Indian trust fund management dispute may get legislative fix

The effort to resolve the long-running dispute over the Interior Department's management of Indian trust funds has attracted a key supporter, as the chairman of the House Resources Committee announced he will join the work of two senators in negotiating a legislative settlement.

Rep. Richard W. Pombo, R-Calif., said a recent injunction in the Cobell v. Norton case requiring Interior officials to disconnect a number of the agency's computers from the Internet for the fourth time due to concerns about the security of Indian trust fund records is an example of why the nine-year-old matter needs to be taken out of the judiciary's hands.

The order, from U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, was subsequently blocked by a federal appeals court Friday after Justice Department lawyers representing Interior asked for a temporary injunction against the order.

Pombo announced Friday that he would join the efforts of Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to craft a resolution to the case, in which a group of American Indians representing more than 500,000 beneficiaries are seeking $27.5 billion in royalties from a trust fund managed by Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs since the 1880s.

The staffs of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the House Resources Committee are working with the Indian group to determine an appropriate sum to reimburse the trust beneficiaries for missed payments, several sources confirmed.

During a February hearing, Pombo said there would be substantial benefits to settling the case this year and that legislation would be the most effective means of ending the bitter dispute over trust funds.

McCain and Dorgan, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Indian Affairs Committee, have proposed a bill (S. 1439) that would establish a fund to reimburse individual plaintiffs in the case and require the Interior secretary to inventory trust assets. Pombo has yet to officially support that bill.

Pombo said it was unfortunate that the lawsuit had "taken [on] a life of its own" and "soured" over nine years. Litigation could end up costing billions of dollars in attorneys' and accountants' fees, with little remaining for Native Americans, he said.

Pombo spokesman Matt Streit said it is clear that the case is not headed toward a legal resolution any time soon. He said that while the committee is still examining the McCain-Dorgan bill, the legislation leaves many questions unanswered.

Bill McAllister, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said that just under $25 billion would be an appropriate amount to reimburse the plaintiffs for "misdoings by the government."

McAllister said he welcomed Pombo's interest in the case and hopes it leads to a quick resolution.

"To continue to try to conduct an accounting when many of the records have been shown to be lost and the fact that you can't even trust the accuracy of the records in hand, because there is a very real possibility that they have been tampered [with] … We just think that there has got to be an easier way and cheaper way to get this resolved," McAllister said.

Both sides have acknowledged that they want to move forward and resolve the dispute.

Dan DuBray, an Interior spokesman, said the department welcomes Pombo's involvement in fashioning a legislative settlement and that over the last three years a project costing $100 million has turned up only a handful of instances of fraud involving individual trust accounts.

"The department is working aggressively to continue its effort in strengthening its [information technology] security and serving the American Indians," DuBray said. "That work continues irrespective of what is going on in the court of appeals."