House Resources Committee Hearing — June 21, 2006 — S1003

Panel 1 Question and Answer

Chairman: Uh thank you very much, Mr. Tessler. The Chair would note a point of personal privilege, please extend to Chris my personal best wishes. We worked with him on several fronts not only concerning this office, but his days as mayor of Flagstaff when the old 6 Congressional District was my area of concern, and please pass along our personal regards. The Chair would also note that the witnesses followed the piece advice that is somewhat elusive for members of Congress that being that brevity is the soul of wit, so we thank you for succinct summarizations today, and now we’ll move directly to the questions.

First, to Mr. Ragsdale. Mr. Ragsdale, in your formal testimony, you made mention that providing housing for relocated families is a potential problem with the current programs and authorities within the BIA. What other sorts of challenges do you anticipate and should the Relocation Office be closed in the next few years, and various responsibilities are in fact transferred to your office?

Mr. Ragsdale: Well, I think our testimony reflects that our basic concern, that if the Department of Interior is required to carry out the relocation functions envisioned in the 1974 act and as it’s been amended that we are not prepared to do that. We do not have the resources to provide for the type of housing assistance that was contemplated by this legislation. Our total housing program within the Bureau of Indian Affairs is less than 19…17 million dollars, and it’s basically an improvement housing assistance project.

Chairman: Mr. Ragsdale, what do you consider to be the responsibilities of the BIA should the Bennett Freeze language be repealed as seen in past congressional legislation.

Mr. Ragsdale: Our responsibilities … I’m optimistic about that. My understanding is that the Navajo and Hopi tribes are hopefully very close to a resolution of that issue, but uh that would allow us to resume our normal functions assisting the tribes to develop their properties.

Chairman: Uh, Mr. Tessler, Mr. Ragsdale’s testimony points to concerns relating to pending appeals to relocation decisions. Can you give us a sense or how many appeals remain in the backlog and how long do these appeals typically take to be resolved?

Mr. Tessler: Right now we have requests for appeals. These are internal administrative appeals to determine eligibility of individual applicants. There are 200 requests for appeals, which were timely filed. We believe that ultimately there will be about 50 or 60 hearings on those requests, and the timetable calls for them to be resolved by the end of July next year. We’ve already started that process and are moving toward it expeditiously.

Chairman: Mr. Tessler, generally speaking, can you describe for what purposes relocation assistance monies are spent, and to date how much money has been allocated in relocation assistance?

Mr. Tessler: I believe, I don’t have…I’m not sure of the exact number, I believe 500 million dollars as Congressman Renzi has said is right in the ballpark. Generally, those monies are spent … well, we have four categories, staff and administration, relocation housing money, the discretionary fund which allows us to do various types of infrastructure or economic development projects, and then development of the new lands, which is an area of 300,000 acres that were provided in 1980 after the original act was passed for relocation purposes.

Chairman: Mr. Tessler, are applications for relocation assistance still being accepted, and if so, how many more of these applications do you anticipate?

Mr. Tessler: We are not accepting them anymore. We stopped accepting them in 1986 and then through a variety of decisions and negotiations with Navajo Hopi legal services of the Navajo tribe we determined that fairness required that we open up applications to people living on the Hopi Partitioned Lands. This was also in conjunction with the Settlement agreement, the Accommodation Agreement, between the Navajo tribe and the Hopis, and the residents that allowed 75-year leases. This was completed in 1977, and, at that time, we finished taking applications from all the people we knew were actually living on the Hopi Partitioned Lands. Since then we determined it would be the fairest thing to do to examine applications from other people who claim to be residents of the land but whose applications weren’t considered earlier. We have received all those applications. We have made a decision on all of them to either certify them eligible, or deny them eligibility, the vast majority of them, more than 200, have been denied eligibility and those are the ones that are in the hearing process right now.

Chairman: Thank you, sir. Thanks to both witnesses. Let me turn to the ranking member, my friend from Michigan.

Rep. Kildee: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. How would the BIA uh role change if the relocation program were, the responsibilities of that program, were transferred to your department, how would you deal with the pending uh responsibilities?

Mr. Ragsdale: Well, if you’re talking about the land management responsibilities, we’re already working with the Office of Navajo Hopi Relocation to affect a transition in an orderly fashion, to carry out our basic range management leasing responsibilities, the normal people services that we provide either directly or through the tribes, through 638 contracts. With respect to engaging in residual relocation activities, if there are any left over, we would have to completely gear up to do that, Congressman.

