Jack Stevens: A Nightmare in the Making

Every federal employee’s worst nightmare is to be forced to appear before a congressional committee to respond to a situation in which his or her agency is clearly in the wrong. It is painful to watch the witness wilt and sweat as angry members rain vitriol on him or her.

Often, the beleaguered witness isn’t even the decision-maker whose actions prompted Congress’s wrath but is offered up as a sacrificial lamb to spare his or her supervisors from an unpleasant time.

Ignoring, or worse, sabotaging a congressional mandate are quick ways to end up in this kind of hot seat on the Hill.

Yet, in the latter days of the Biden Administration, the BIA’s Office of Trust Services did exactly that.

Without explanation or tribal consultations, it laid off or drove away 50 of the Division of Energy and Mineral Development’s (DEMD’s) 65 contractors and six of its 13 federal employees, hobbling the Department of Interior’s ability to fulfill venerable congressional mandates under the Indian Mineral Development Act of 1982 (25 USC §§ 2101-2108) and the Indian Tribal Energy Development and Self-Determination Act of 2005 (25 USC §§ 3501-3506).

The 1982 Act authorized tribal negotiations leading to mineral development agreements. Congress recognized that most tribes lack the technical expertise to ensure that such negotiations can proceed on even terms. So, it required in Section 7 of the law that the tribe “. . . shall have available advice, assistance, and information during the negotiation of (an) Agreement.” DEMD was charged with that responsibility – assuring that each proposed agreement is "in the best interest of the tribe” – and carried it out capably for decades.

The 2005 Act requires DEMD to “. . . provide development grants to Indian tribes and tribal energy resource development organizations for use in developing or obtaining the managerial and technical capacity needed to develop energy resources on Indian land . . .” This is an obligation DEMD now finds challenging given its drastically reduced manpower.

The immediate impact of these staff cutbacks has been a drop in energy and mineral related tribal revenue from over $1.6 billion in 2022 to $1.1 billion in 2024 -- a loss of over $500 million in less than two years.

Sooner or later, Congress is going to want to know why this has happened and why the BIA is undermining its mandates. That day of reckoning will not be pretty.