--- Daniel Mackay <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: "Daniel Mackay" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [forum-l] The latest on the Dept of Interior computer shutdown
> Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 10:47:41 -0500
> Reply-to: "Daniel Mackay" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> From the NYTimes:
>
>
> February 14, 2002
>
>
> A Computer Shutdown Plays Havoc at Interior
>
>
> By TIMOTHY EGAN
>
> After a 10-week court-ordered shutdown of nearly all its computer
> communications, the Interior Department said yesterday that it had restored
> some of them, bringing e- mail back to government scientists, Web service to
> national parks — and payments to nearly 40,000 American Indians.
> The blanket electronic closing of a department that manages everything from
> seashores in New England to Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky stemmed from a
> problem that has been out of sight of much of official Washington but has
> played havoc with the lives of millions of people who depend on an agency
> that is landlord to one-eighth of the United States.
>
> A federal district judge ordered the department on Dec. 5 to shut down its
> entire computer system, saying it could not safeguard the accounting system
> that manages money for Indians.
> The judge, Royce C. Lamberth, who is hearing the largest class-action suit
> ever filed by Indians, has already found that the government mismanaged
> Indian money for more than a century. In the process of a second trial, to
> determine whether Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton should be held in
> contempt for failing to comply with past orders on cleaning up the
> department, the judge found that Interior's Web sites were vulnerable to
> computer hacking.
> In court in Washington yesterday, Secretary Norton promised Judge Lamberth
> that checks were on the way to thousands of Indians and said that about 40
> percent of the department's Web sites were safe enough from hackers to
> reopen. The other major Interior Web sites remain offline.
> To Indians who live in cities and on the reservations in the West, and
> depend on the $500 million in annual income that the department manages for
> them as part of a historic trust, the promises have a hollow ring, some of
> them said.
> "I've watched them jump around for Enron ( news/quote
> <http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.m
> arketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=ENRNQ> ) while I
> haven't received so much as a single word about the money they owe me," said
> Rosemary Pimms, a Yakama Indian who lives in Seattle on the royalty payments
> that the government manages for her. "Nothing new there: the Indian is
> always last in line."
> In Oklahoma, New Mexico and Washington state, which have large tribal
> populations, the cutoff of royalty payments, which come yearly, quarterly or
> monthly, put some families in danger of losing their homes.
> "The house payment is the one we're most worried about now," said Billy
> Wolfe, who lives in a trailer with his wife, Christine, in Lamar, Okla. The
> couple depend on $450 a month in royalty income that the government manages
> for them. They have not received a check for three months, and there is a
> lien on the trailer, Mr. Wolfe said.
> The Indians point out that the checks are not government handouts, but money
> owed individual Indians from land leased to outside business interests and
> managed by the Interior Department.
> There are more than 500,000 such accounts, though the bulk of the money goes
> to 43,000 Indians who get regular royalty checks ranging from a few dollars
> to several thousand. The tribes say the government has lost up to $100
> billion over the last century because of mismanagement and poor accounting.
> "The way these people have been treated recently is an outrage," said
> Representative Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, whose district is 21
> percent Indian. "It's just been a huge injustice. There are people out there
> living day to day, month to month on these checks, and the pace from
> Interior has been like molasses in winter."
> Some tribes, including the Blackfeet, the Oglala Sioux and the Navajo, have
> made emergency funds available from their tribal welfare accounts to
> individual Indians.
> They say they are furious with Secretary Norton. "Where I live, in Glacier
> County, Mont., home of the Blackfeet Nation, one of the 25 poorest counties
> in the United States, I can tell you that many people depend on these
> payments for the bare necessities of life," Elouise Cabell said in testimony
> before Congress last week.
> Ms. Cabell, a former banker who is a member of the Blackfeet Nation,
> initiated the lawsuit six years ago. She says the way the government manages
> Indian money is "a national disgrace."
> Interior officials said yesterday that they should be able to pay about half
> of what the Indians are owed from the computer shutdown and would work to
> make up the full amount in coming months.
> "I'll believe it when I see it," Mrs. Pimms said.
> The accounts date from the 1880's, when the government tried to break up the
> tribal land ownership system and awarded allotments of land to individual
> Indians. These lands were then managed by the government, and usually leased
> to gas, oil or timber companies. As with many trusts, the funds are given to
> descendants as the oldest generations die.
> While most of the Interior computer shutdown has been felt in Indian
> Country, outdoor enthusiasts have been upset at the loss of Web access.
> Complaints from people planning vacations to national parks, or trying to
> get permits to float rivers on federal land, or simply trying to find out
> the status of bird species from the Fish and Wildlife Service, have been
> pouring into the department, officials said.
> The shutdown has disrupted recruiting for summer firefighters and studies on
> wetlands and endangered species, and has forced thousands of government
> workers back to an era of typewriters and endless paper forms.
> "We are frustrated because we don't have e-mail between employees, but the
> public is frustrated because this whole link has been cut off," said John
> Wright, a spokesman for the department.
> Even with the National Park Service Web site scheduled to open within a day,
> an Interior agency that manages even more land — the Bureau of Land
> Management — will remain offline indefinitely, as will the Fish and Wildlife
> Service and the department's general site, officials said.
> The Indians are trying to force the government to set up a proper accounting
> system for the trust funds, and to repay beneficiaries who may have lost
> money over the last century. The accounts have been so mismanaged, tribal
> members say, that they do not comply with even the basic standards of
> running private trusts.
> When President Clinton was in office, Judge Lamberth found Interior
> Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin in contempt
> for their handling of the trust fund records, and the government paid a
> $600,000 fine.
> In ruling three years ago for the Indians, Judge Lamberth wrote, "It would
> be difficult to find a more historically mismanaged federal program." His
> ruling was upheld last year by a federal appeals court in the District of
> Columbia, which wrote, "The trusts at issue here were created over a hundred
> years ago, and have been mismanaged nearly as long."
>
> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
> <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>
>
> > ---
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=====
www.aaronmarcavitch.com
Webmaster, VAF (www.vernaculararchitecture.org)
Webmaster, ADM (www.americandinermuseum.org)
Webmaster, Boston Harborfest (www.bostonharborfest.com)
Grad. Student Caucus Chair, Am. Assoc of History & Computing

M.A. (Public) History, Middle TN St. Univ (2002)

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