Testimony, continued from previous page
Courtesy photo from the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs website - indian.senate.gov
Among those who testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs at
the Hearing on Contract Support Costs and Sequestration were Aaron Payment,
chairman, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians; Jefferson Keel, lieutenant
governor, Chickasaw Nation; Karen Diver, chairwoman, Fond du Lac Band of Lake
Superior Chippewa; Phyliss Anderson, Tribal chief, Mississippi Band of Choctaw
Indians; and Bud Lane, Tribal vice chairman, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.
urgent or emergent care or to prevent
disease and disability and (2) surgeries
such as carpal tunnel release, rotator cuff
repair, knee surgeries, gastric bypass,
inpatient psychological treatment, herni
ated disc repair and hysterectomies are
deferred indefinitely.
Our Tribal Court, exercising limited
jurisdiction, averages 500 civil cases a
year and is staffed by a full-time court
administrator, a part-time deputy court
administrator, a part-time chief judge
and four on-call judges. The 2013 court
budget is $ 197,000, most of which comes
from Tribal revenue. Only $36,271 - less
than 19% - comes from BIA funds. A
2010 BIA assessment of Tribal Courts
noted that this federal contribution was
the lowest of 50 Tribal courts reviewed
and recommended there be a significant
increase in funding to the Tribe, but that
has not occurred. Inadequate funding
unnecessarily restricts the Tribe from
fully exercising jurisdiction and seques
tration is worsening this situation.
The Tribe has tried to absorb cuts in
areas that do not affect direct services
to Tribal clients - reducing travel and
staffing. In this second round of seques
tration, we continue not filling vacancies
and there will be no COLA and no step
increases for staff. Services to Tribal
members will be affected in the second
round of cuts.
The Health Department eliminated
four positions - a pharmacy technician,
a dental assistant, a community health
advocate and the clinical applications
coordinator. We will maintain Contract
Health Services at the priority 1 & 2
levels and cancel two specialty provider
contracts. The clinic personnel reductions
will result in 200 less medical transports,
50 fewer home visits, elimination of child
safety seat and bicycle safety helmet dis
tribution programs, 240 less dental visits,
lengthening the time to fill prescriptions
and 12,000 fewer patient visits.
We are eliminating one of two Elders
Program coordinators, the After-School
Program coordinator and assistant posi
tions, and our environmental planner. This
will significantly reduce services to our
Elders, while increasing the workload for
the remaining staff person. Elimination of
the After-School Program staff requires
that we close the program - impacting
20 children and their families who relied
on these services. We are shifting the
environmental planner duties to our Natu
ral Resources staff - significantly more
work than “other duties as assigned.” The
functions of this position are essential
for ensuring environmental compliance
for purchasing, managing and develop
ing land. As this committee knows, the
land-into-trust process is cumbersome and
time consuming on the federal side; for
Siletz it will now take even longer due to
sequestration impacts on staffing.
Additionally, three administrative
positions being eliminated are Public
Relations clerk, Records Management
clerk and the Public Works supervisor.
Again, we are shifting responsibilities
of these jobs onto other staff. Our Public
Information specialist will now be a one-
person department, making it harder to
keep up on projects and more difficult to
maintain quality. The Records Manage
ment clerk duties have been added to
another staff person’s duties. The Public
Works crew are reorganized as a team to
self-direct their work and report periodi
cally to a manager.
Our Information Systems Department
has been making critical upgrades to our
operating systems on five servers, as well
as the call manager for our phone system.
The 2014 cuts will prevent completion of
these projects, which means we will no
longer have vendor tech support for these
old systems. This is critical to ensure our
clinic’s capability to meet HIPPA stan
dards for electronic health records and
accreditation standards.
The situation is even worse for Tribal
law enforcement services, which cover
Tribal lands and the City of Siletz where
many Tribal members live. These services
started out at 120 patrol hours a week
under a contract with a neighboring city
police department in order to save on
costs. At $95,391, the BIA funding cov
ered just under a third of the costs (a 2010
BIA review of Tribal courts pointed out
that Siletz was the lowest funded Tribal
court among 50 reviewed). The Tribe's
Housing Department funded another
third and the remainder was subsidized by
Tribal revenue. However, steady revenue
decline from 2008 to 2012 required reduc
ing law enforcement coverage from 120
to 80 hours a week. In 2013, BIA funding
dropped to $90,809 under sequestration
and will be down to $86,298 with the
second sequester. In addition, new HUD
guidance has reduced the amount Tribal
Housing can contribute. And it is not fea
sible for the contracted police department
to provide services. We are working with
the City of Siletz to poll the community’s
support to help fund these essential ser
vices; however, it is anticipated by the
Tribe that these services will not be avail
able in our community very soon.
