Navajos lose nearly $1 million

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — Nearly $1 million in grant money reverted to the state of New Mexico at the end of June. Of that amount, more than $700,000 should have gone to help Navajo Nation chapters in New Mexico with Capital Improvement Projects.

The New Mexico Indian Affairs Department, state legislators, and Navajo Nation representatives, including Council Speaker Lawrence Morgan, met Wednesday at Gallup High School to discuss capital outlay issues.

All agreed that getting any type of capital improvement project off the ground on the Navajo Nation is a cumbersome, time consuming process.

After listening to both state and tribal perspectives regarding capital outlay and looking at flow charts depicting the process, Republican Sen. Rod Adair (District 33, Chaves, Lincoln counties) told the audience, "I have to say that some of the things today I've seen are not encouraging.

"The messages I received today of these two pieces of paper here (flow charts), one for the Indian Affairs Department and one from the Navajo Nation, combined reference has been made to 42 steps for capital outlay, and that it takes about a year. One of them is three to four months alone.

"Then we've seen where almost a million dollars is going back, being reverted and lost. This is not good," Adair said. "The message from this is we are a big bureaucracy and we're getting bigger, and we're more complex than anybody else.

"Dollars are supposed to be provided to the people. I even heard here a proposal to use part of the money to make new positions in the Navajo Nation to expand the bureaucracy even bigger. It's almost a record already."

He encouraged the tribe to seek outside help if needed to streamline the Navajo government machine.

"The number of steps to get to capital outlay from the Legislature and back is probably six, not 42," Adair said. "Expanding the bureaucracy is not a solution. It reduces the enthusiasm and the incentive on the part of the legislators, because we want to see people get helped."

But where the Navajo Nation is concerned, he said, "The message is almost, 'Don't give us any more money. It creates more headaches for us. It's just too hard to work with.'

"Bureaucracy is strangling the effect of everything you're doing," Adair said, drawing a loud round of applause from the largely Navajo audience.

Rebecca Martinez, Capital Outlay manager, said the total amount of grant money returned to the state amounted to $922,000. "It's not 100 percent Navajo Nation. I would say $747,000 of that is Navajo Nation funds," she said.

The General Appropriations Act passed in 2004 allows tribal governments to submit invoices on projects that had expired 2004 and prior, Martinez said. "They had until June 30, 2005, to submit those invoices and still get reimbursed."

Michelle Brown-Yazzie, deputy secretary for Indian Affairs, said one of the purposes of Wednesday's meeting was to try to find solutions to prevent future reversions.

"A majority of the reversions from our department are attributed to Navajo Nation projects. But these dollars don't include the Department of Aging's project and the Department of Transportation's project. They have projects with the Navajo Nation as well," she said.

Indian Affairs Secretary Benny Shendo Jr. came into office in June 2004. Since that time, he and his staff have reduced a purported backlog of $17 million in capital project funds by creating a Capital Outlay unit and "staffing it with classified employees vs. in the past it was staffed with exempt employees, which are politically appointed," Yazzie said.

"In January, the backlog was down to $2.7 million. As of June 30, 2005, the backlog was zero," she said.

Unfortunately, according to Shendo, "The reason it zeroed out was because the funds had reverted to the state. When it reverted, there was zero," he said.

Yazzie said that Shendo and staff have worked very hard over the last few months to reduce the backlog. She also praised the efforts of the Navajo Nation's Capital Improvement Office and chapters such as Smith Lake, which also have helped.

"All of us have our different perspectives in terms of how the process works," Shendo said. "This meeting was basically to pull everybody together ... sit down and move toward some resolution, if it means changing state laws, Navajo Nation laws, administrative functions ... to expedite the process."

Yazzie said Indian Affairs also has been directed by Gov. Bill Richardson to address the matter. "This has been the biggest issue, not only just for the legislators but for the governor, and we were charged with addressing the issue," she said.

Shendo added, "I want these funds to be expended at the community, quicker, for the purpose they were intended. It's really unfortunate when these things get up an administrative quagmire and they do without the basic needs, whether it's water, wastewater, infrastructure, lights, power lines, bathroom extensions things many of us take for granted every day."

"When you see monies reverting and you know you've been to a community where they need the resources, my job is how do we find a way to get these projects done," Shendo said.