WELFARE REFORM IMPLEMENTATION
IN INDIAN COUNTRY:
A NATIONAL FORUM

sponsored by the National Congress of American Indians
Saturday, February 28, 1998
Grand Hyatt Hotel
Washington, D.C.

TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
C O N T E N T S

Invocation - Frank Chee Willetto, Executive Board Member, National Indian Council on Aging

Welcome - W. Ron Allen, President, National Congress of American Indians

Keynote Address - Olivia Golden, Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and

Families, Department of Health and Human Services
 

Panel 1 - Tribal TANF Plans

Ray Apodaca, Division of Tribal Services, Department of Health and Human Services

Beth Meyers, Family Services Division Chief, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa

Gerald Heminger, Jr., Council Member, Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux

Joe Finkbonner, Life Center Director, Lummi Nation

Panel 2 - Job Creation and Job Training Programs

Tom Dowd, Chief, Division of Indian and Native American programs, Department of Labor

Norm DeWeaver, Director, Indian and Native American Employment and Training Coalition

Dr. David Gipp, President, United Tribes Technical College
 
 

Panel 3 - Federal/State/Tribal Government Partnerships

Rhonda Whiting, Attorney

John Meredith, Tribal Welfare Reform Coordinator, State of Montana Division of Child and Family Services

Denis Turner, Executive Director, Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association

Charlene Lewis Meeks, Deputy Director, California Department of Social Services, Office of Community Relations
 

Panel 4 - Children and Family Support Services

Donald Sykes, Director, Office of Community Services, Administration of Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services

Janet Wise, Chairperson, National Indian Child Care Association

Alex Yazza, Navajo Nation 211

Leila Tulley, Executive Director, Division of Social Services, Navajo Nation
 

Panel 5 - Impact Data Collection Methodologies
 

Dr. Shanta Pandey, Associate Professor, George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University

Rick Anderson, President, Tribal Data Resources

P R O C E E D I N G S

DR. BROWN: If I could have your attention, please. One of the first things that we had talked about was getting started on time, so we're close. And we hope to be pretty -- on a rigorous time schedule this morning.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Eddie Brown, and I have the honor of kind of moderating the program throughout the day, which is a major responsibility. When they were looking for someone to do that, they said, "Well, let's get Ed Brown; he's the former Assistant Secretary. He's used to trying to tell people what to do and have everybody mad at him.

So we're going to stay true, probably, to that form today.

Again, we want to thank NCAI and the Administration on Native Americans and HHS for their support in making this opportunity possible.

Today, we're gathered here to discuss a very, very important topic that will have impact on American Indians' lives for years to come. What we do today and what we do in the next four to five years is going to be critical in looking at how we assist our communities in the area of economic development, job creation, and the well-being of our citizens.

So with that, we want to open with an invocation. We are honored today to have Mr. Frank Chee Willetto from the Navajo Nation, from Crown Point, New Mexico, who is a member of the Navajo tribe as well as the Navajo Code Talkers. I'm sure they need no introduction in regards to Navajo Code Talkers. They are honored in that they have a special display in the Pentagon, recognizing their efforts in World War II and the outstanding role that they played in serving the United States and ensuring no further encroachment upon the United States by outside nations.

So we're delighted for that, and we would like to invite Mr. Frank Chee Willetto down to provide our invocation. Mr. Willetto. If you could all stand, please.

MR. WILLETTO: (Lengthy passage in Navajo.)

Our Heavenly Father, our Creator: I ask for strength, wisdom and courage for each and every one of the people that are here that are Your children. We are Your children. We need Your help. We need Your strength to give us strength and wisdom and courage. Let them, their words be strong and let their words help their people, their responsible people here. And You helped them to be here safely. Please help them to go home to their homes, to their loved ones, to their children, to their homes. Give them strength. Bless them. And we, Heavenly Father, ask for forgiveness, individually, for some of the things that we do, the things we see, without thinking. I ask this and pray to each and every -- for every person that is here. And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

DR. BROWN: Mr. Willetto holds a number of distinguished positions. He is a coucilmember of NICOA, the National Indian Council on Aging. But perhaps his greatest recognition comes from being the father of seven children, 21 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. So we are honored to have him here today.

