Indian Tribes Put $3 Billion In Stimulus Funds To Work
While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has buoyed high-profile sectors such as transportation and energy, in Indian Country—the sovereign lands of 562 American Indian tribes across the United States—$3 billion in stimulus funding quietly has moved into development backlogged road improvements, hospitals, correctional facilities and schools. Many of the projects were planned but remained unfunded for years, in some cases for more than a decade.
The ARRA windfall gave cash-strapped tribes more capital than ever before but added constraints to an already idiosyncratic sector.
A March report by the National Congress of American Indians, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., that advised Congress on the legislation and serves as ARRA tribal intermediary, concluded that while ARRA has provided unprecedented funding to address tribal needs, in the end it is “a drop in the bucket.”
Generally poor economic conditions, high unemployment, poverty and substandard infrastructure leave tribes far behind, requiring a long-term funding commitment, the report says.
Two recent conferences addressed these and other topics. Arizona State University presented “Construction in Indian Country” at Fort McDowell, Ariz., in May. The month before, the Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber of Commerce held the American Indian Business Expo in Denver.
Tribal jobs are often rural, with limited access, utilities and workforce, says Elsa Johnson, a CIIC organizer and consultant with Arviso/Oakland, a 51% Indian-owned construction firm with offices in the Four Corners region. Each tribe has its own laws and enforcement.
Cultural differences and negative past experiences can make tribes wary. “You do have to work at getting their trust,” says Prescott, Ariz.-based architect Douglas Stroh, who has designed more than 85 projects for Southwest tribes. “They’ve been burned a lot in the past.”
From concept to completion, cultural values make an impact on projects and vary among tribes.
Tribal projects are needed and bolster community pride, says Brad Gabel, vice president of the Native American division of Phoenix-based general contractor Kitchell Corp., which has performed nearly $1 billion of work in the sector over the past decade. “The work we do literally changes lives,” he says.
ARRA funding for tribes comes from a mixed bag of federal agencies, from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the departments of Education and Justice. Challenges for applicants—such as stringent reporting, recordkeeping and time restrictions—are common.
Early on, leaders and agency staff tackled issues that were more tribal-related, says Dante Desiderio, NCAI’s economic development policy specialist.
Some agencies were unfamiliar with tribal applicants, Desiderio says. Self-governing tribes encountered delays...
...renegotiating Dept. of the Interior contracts. Competitive grants geared toward business, such as broadband-technology funding, initially disfavored non-profit organizations.
“As far as construction, it was really the timing of the funding itself, negotiating and just having agencies make sure tribes were included,” Desiderio says. Expediency was a prime consideration. “The term ‘shovel-ready’ took on an important meaning in tribal communities,” he says.
ARRA emphasis on construction readiness gave a competitive advantage to tribes with master plans and projects on the boards.
“You shouldn’t just pull a project out of a hat, so you need to have some footing and understanding of what your needs are,” says Shelley Zavlek, president of Justice Solutions, a New Jersey-based criminal-justice planning consultant with more than 45 tribal clients.
Tribes fund planning through various avenues, such as the Dept. of Justice’s Correctional Facilities on Tribal Lands program. Tribes poised to take advantage of ARRA funding already had developed plans through alternative funding, Zavlek says. Most tribal projects funded by ARRA were shelved due to lack of funds, not insufficient planning.
In Rosebud, S.D., an airport planned since 1999 is more than 50% complete. Independent-living homes for Choctaw elders in Oklahoma were 12 years coming. On the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington, ARRA funds are improving roads neglected for 30 years.
Norton Sound Regional Hospital, a 150,000-sq-ft, $91-million project located in Nome, Alaska, replaces a 61-year-old facility. It’s one of two ARRA construction projects through Indian Health Service (IHS); the other is a $111-million Cheyenne River Health Center in Eagle Butte, S.D., that will triple the size of the existing hospital, which was built in 1960.
“I don’t know whether we could have completed those two projects with the funds that we had,” says Randall Gardner, acting deputy director for the Office of Environmental Health and Engineering and IHS ARRA coordinator.
The projects were selected from an agency priority list based on readiness, including operations funding, he says.
The Nome project will create 150 jobs and aims to give 40% of the jobs to local tribe members, according to Gary Donnelly, project administrator for Neeser Construction Inc., Anchorage, which is building the project through a joint venture with Inuit Services, a subsidiary of Bering Straits Native Corp.
Facility staffing will provide work long after construction, Gardner adds, as will ARRA-funded IHS projects in maintenance and sanitation.
Data on ARRA economic impacts is accumulating as projects progress.
NCAI is measuring effectiveness and already analyzing lessons learned, Desiderio says.
