Money proves to be elusive for Many Farms

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — The Navajo Nation Washington Office said that it has been working on the projects for the Many Farms community that Council Delegate Kee Allen Begay, Many Farms/Round Rock, has been pushing for two years.

Begay said that he is being ignored by the executive branch, but the Washington office said that’s not so.

Deswood Tome, from the Navajo Nation Washington Office, said the office submitted the numbers for the Many Farms projects to the federal Office of Management and Budget last year for the fiscal year 2010 budget. He also said that the Washington Office updated Begay last year on what the office has done.

“We’ve taken time to sit down with Mr. Begay and explain what we’ve done for his budget request for his community, which is beyond what we’re doing for him on the Judiciary Committee,” Tome said. “We’re apt to work with Mr. Begay just as much as we’re apt to work with any other chapter or council delegate.”

The numbers cited in a 2006 memorandum to Begay from the Navajo Nation Washington Office include $832,534.58 for a communication line extension, $373,000 for two storage tanks and two booster stations, $200,000 for bathroom additions and $146,638 for purchase of farming equipment.

“We hope to include that with the president’s budget,” Tome said.

Tome said that the Washington Office worked to include the budget numbers into the U.S. president’s budget, which is the start of the budget process.

“We won’t know those numbers until they’re released when the president carries his budget into Congress, which will be in the first week of February,” Tome said. “Then we’ll have a brand new administration so we won’t know which president is coming into office.”

After the election, the new administration has from election day to inauguration day on Jan. 20 to rewrite budget policies, so what could be in the budget could take a new turn depending on who becomes president, Tome said.

“Working to put this into the president’s budget at least puts it before Congress,” he added.

The Washington Office has been working on the appropriations requests for two years now, Tome said.

“We arranged to set up meetings with congressional staffers to have Mr. Kee Allen Begay’s appropriation request considered and worked into the appropriations,” Tome said. The Washington Office did that the first fiscal year it worked on Begay’s project, Tome said. The second year it worked on it, the office tried to set up meetings for Begay and Many Farms chapter officials.

According to an e-mail from Darren Pete, who worked on the projects while he was employed with the Washington Office, to Navajo Nation Washington Office director Sharon Clahchischilliage, several attempts were made to schedule meetings for Begay and Many Farms chapter officials before December 2007 to advocate for the funding in person in Washington.

The trip was canceled after Begay informed Pete that the chapter officials would not be attending any of the meetings, Pete stated in the e-mail.

Pete stated that the requests were then sent to Jim Lester at Rep. Renzi’s Washington office for the FY2009 appropriations cycle.

“As you are aware, Rep. Renzi has a large number of requests for earmarks in every appropriations cycle. Not only does Rep. Renzi have to consider non-Navajo Nation requests, but he has to narrow and decide which from a large number of Navajo Nation request he can fund,” Pete wrote to Clachischilliage.

Tome also said that getting earmarks in the appropriations process is highly competitive.

“You’re competing with a whole range of requests, other tribes as well. You’re competing with the whole range of Indian country and Many Farms is one community that is competing for funding,” Tome said. “Funding in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the (Department of) Interior has been incrementally decreasing over the last three or four budget cycles so it makes it difficult to put in project requests.”

The most viable method would be to have an earmark in either the Interior or the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bills, he added.