1986-02-20 Char-Koosta News

              VOLUME 14 NUMBER 21
Council meets with senator to discuss FHP and other concerns
Senator John Melcher spent part of the congressional spring break visiting with irrigators and Indians on the Flathead Reservatioa
He met with the Tribal Council after lunch last Wednesday, following a morning meeting at Allentown with the Joint Board of ControL
The main reason for his visit was to brief the Council on the high points of a recently approved "memorandum of
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agreement" (MOA) between the Bureaus of Reclamation and Indian Affairs (BuRec & BIA) about management of part of the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project.
The MOA includes plans for retaining all existing irrigation personnel, Melcher said, who will retain all their employee rights Indian preference will apply to all positions except the 3-4 positions that will make up a new management team, he said further.
The rest of FY86 will be used for drafting engineering plans for im-
provements and repairs. The BIA, which will continue its involvement with the whole project is supposed to have $1 million available in FY87 to begin paying for that work, he said. The $9.2 million needed to shape up the whole system will no doubt appear in future Interior Department budgets, he said. The money will be repaid by the irrigators after negotiations according to BuRec loan regulations.
As far as the Tribes are concerned, he said, "The MOA is explicit in pro-(Con eludes on page two)
'GRAMBO' may hit IHS after all;
U.S. Supreme Court asked to review law
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As promised, federal agencies across the country have gotten word about how much money they don't have available for what's left of FY86. Almost universally -- at least with regard to Indian programs -- no one got what was requested,which had been promised by the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing law, fondly being called "GRAMBO" in certain circles
As plans to implement the law continue to be discussed, and challenged, in Washington, D.C., an unexpected development has come about the Indian Health Service originally looking at only a 1 % cut in FY86, may lose close to 8% if the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gets its way.
OMB proposes that IHS volunteer to give up $76.6 million which includes almost half the national CHR program's budget
OMB's starring role in the GRAMBO Act is being protested to the U.S. Supreme Court
To cope with deeper cuts in FY87, all the BIA's area offices should be eliminated, suggests two national Indian organization leaders in a January 27 "urgent memo" to tribes.
The Snake- LaFromboise memo invited Tribal leaders to a "GRAMBO strategy session" February 10 and 11 in Washington, D.C., during the 1986 NCAI executive council's annual meeting
Reuben A Snake Jr., is president of the National Congress of American Indians. Richard LaFromboise is president of the National Tribal Chairmen's Association
The CSK Tribes belong to neither organization