Navajos left out
Begaye blames Window Rock for funding bottleneck

By Kristen Davenport
For The Independent

SANTA FE — When the New Mexico legislative session is over, lawmakers bring home the bacon: Millions for roads and building projects in their home districts.

But some districts might get more than others this year and Navajo communities might be missing out, says Rep. Ray Begaye, D-Shiprock.

Why?

"Because the tribal government just isn't cooperative," Begaye said. "There's too much bureaucracy."

For instance, last week, the House passed a bill called "GRIP 2" which funds $250 million in road projects throughout the state over four years. More than 100 projects are listed in the GRIP 2 bill.

Begaye lists the projects in his area:

• $8.1 million for a four-lane highway across the Animas River in Farmington.
  
  
• Nearly $1 million for two bridge replacements on County Road 6100 in San Juan County
  
  
• $5.5 million for a connector road in Aztec from U.S. 550 to NM 173

But for the Navajo Nation?

"All we have is $198,000 for some work on N-36 between Shiprock and Farmington," Begaye said. "The Navajo Nation could have had millions. But the Department of Transportation and the legislature, they don't want to fund a larger amount until the tribe gets out of their bureaucratic way of doing business."

In 2003, when state lawmakers in Santa Fe passed the first version of this roads bill, called GRIP 1, the Navajo Nation received $125 million for improvements to Highway 491 from Tohatchi to Shiprock. The money was earmarked for creating a four-lane road on one of the nation's most deadly highways.

Four years later, most of that money sits in state coffers, waiting for the project to begin.

"It's pretty sad, but why fund Navajo road projects in the millions when they haven't used the $125 million we gave them four years ago," Begaye asked.

'Fools'
Begaye said he thinks the tribal government "makes us look like fools."

"All the work we do here in Santa Fe, all the talking we do here, on behalf of our people, and what do we get back? A slap in the face from the Navajo Nation government," he said.

Begaye said the state government has also had trouble with tribal bureaucracy when funding projects at local chapter houses. The legislature earmarks the money for a chapter project a community center, a chapter house, a vehicle but the money sometimes gets snagged in Window Rock and never makes it to the communities.

"There's a bottleneck," Begaye said. "That has been the protocol."

Navajo lawmakers and others from the state's newly created Indian Affairs Division met this week to discuss the problems moving money between the state and the tribe.

Other factors
Although Begaye places blame squarely on Navajo tribal bureaucracy, other area lawmakers say it isn't so clear.

"I think that's not fair," said Patty Lundstrom, D-Gallup. "This is my seventh year in the legislature and seven years ago, it's true there were some big problems."

But now, Lundstrom said, the problem comes not from tribal bureaucracy, but from lawmakers who don't adequately fund chapter projects.

"If they have a project that needs $200,000 and you give them $20,000, what are they supposed to do with that?" Lundstrom said. "They say the Navajo tribe isn't moving the money, but if you're only giving them half of what they need, that's what happens."

Lundstrom said she believes the tribe has turned around its bureaucracy and is better able to process funds that come from the legislature. Some work has been done on the Highway 491 project, she said mostly the planning and engineering.

"We ran into problems with right-of-way acquisitions," she said. "But yes, there were a lot of hang-ups with Window Rock on that project."

Spreading the blame
Sen. Lynda Lovejoy, D-Crownpoint, said she agrees that the tribe has some bureaucracy problems, but says the finger can't be pointed in only one direction.

"The blame can't go to one source," Lovejoy said. "There's the tribal government bureaucracy, but also, the chapters and communities share some blame."

Lovejoy said some communities request funds before they are "project ready," meaning, they ask for money before they know exactly what they want to do with it.

"It's true that a lot of the capital outlay funds that are authorized for the Navajo Nation end up sitting there and sitting there," she said. "There's no consistent planning. Everything is fragmented."

Lovejoy said the Navajo Nation does endure a lot of criticism at the Roundhouse from lawmakers who think the tribe needs to do a better job distributing state funds.

Lovejoy said another problem is the structure of the so-called "Indian Day" at the New Mexico legislature, where members of the state's 22 tribes show up to tell lawmakers about Native needs.

"Everyone comes here and they bombard the legislators with the funding requests, which is really poor planning, it's very haphazard," Lovejoy said.

Cooperation
Begaye, too, said the tribes in particular the Navajo Nation need to learn how to work with state lawmakers. Take, for instance, the case of the coal-fired electricity generating station the tribe hopes to open with Sithe Global Power south of Shiprock.

"Their approach was all wrong," Begaye said. The tribe was hoping the state would help entice Sithe Global Power to go forward with the project by giving the company a tax break. But that bill now appears dead at the Roundhouse.

"I was never put into the loop on what the Navajo council delegates wanted," Begaye said. "They never sat down and talked to me about this. From the get go, it was done wrong. It would have been really much better if they would have sat us down, and gone through these discussions beforehand. It would have been more appropriate, more professional. Instead, the Navajo government lost important allies in the battle to get that tax break, and the bill won't go through," he said.

"I was disappointed in the leadership style," Begaye said. "In fact, I was really disturbed."

Lovejoy said it's time for the Navajo people to ask for more cooperation from their leaders.

"We need to bring these barriers down," she said. "Or, maybe we'll just fund less projects next year."

But, she said, it's hard to pinpoint where the problem is, for certain.

"We're all frustrated with one another," she said. "There cannot be one person, one entity, or one source to point to. It's a combination of different problems and sources, including ourselves as legislators."