sins the GOP always pins on the nature-lovin’ “radicals.”
They took 100,000 acres of private land off the tax rolls in a county already more than half-owned by the government, over the objection of the county commissioners. Allard seems so intent on being seen as green that he’s trying to join the Sierra Club. But they won’t have him. Allard’s staff says the Sierra Club was so happy with the senator’s work on Sand Dunes that it sent him an honorary membership card to thank him. The Sierra Club says it did no such thing. Allard produced the card, but Sierra Club organizer Deb Robison said the group has no record of Allard ever being a member. The card must have been part of a routine solicitation, she said.
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