From: Indian Trust ListServ
Date: Saturday, March 09, 2002 08:39:59 PM
To: Indian Trust ListServ
Subject: ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES EDITORIAL
 
  A St. Pete Times Editorial

New steps needed for Indian trust

March 7, 2002 

The federal courts have waited long enough for the U.S. government to 
sort out its sorry management of the American Indian trust fund system. 
Continuing problems with the accounting, security and administration of 
Indian lands and money call for the job to be taken from the Interior 
Department and given to a court-appointed receiver. Even if taken as a 
temporary step, this move could speed the necessary reforms and restore 
confidence in the government's ability to manage the trust accounts. 

The accounts date to the 1880s, when the government established trusts 
for individual Indians in an attempt to break up the system of tribal 
lands. But modern-day descendants claim the government mishandled 
$10-billion or more in gas, oil and timber leases, thereby denying 
hundreds of thousands of Indians of royalty income. 

Three years ago, the federal judge overseeing a massive lawsuit Indians 
brought against the government wrote: "It would be difficult to find a 
more historically mismanaged federal program." And despite time, money 
and bureaucratic reform, the problems have not gone away.

It is senseless to tolerate this record any longer. U.S. District Judge 
Royce Lamberth, who said last month he had been "duped" about the 
government's progress in reforming the trust, needs to remove this 
problem from the political arena. 

A receiver could start from scratch to determine what value of the 
trust was lost, who is owed and how the trust accounts should be 
managed. The government has lost credibility with Indian groups and the 
courts; computer security of the trust funds is poor, and Lamberth 
slammed the new accounting system as "a total failure." Interior 
Secretary Gale Norton's idea to reconstitute the trust fund into a new 
government agency looks less like progress than a stall to buy time. 
Giving the job to an outside manager would not eliminate the need for 
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has a role to play in keeping 
broader issues important to Indians on the national agenda. The 
receiver would play a more limited role -- cleaning up the trust fund 
within a specific period of time, then handing off that new architecture 
for managing the trusts to the BIA. The court could appoint a special 
monitor to oversee the reforms and keep the process in public view. 
Continuing to haul government officials back to court to explain the 
latest broken promise is not a strategy for resolving the core issues 
of this longstanding case. Let's try something different. 




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