NWX-DEPT of INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 Pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 1
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NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 1 NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel December 13, 2017 12:00 pm CT Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. To ask a question please press Star then 1 and state your name when prompted. Today’s conference is also being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Jerry Gidner. Thank you, you may begin. Jerry Gidner: Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody or good morning -- depending on where you all are. I am Jerry Gidner. I’m the Principal Deputy Special Trustee for the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians and currently the Acting Special Trustee. And today’s consultation is a follow up to a series of consultations that the Department held through the fall of 2016 regarding several issues required by the Indian Trust Asset Reform Act (ITARA). So today we’d like to talk about our proposal to transition OST from the Office of the Secretary of Interior to be under the jurisdiction of the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. So at the consultations last year we heard a number of options: leave OST intact where it is; break it up and move the functions to different parts of the NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 2 Department; move it intact into BIA proper; move it under the Assistant Secretary’s Office. There are a few others. One was to put it under the Undersecretary of Indian Affairs, which is allowed by ITARA but that has not been decided to make an undersecretary a position. So after looking at the comments and the transcripts, we have decided to propose moving OST under the Assistant Secretary of the Indian Affairs. I want to clarify that. It is not to put it within BIA proper. It would be a third organization reporting to the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. So there would be the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education, and the Office of the Special Trustee. We would envision that it would become a permanent organization. Probably most of you know the 1994 Trust Reform Act included a termination or sunset provision for the Office of the Special Trustee as it was envisioned - working on trust reform and oversight. In the intervening years, however, operational functions of accounting management and records, etc., have been added to OST, and those functions need to continue on a daily basis. So our proposal is to move OST almost intact, and I’ll explain that in a second, to underneath the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. And at some point it will become a permanent organization. The “almost intact” part is what we have also proposed and were required by ITARA to have the appraisal functions within a single entity that we have proposed, and it’s moving on a different tract to combine OST’s Office of Appraisal Services with the Office of Valuation Services and the Department of Interior and that would create a new office, the Appraisal and Valuation Services Office (AVSO). But other than appraisals moving out, the remainder of OST under our proposal would move under the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs as it is right now. NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 3 So rather than say any more about that, that’s the gist of the plan. I would at this time propose to hear your comments or questions. I guess I should talk about the process going forward. We’ll be having another consultation session tomorrow morning. It will be identical to this one. We will maintain a comment period until January 15 I believe it is. After that point we’ll review the comments that come in, any comments made on the consultations today and tomorrow, and decide based on that if we need to amend the plan. But at that point the ITARA plan, the draft of which we’re consulting on today, we will send to both the authorizing side of Congress as well as a reprogramming letter if needed to the appropriations side and let them review those documents and hopefully improve them at that point. Following that congressional review period, whatever we finally implement would be done via a secretarial order signed by Secretary Zinke. So with that we’ll open the lines to comments. Coordinator: Thank you. If you’d like to comment at this time please press Star 1 and state your name when prompted. If you wish to withdraw from the queue you may press Star 2. Again if you would like to make a comment please press Star 1. One moment. (Damon Knight) your line is open. (Damon Knight): Hello this is (Damon Knight). I’m calling from Minnesota. I’m a lineal descendant of a rule that the Secretary of Interior prepared in 1972 as they call it - the lineal descendants of the Mdewakanton Wahpekute, also descendants of some Lake Pepin land relinquishment in the 1800s. So I’m just curious we’ve never had our judgment funds’ awards fully paid out. We’ve got two docket payments recently just this year - a Docket 363 and interest payment in 1981. NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 4 Just curious how we as a people can, you know, create economic opportunity for ourselves, for our state and for our country for these judgment funds, you know, to be distributed throughout the lineal descendants. And I also would like to know about titles of land and compensation for titles of land that were seeded at a time open for settlement. My grandmother had 400 acres and I would look for compensation for those lands. So that’s my comment for today. Thank you. I appreciate it. Jerry Gidner: Thank you. Coordinator: The next comment comes from (Brian Gunn). Your line is open. (Janet Nicholson): Good morning this is (Janet Nicholson). I wanted to provide comments on behalf of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. I see based on the ITARA report and what’s been presented is it’s proposed that the OST be moved from the Office of the Secretary to AS-IA as an office equal to BIA and BIA education. I believe the Colville Tribe and the tribes in the northwest across the country would be more agreeable to the Office of Special Trustee be moved under the Office of the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. And that the duplicate services that are provided within the Office of Special Trustee could then be transitioned out and under the services already provided within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That would make funds available where they were originally taken from, such as our real property offices, our forestry departments, our range departments. We think that would be a better use of the money of actual FTEs. I believe that the superintendent authority, the regional director authority, they are all delegated with approving all the NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 5 transactions that generate the money and they actually do the approval of all the financial documents for OST to process. I believe the Office of Trust Fund’s Management should remain intact with one exception that the Fiduciary Trust Officers that were developed to be the front line in answering questions related to the management of natural resources that is not done at a great majority and they basically do follow up of what the financial trust accountants do. It’s the superintendent that is the frontline officer that responds to all questions in relation to the management of natural resources or all the financial transactions. I believe the Office of Special Trustee provides the backup but they do not have the final authority. So I believe that we could sunset the fiduciary officers at the GS-14 level, approximately 50 positions that would be transitioned over to realty specialists, foresters, range cons. Also at the same time, the GS-14 deputy superintendents also were created during the evolution of the Office of Special Trustee. I believe there are more of those in BIA but that would be a separate discussion. I believe that the actual review and processing of the trust transaction at the field level is done by the financial accounts’ managers and the accounting techs and the Trust Beneficiary Call Center. So the Fiduciary Trust Officer basically is a moot position. That would be the position of I believe the tribes would take. And I also believe that the Regional Trust Administrators are a duplicate of the services provided by the Regional Directors. So that would be the comments that we would make. We would also provide more explicit written comments of the duplicate services that could be sunsetted within the Office of Special Trustee. Thank you. NWX-DEPT OF INTERIOR-NBC Moderator: Elizabeth Appel 12-13-17/12:00 pm CT Confirmation # 5862740 Page 6 Jerry Gidner: Thank you and we’ll look forward to seeing those written comments. Coordinator: The next comment comes from (Daniel Jordan).