Rep. Kildee: Do you foresee, either one of you, see any disruptive element coming from the termination of this relocation program and its transfer for its responsibilities to the BIA, do you see any disruptions that might ensue from that?

Mr. Ragsdale: Mr. Congressman, I don’t know that there would be any disruption provided we work together and we have a very good relationship with Relocation Office. I was up there last summer, and I have been out on the new lands, and they’re running a model, a range project there on the new lands, but I think it would be contrary to the intent of the Congress, Congressman, I was around in the 70s when the legislation was enacted, was sponsored by Congressman Udall, and it was… there were a number of bills that were introduced to either directly involve the Department of Interior or create a new office to handle the relocation effort. And to me, for us to go back, and best that with the Secretary would be contrary to the legislative history and the intent of Congress in the first instance. And because we have fiduciary responsibilities to both the Navajo and Hopi tribes, it puts the Department of Interior, and specifically the Bureau of Indian Affairs if we were vested with that function, in a very difficult position with regards to relocation.

Rep. Kildee: Uh Mr. Tessler, do you believe that uh September 20th eh 2008 would provide ample time to complete the relocation process before handing it over to Interior.

Mr. Tessler: We do, Mr. Chairman, as we testified in the Senate and have been planning for that date for some time, perhaps even before the introduction of the Senate bill. I don’t see disruption as you asked Mr. Ragsdale. We hope to have all the relocations done by that date. If there are some few remaining, there is part of the legislation allows the transfer of employees or part of perhaps our office, to Interior, if I understand it right, and we could…those relocations could be completed uh at that time. We do not want, and understand that nobody wants us to give a house-building job to the Department of Interior that we’ve been doing for all these years, and we don’t intend to do that.

Rep. Kildee: Thank you…(unintelligible - sounds like Mr. Chairman). Just as an aside here uh, Mr. Ragsdale, I’ve been driving Buicks all my life, and uh the best-designed Buicks were designed by a gentleman who was general manager at Buick by the name of Mr. Ragsdale so you might have some commonality (?).

Mr. Ragsdale: (Laughing) Well, thank you, I wish I could claim the heritage. I’m not sure we’re related.

Chairman: …heritage and commonality of family trees, but maybe a percentage of the designs.

Mr. Ragsdale: If he was…is Cherokee he might be one of my distant relatives.

Chairman: I thank the ranking member, and I’m honored to yield to my colleague from Arizona.

Rep. Renzi: I’m not known for my humor so I’m gonna go ahead and cut to the chase. The largest land mass and poverty in America…The largest land mass and poverty in America is the Navajo Hopi First District of Arizona. The most deplorable conditions within that is the area of the Bennett Freeze. Not real funny. Not real humorous. If BIA was given the responsibility of having not just to move people into houses but to have to bring back that area, the roads and the schools and the health care clinics and the hospitals, the electrification projects, the energy, the clean up of the polluted water, some of the largest pollution and tainted water uranium in the country exist up in that corner of the world. I don’t think BIA given the limited amount of money that you get, given the length of projects that it takes, you can put a school on BIA’s list and take 15 years to get to the top. It’s a fact. I don’t think BIA right now, and you work hard, Mr. Ragsdale, and I appreciate you coming to my office, and I appreciate going out and visiting Hopi Navajo land, and I’ve been impressed by you since you came on board, but given the constraints of what you have to work with, there’s no way you can pull and lift and help those people. NO WAY! Not a chance, which tells me that’s going to be left then for the congressman who represents the Hopis and the congressman to the Navajos, Republicans or Democrats, to have to fight for earmarks and special projects, give your vote here to leadership, get a little money here, and that little drop that you get won’t be enough. So, me, this congressman, won’t be able to do it. Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter. Can’t get it done, which tells me if we’re really gonna to fix the project, if we’re really gonna to fix it, we’ve got to have a separate program dedicated to roads and schools and hospitals and leprication (?), and water, and pulling the deplorable conditions. If we’re gonna to have a special office, if we’re gonna to have a special program we’re gonna get it done, why not take the office of relocation and continue it? Let me just start with that little question, Mr. Ragsdale. Why not continue, why not build on what we have rather than cutting it off (unintelligible)?

