Historical accounting plan comes under fire

FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2002

The Department of Interior's top Indian trust official won't endorse the Bush administration's controversial historical accounting proposal.

Special Trustee Tom Slonaker, a Clinton appointee, said the $2.4 billion, 10-year effort won't provide an accounting to more than 500,000 American Indians. At best, the plan will identify the "gaps" in the historical record, he told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee at a hearing yesterday.

"Since it can't produce a full accounting, I don't believe it satisfies the trust responsibilities of the Secretary to effectively and efficiently provide that," he said.

Slonaker didn't criticize the work of the Office of Historical Trust Accounting, which Secretary Gale Norton set up last year to provide what she said was "long overdue" to Indian beneficiaries. "It may be possible to reconstruct a good many accounts completely," he said.

But Associate Deputy Secretary Jim Cason acknowledged the plan was based on "lots of speculation." Since the courts and federal law require an accounting, he said Bush officials were trying to "do the best that we can."

The committee's leaders posed tough questions about the length, cost and feasibility of the proposal. "Why have them suffer and wait for 10-plus years?" asked Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the panel's chairman.

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), the committee's vice-chairman and member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana, was harsher. "There are a lot of Indian people out there who are going to die before they get that money," he said.

Cason said the department was committed to providing results. "This is a big job and uncharted territory," he told the committee.

He cited the recent completion of an historical accounting of 8,000 judgment fund accounts and said similar projects were already underway. But he didn't point out that Slonaker refused to sign off on the reconciliation. Slonaker also didn't raise the issue.

McCoy Williams of the General Accounting Office agreed to a committee request to investigate the OHTA plan. He testified that it would take several weeks but based on prior assessments, settling the accounts through other means was preferable due to the "obstacles that Interior is likely to encounter."

Watch the Hearing:
Video: Senate Commitee on Indian Affairs (7/25)

Relevant Documents:
Written Witness Testimony (7/25) | OHTA Letter (7/3) | OHTA Plan (7/3)

Relevant Links:
Office of the Special Trustee - http://www.ost.doi.gov
Office of Historical Trust Fund Accounting - http://www.doi.gov/ohta
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton - http://www.indiantrust.com
Trust Reform, NCAI - http://www.ncai.org/main/pages/
issues/other_issues/trust_reform.asp