A bill to help the
Gila River Indian Community protect its homelands is slated for action on Capitol Hill this week.
H.R.4032, the Gila River Indian Community Federal Rights-of-Way, Easements and Boundary Clarification Act, resolves a number of rights-of-way, easement and boundary issues on the tribe's reservation in Arizona. Passage would help finalize a settlement that the tribe reached after suing the federal government for breach of trust.
"H.R.4032 is a non-controversial, bipartisan piece of legislation that is absolutely critical to achieve the settlement terms that the community agreed to in exchange for settling its federal trust accounting case against the United States,"
Governor Stephen R. Lewis said in
written testimony on the bill in February.
Rep. Tom O'Halleran
(D-Arizona) introduced H.R.4032 last fall along with a number of Republican co-sponsors. It moved quickly through
House Committee on
Natural Resources after the hearing earlier this year and
cleared a markup in May.
The bill is now expected to be considered under a suspension of the rules this Friday,
according to the House Majority Leader's schedule. The process is typically used for non-controversial legislation.
There is no companion measure at this point in the
Senate but that chamber could always take up H.R.4032
after it passes the
House.
The bill is one of the
many items on the tribe's legislative and policy agenda in Washington, D.C. The tribe ranked third in a list of top lobbying contracts in the first quarter of this year,
POLITICO reported.
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