Mr. Ragsdale: Well, that question hasn’t been posed to us in exactly that way so I’m not going to answer you specifically. What I will tell you is that I am very well aware of the resources that we have available to tend to the many things that we are supposed to tend to, and you and I have had discussions about that. With respect to the Bennett Freeze area, I don’t know that we would have all the resources to make up for the 40 to 50 years of not being able to do anything but it would be a good start and I’m very optimistic that the tribes are going to come together, the two tribes are going to come together, so that the Bennett Freeze can be … (interrupted)

Rep. Renzi: What would be a good start? What would be a good start?

Mr. Ragsdale: Well, the Freeze needs to be lifted, first of all, and we cannot do that unless the two tribes agree to the terms of that, and I think that uh my understanding is that we’re very close but that would make it immediately available for us to be able to develop those properties, to provide roads money, to provide some infrastructure money with the resources that we have.

Rep. Renzi: So you’re saying that within the resources you have that you could then go to work on that huge …

Mr. Ragsdale: We would have to stretch the resources that we have, Mr. Congressman, to do that but it would be a start. Right now we’re prohibited from doing anything.

Rep. Renzi: Ya…In my opinion you don’t have enough resources to be able to handle what you have on the, on your plate.

Mr. Ragsdale: I’m not going to disagree with you.

Rep. Renzi: Thank you. Mr. Tessler, do you have any thoughts on that?

Mr. Tessler: Uh much like Mr. Ragsdale’s, the redevelopment of that whole area which has been frozen since 1966 is a monumental task. I believe Senator DeConcini held hearings on that issue late 80s, early 90s and the Navajo Nation submitted a very comprehensive report you know, at that time – school, roads, power, health facilities – and I think the number that sticks in my mind, if I remember correctly, was 250 million dollars back then [Renzi says “back then” at the same time] and where it would come from now, I don’t know. It’s certainly not in the Office’s budget. It has been suggested by the Navajo Nation that the Office could be helpful with them in terms of building housing for them should the area be unfrozen.

Rep. Renzi: Not really some kind of a thing that you could handle with just a little couple earmarks in there, huh?

Mr. Tessler: No

Rep. Renzi: No. Thank you. I’ll look forward to talking to the other witnesses.

Chairman: I thank my colleague from Arizona, and as one who preceded him in dealing with the Bennett Freeze, I will reaffirm there is little levity in the entire situation there, the bureaucratic fiat now 40 years ago that led to the consequences there. The gentleman from American Samoa.

Rep. Faleomavaega (American Samoa): Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I, for the record, I want to associate myself with the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Renzi, who has done, in my humble opinion, an outstanding job in representing our Native American community who resides in his district. And I have basically the same questions that Congressman Renzi had raised earlier. I’d like to ask Mr. Ragsdale, I note that one of the preambles of the proposed bill legislation that was passed by the Senate specifically states, “The relocation process has been plagued with controversy and delay. Congress has had to amend the act several times to authorize the expansion of the recent relocation activity and to provide additional appropriations for the implementation of relocation activities.” Now I wanted to ask Mr. Ragsdale does administration agree to this basic proposed legislation to simply transfer this whole activity to the Bureau of Indian Affairs?

Mr. Ragsdale: No, we do not.

Rep. Faleomavaega: Do you prefer to have the way it is currently structured?

Mr. Ragsdale: Well, I’m hopeful, I’m hopeful that uh, and the relocation commission has indicated that they are hopeful that they will have the relocation process completed by the expiration date in the bill. If it is not, then the Department of Interior would have serious concerns about assuming the responsibility.

Rep. Faleomavaega: If I read my history correctly, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, Mr. Ragsdale, since the legislation some time around 1974, it was projected at the Office that everything would have been completed by ‘86, around there, ‘88, and now we’re at 2006. And it seems that this is major surgery as I was going through the provisions of this proposed bill, basically by transferring the BIA, I suspect that one of the real concerns as mentioned by Mr. Renzi, is the BIA capable of carrying on this responsibility if this office is to be terminated.

Mr. Ragsdale: It would depend on what work is left to be done. If it was just some very routine, administrative functions, I think that we could do that, but there was uh… if the process was not complete, if there were appeals still pending, and there was work yet to be done, construction work yet to be done, then we would have to advise you of what resources the department … would need to do that.