Insufficient contract support costs is
not the only factor affecting the ability
of Tribes to manage our contracts and
grants. During a periodic monitoring of
the Tribe’s housing programs, HUD staff
disputed costs under our approved indirect
rate. The law - Native American Housing
and Self-Determination Act - clearly and
unambiguously states that indirect costs
rates will be determined by a Tribe’s
cognizant agency (not by HUD or any
other outside agency). For Siletz and most
Tribes, that agency is the BIA through
their National Business Center (NBC).
HUD conducted two monitoring
reviews of the Tribe's housing program in
which they determined the Tribe’s indi
rect cost rate was not applied correctly
to HUD programs. Unable to convince
HUD that the indirect cost rate had to be
applied consistently to all Tribal programs,
the Tribe contacted the National Business
Center (NBC), only to find that HUD had
already been in communication with them
and consequently the NBC was unwilling
to defend their longstanding approval of our
indirect cost proposal. Unfortunately, the
Tribe felt it had nowhere to go as HUD was
threatening to make their finding retroactive
(back to 1998), so we agreed to settlement
limiting the finding to one year, which was
a significant amount - $518,405.
Agreeing to settle had immediate
fiscal impacts - it shifted two program
manager positions from the indirect cost
pool to direct costs, thereby increasing
the Tribe’s costs to manage contracts
and grants by an estimated $200,000 a
year. The only source to cover this is to
reduce services under grants and contracts
to cover these costs. We need these two
positions but it is likely we can only afford
one of them.
And how is it that a single federal
agency, in conflict with literally the letter
of the law, could do this in the first place?
Will Tribes have to vet their indirect cost
proposals to all federal agencies that they
contract and compact with? Where was
our trustee in defending the Tribe from
this intrusive action and the resulting
long-lasting harm?
It is important to recognize that
sequestration has exacerbated the long
standing issue of insufficient funding for
contract support costs. Often the only
recourse to address this shortfall is to
reduce services to Tribal members. For
Siletz, we have seen Tribal child welfare
positions go unfilled while remaining
staff carry caseloads two times higher
than their state counterparts. In some
cases the Tribe has to seek additional
grants to fund salaries and services - our
Natural Resources clerk has three funding
sources. And this situation is not limited
to BIA and 1HS funding. We support staff
ing costs for our Elders Program through
four sources of revenue - BIA. Title VI-A
and C, and Tribal gaming revenue.
At some point, service reductions
are not an option. For years, the Siletz
Tribe has contributed funds to cover an
increasing CSC shortfall for the Head Start
program. In 2009, this cost reached a high
of $90,000; it is now down to just under
$60,000. This might appear to be good
news but it is not — the cost has gone down
due to declining appropriations. Two years
of sequestration has taken $ 100.000 from
our program budget, directly affecting the
education of our youngest members and
their families. We have eliminated posi
tions, reduced others to part time for sal
ary and benefit savings, added duties onto
other job descriptions and most offensive,
have had to eliminate classroom days.
While the collective sentiment may be that
the children are our future, it is not reflected
in federal appropriations.
Tribes are legitimate government
contractors whose indirect rates are objec
tively calculated by the National Business
Center (despite HUD’s opinion). Payment
of these costs to Tribes is required by fed
eral law (ISDEAA) and has been upheld
by the U.S. Supreme Court (Cherokee
Nation v. Leavitt). There are solutions
to this long and ongoing problem and
the Siletz Tribe urges you to consider
the following actions; (1) appropriating
more funds for CSCs to close the funding
gap; (2) lifting the cap on CSC appropria
tions; (3) tapping into un-obligated BIA
and IHS appropriations from prior years;
(4) prohibiting the National Business
Center from altering past rules for negoti
ating indirect cost rates; (5) extending the
statute of limitations for Tribes to pursue
CSC claims; and as an alternative to costly
litigation, creating a CSC claims board to
fairly compensate affected Tribes.
I hope 1 have adequately conveyed
to you that sequestration is real and is
negatively affecting Tribes. We have
been as creative as we can in meeting
this challenge but we are running out of
options. In many instances services are
contingent upon the staffing and the Tribe
doesn’t have the numbers to lose posi
tions and provide the quality of services
needed by our members. Tribes have
long been among the poorest, most vul
nerable populations in the United States
and historically been under-funded by
the federal government. Sequestration is
worsening this situation. On behalf of the
Siletz Tribe, I implore you to take action
to immediately exempt all Tribes and
federal employees serving Tribes from the
current and any future sequestration. Your
help in crafting solutions to sequestration
as well as our other funding problems is
greatly needed.
On behalf of the Siletz Tribe. I want
to thank you for allowing me to share our
comments with you today and I would be
happy to answer any questions.
December 2013
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Siletz News
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