CARES Act

Miriam Jorgensen on New Policy Brief Dissecting Round 1 Allocations of CARES Act Tribal Funding

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Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
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Miriam Jorgensen, Research Director with the Harvard Project and with Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, discusses the release of a new Harvard Project and Native Nations Institute policy brief dissecting the US Treasury Department's round 1 allocations of CARES Act funding for tribal governments. The Treasury's population choice results in arbitrary and capricious allocations of funds.
 

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Insights from Congressional and Tribal Leaders: Coronavirus Relief for American Indian Tribal Govt

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In March 2020, American Indian tribes celebrated their historic inclusion in the CARES Act, receiving nearly $11 billion in direct relief. The Act recognized that tribal governments are confronting extraordinary demands parallel to those faced by state and local governments. The relief dollars, however, have been slow to reach Native Americans. While tribal governments have put forth unprecedented efforts to serve their citizens in crisis, restrictions on the use and timing of federal relief monies have hindered tribes’ capacities to do all they are capable of. Now, as Congress returns from their summer recess to debate additional coronavirus relief packages, including potential additional direct aid to tribal governments, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development will host a diverse panel of Congressional and tribal leaders to look ahead and discuss how Congress might come together on a bipartisan basis to enhance support for Indian Country’s pandemic recovery efforts. Please join us for an informative session, featuring:

  • U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R-MT)
  • U.S. Representative Sharice Davids (D-KS)
  • President Shelley Buck, Prairie Island Indian Community
  • Governor Stephen Lewis, Gila River Indian Community (HKS MPA 2006)
  • Chairman Alvin “A.J.” Not Afraid, Jr., Crow Tribe of Indians
  • Moderated by Prof. Joseph P. Kalt, Director, Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development

Native Nation Building and the CARES Act

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Native Nations Institute
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On June 10, 2020 the Native Nations Institute hosted an a online panel discussion with Chairman Bryan Newland of the Bay Mills Indian Community, Councilwoman Herminia Frias of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and hosted by Karen Diver the former Chair of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Director of Business Development for the Native American Advancement Initiatives for the Native Nations Institute. These distinguished tribal leaders brought their wealth of knowledge and first-hand experience in making Indigenous Governance address the needs of their Native communities in response to the crisis surrounding COVID-19. Across Indian Country the pandemic has brought a rise in new challenges and bringing old ones to more prominence when dealing with the Federal Government for appropriate resources. The CARES Act was passed to address some of these needs but does not deal with the root of the issue many Native Nations face in asserting the methods of self-governance. The panelists provide insights on ways they are working to help the citizens of their Native Nations be resilient under constraints of emergency response. 

Transcript available upon request. Please email: nni@email.arizona.edu

Policy Brief: Dissecting the US Treasury Department’s Round 1 Allocations of CARES Act COVID‐19 Relief Funding for Tribal Governments

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In a joint statement, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Interior Secretary Bernhardt detailed the amount of CARES Act Title V funds that would be released for federally recognized American Indian tribes starting on May 5, 2010. They noted that the US Treasury Department would “distribute 60 percent of the $8 billion to Tribes based on population data used in the distribution of Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG), subject to a floor of $100,000. This data is based on US Census figures and is already familiar to Tribal governments.” In a separate document, the US Treasury Department detailed exactly how the $4.8 billion would be allocated among tribal governments. The three steps in this allocation are:

  1. Calculate the pro‐rata payment for each Tribal government based on single race and then multi‐race data for each Tribe’s IHBG formula area, and use the larger result for each Tribal government.
  2. Assign a minimum payment of $100,000 to those Tribal governments that would otherwise receive less than that amount under step 1.
  3. For Tribal governments that would receive a payment greater than the minimum, a pro‐rata reduction is made for those amounts above the minimum for each Tribe so that the total amount for all Tribes does not exceed $4.8 billion.

In the analysis below, we have followed this “recipe” using the publicly available IHBG information from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website that explains the IHBG funding formula.5 Key takeaways from our analysis include:

  • Different tribal and reservations population data series give rise to different allocations of CARES Act dollars. The particular population choice has significant impacts on the amount of dollars received by certain tribes.
  • The Department of the Treasury chose to use tribal population numbers derived from racial population data that ties to HUD’s block grant formula for allocation of housing monies. This population choice by Treasury resulted in a number of tribes receiving de minimis payments that are clearly not reflective of the population of tribal citizens or of tribal needs.
  • Further, in failing to reflect actual counts of enrolled tribal citizens, Treasury’s decision to use racial population data from HUD’s IHBG dataset demonstrably produces arbitrary and capricious allocations of CARES Act funds across tribes.
  • None of the publicly available data series are reliable for the purposes to which Treasury has tried to put the HUD IHBG data. Each such data series results in arbitrary and capricious allocations of the CARES Act monies.
  • The case is strong that an appropriate allocation rule would employ the current tribal enrollment figures submitted by tribes to the Treasury Department in mid‐April.

If and to the extent the Treasury has not followed the description of its allocation calculations that has been publicly provided, the numerical figures we report below would change. However, the key conclusions we reach regarding the inadequacies of those calculations and, in particular, the infirmity of the data being used by Treasury would not change.

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Citation

Akee, Randall K.Q. Eric C. Henson, Miriam R. Jorgensen, Joseph P. Kalt. May 18, 2020. Policy Brief: Dissecting the US Treasury Department’s Round 1 Allocations of CARES Act COVID‐19 Relief Funding for Tribal Governments. Cambridge and Tucson: Harvard Project for American Indian Economic Development and Native Nations Institute.