Rep. Faleomavaega: So here we have legislation with absolute good intentions on the part of the Congress, and I’m sure that even the representative as leaders of the Navajo and Hopi tribes in trying to settle this controversy that’s been there for hundreds of years, and now it’s over 30 years, and correct me if I’m wrong, it seems that we’re in a quagmire right now. And this is the bottom line really on our part that we haven’t provided the necessary funding for proper implementation of this program since we started in ’74?

Mr. Ragsdale: I’ll have to defer to the Relocation Commission to respond to that.

Mr. Tessler: For me to say that half a million dollars isn’t enough would be silly.

Rep. Faleomavaega: Half a billion you mean?

Mr. Tessler: Half a billion, I’m sorry, yes, and I’m not saying that. We have, while the program has taken longer than anyone expected, there are less than 100 Navajo families remaining to be relocated. There are some pending appeals that will add to that. Some of the 100 that are remaining are already in the process, have a house under construction or are in the process of contracting for a house, so the vast, vast majority of the relocations have been completed. We hope that the ones that are under appeal will be finalized by the end of the summer, 2007, and that they’ll be under contract and have houses built by the time we turn things over. So we’ve had enough money to do most everything we wanted to do and been instructed to do all these years.

Rep. Faleomavaega: This 500 million dollars, where do you suppose the vast amount of monies has gone into, personnel, administrative costs or the appeals or…?

Mr. Tessler: The vast amount has gone into housing for relocates. We provided housing I want to say 4300 some families. In addition, in 1980, when they added 400,000 acres to the … gave to the Navajo Nation for relocation purposes, we, the agency, developed roughly 300,000 of those acres from what was raw lanch rand, lanch, ranch land in Arizona, and put in power, water, schools, electricity, housing units. An awful lot of money went there. The vast majority went for housing and those kind of services.

Rep. Faleomavaega: My time is up, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Faleomavaega. Let me turn to the gentleman from Puerto Rico.

Rep. Fortuno (Puerto Rico): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, uh Mr. Tessler, uh if you could uh help us in understanding better the process perhaps of relocation, we would perhaps be better prepared to help you in having the resources to, to complete the process. Could you go over the process? Let’s say there’s going to be a relocation. You mentioned that there are some families are in the process perhaps contracting out a home whatever. Could you go over the different steps that are taken?

Mr. Tessler: Sure. Starting in 1977 we began accepting applications from Navajos and Hopis who were affected by relocation. So the first step is to take an application. The next step is to determine if that person is eligible for benefits cuz not everybody there met our eligibility requirements. If they were determined eligible for benefits then they’d go along one track. If they were denied eligibility for benefits they’d go along an appeals track, which allowed them an administrative in-house hearing and appeal, and then an appeal to the United States District Court. That process, you know, could take took from a year to you know they have six years after denial of eligibility to go to District Court.

Rep. Fortuno: On the administrative side…up to six years on the administrative side.

Mr. Tessler: After the administrative [“oh” said by Fortuno] administrative remedy is exhausted within the agency then they can go to District Court.

Rep. Fortuno: OK

Tessler: They have after the final denial they have six years to file their action in District Court to file their action in District Court so denied people get a hearing. The people who are certified eligible, after they’re determined eligible, they’re uh linked up with one of our Navajo oh Hopi at the time in-house specialists who are fluent in the language to assist them in determining where they want to move. They can move anywhere in the country, on reservation, off reservation, um, determine their income, look into their problems, try to solve them as best we could and facilitate the acquisition of a house, which could mean buying an existing house in say one of the border towns around the reservation or building a new house around the reservation, off the reservation for building a new house on the reservation itself, the Hopi or the Navajo which in turn puts us into the process of getting a land lease from either of the tribes where the house is to be built, and then the actual construction of the house which this our agency oversees uh from beginning to end with inspections to ensure quality much like a city inspector would do on a house uh and then once the house is built, follow-up afterwards to make sure the house is what we say it was, sometimes to provide repairs, uh and also to follow-up after relocation to a limited aspect with social uh, I don’t want to say social counseling but follow-up to see if there’s assistance we can provide if there are problems afterwards.

Rep. Fortuno: Are these specialists and agency officials located on site or are they flying out of Washington. How does that work? On site?

Mr. Tessler: Oh, no, no, no. Our office is in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Rep. Fortuno: Oh so you are there.

Mr. Tessler: Which is not quite on site but it’s an hour’s drive from the Hopi reservation and parts of the Navajo reservation. We have also had offices on the Hopi reservation and the Navajo reservation, field offices at various times, and in the new lands area that we developed near Holbrook and Sanders, Arizona, we have a full staff there, uh and a whole essentially a whole community that we built.

Rep. Fortuno: OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for having this hearing. We’ll be looking toward Mr. Renzi for leadership on this issue. Thank you.

Chairman: I thank the gentleman from Puerto Rico, and now I turn to my Arizona colleague, Mr. Grivjalva.

Rep. Grivjalva: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And let me echo the comments uh my colleagues in appreciation for Mr. Renzi beginning the process of dealing with this very important issue. We have the Senate version that has already passed and uh I think it’s incumbent upon our committee and uh the House of Representatives to deal with the question as well. And I don’t think we’re talking today about any specific legislation. I know there are some draft concepts that Mr. Renzi has put together but as we go through this process my only points would be that we really don’t need to mirror what the Senate did. There are differences that we understand are significant, should deal with them, and that the context of the legislation be fair and equitable to the tribes involved in this question, and that there be a level of equality in both how we legislative this and for the long term. And I particularly appreciate the idea of a study and that that everybody is playing with the same set of information, the same timelines, and uh I look forward to the additional testimony and yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.

Rep. Renzi: Mr. Chairman.

Chairman: Mr. Renzi.

Rep. Renzi: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna thank my colleague from Arizona uh for his, for his insight. One of the big differences between the draft that we’re working on and the Senate version is the Senate calls for a report and calls for the Office to be completely shut down. What I’m asking is, Mr. Ragsdale, Mr. Tessler, what if we did a study that looked at where we are right now and where we need to go, looked at the infrastructure, looked at the architecture that’s in place, the bureaucratic architecture already in place, and see if we can use some of that to get where we need to go. Why shut down an office or why knowing that we’re just going to have to recreate something in the future particularly if it’s going to be an offline special kinda budget idea. Any thoughts on doing a study verse a report with the idea of where we need to go in the future may need to include the current or some portions of the current architecture?

Mr. Ragsdale: Speaking for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, what I think the first step would be for us to do a thorough review of the Relocation Office’s effort and, and back to one of your comments about having resources, I want to commend the Relocation Commission’s Office on the 300,000 acres of new lands located at Sanders. I’ve been to that community. I know some of the personnel, Navajo people that work there personally I’ve worked with them before, and they have developed a model community, and more importantly they developed a model grazing management system that will take resources to endure and carry forward. One of the caveats to my testimony is that uh even with respect to range management activity, we are going to need the financial resources to maintain those improvements that that have been carried on by the Relocation Commission.

Rep. Renzi: Mr. Tessler, currently the Office of Relocation is a line item each year. You guys are funded in the base (?). Is that right?

Mr. Tessler: Yes.

Rep. Renzi: OK. My point is that if we already have a conduit that exists that funds an office that is in charge of at least doing some rehabilitation in the Bennett Freeze area, and it’s already in the base, does that give us an avenue then to continue that architecture into the future?

Mr. Tessler: While it isn’t part of the Senate bill…

Rep. Renzi: I realize that. I’m talking about…

Mr. Tessler: …nor any bill that that, you know, I’ve seen the proposed legislation, and the answer would be, yes, yes, it does give an avenue.

Rep. Renzi: Wouldn’t it be smart I think to relocate your office since you’re in the relocation business up on to Tuba City into the Navajo, into the Hopi Navajo area so that you could actually be in there, and see it and feel it and experience it yourself.

Mr. Tessler: Um, well we have had offices up there. Uh whether moving it from Flagstaff where it’s been for…

Rep. Renzi: Well, right now it’s gonna be shut down.

Mr. Tessler: Correct.

Rep. Renzi: Mr. Chairman, thank you for that extra time.

Chairman: (Pombo’s here now). Thank you. There any further questions of these witnesses? Well, I want to thank you for uh your testimony. I apologize for being late coming in but if there are further questions, they will be submitted to you in writing if you can answer them in writing, it would be appreciated. Thank you.