I want to now turn the time over to the president and the person who needs no introduction and who is here today to open up the meeting and to give his inspiration and guidance as well as to do a very special introduction for a very special guest we have here today who will be presenting.

MR. ALLEN: Well, good morning. I want to express a great deal of gratitude and appreciation to each and every one of you. Getting tribal leaders and policy individuals to come out on a weekend on a Saturday to deal with the issues that we have to deal with every day of our lives is sometimes challenging, because our work is very, very overwhelming and sometimes we just like to have weekends just to have an opportunity to go back and be with our families and rest and relax a little bit and recharge our batteries so we can get back to work early Monday mornings. But a fact of life is that our jobs simply require us to work weekends. It has caused us to have to work that extra eight and ten hours throughout the weekend to get the job done, to take care of our people and take care of our community.

So I really want to express my deepest appreciation to you to have the willingness to be here and to begin to come up with some ideas and thoughts about solutions for the welfare reform legislation and implementation of TANF programs, et cetera.

I also want to express my appreciation to Assistant Secretary Olivia Golden, who has also made adjustments in her own schedule to be here with us, to cause you to know that the administration clearly is with us in terms of finding solutions and making this legislation work for our Indian communities.

We are regularly, as a matter of everyday thought and activity and efforts, trying to make our governments work to serve our communities. And we know that that is a very challenging effort for each and every one of us. It has been challenging throughout our whole careers, it's been challenging for our elders and our predecessor leaders who have tried to cause our governments to become truly governments and full governments to fully serve our communities, from our elders to our families to the children.

Of course, every time we turn around, legislation comes out in terms of what is the will of Congress for the benefit of the people of America. A lot of times -- and quite often, as a matter of fact -- these pieces of legislation always end up dealing with the Indian country as an afterthought policy. So when the legislation is designed, often they do not think about how would it apply to our Indian communities and does it work, does it fit consistently with the rest of America.

We have been sending a message out there that our Indian community, as a general observation, are very different. We do have a number of Indian communities that are in urban settings that have a little different conditions that the majority of our communities which are in rural settings with very weak economies and so our jobs are very, very challenging. So when we try to communicate these efforts to the Congress and do the administration to cause them to understand when they put together pieces of legislation and policy as it will affect the welfare of our communities, they often sort of miss these fundamental points. And I think in the last five years particularly, we've started to make some progress. And the administration and the Congress now are starting to recognize and realize that they need to take into consideration the unique conditions of our communities and our economies. Clearly, the welfare reform legislation has to make a lot of adjustments. The TANF programs and the children's support, family support-type programs, they all have to make some adjustments. I think it's important for us to make sure that we work very closely with the administration and very closely with the Congress because we know what the problems are. Today, our expectation is going to be that we're going to engage in solutions.

We have a lot of people. I see Norm DeWeaver up there, who has been with us. You know, Eddie Brown, we regularly have called in to be with us. John Bushman has been working on this thing since the beginning of the legislation, and then all of the experts throughout our Indian communities.

But to recognize that we have problems, to recognize that this legislation and a lot of the programs don't fit really well with the tribal operations and our communities and our economies, we know that. We have made that statement. We have that collection of facts. So now, really, the issue is regarding what is taking place out there, because it is moving forward. And the fact is, the tribes are trying to work with the states, to try to get the state programs to adjust so that they're more sensitive and more reflective of their obligations to serve our communities and to assist us in making adjustments so that when people are dropping off programs, what are we going to do about that. How are we going to handle those situations or how are we going to assist the families that are off these programs and they need to move into the work force in one form or another. And do they have enough support for the children or support to get them back into schools and elevate their education.

I'm hopeful that this particular program, or this workshop will be one in which we're going to start talking about where are the solutions so we can start communicating with the administration, to the Congress, what needs to be -- what kind of adjustments need to be made to the legislation and come up with the data to make that case, to make that argument why it works or why it doesn't work and what needs to be done in order to fulfill their goals and expectations or the intent of the legislation itself.

So I really do believe that we can come up with it. I am always very proud of the fact that Indian country is a very creative set of communities. We have had many obstacles in front of us throughout our whole lives, and yet we have continued to survive; we have continued to make it work. It has been frustrating, and we always find ways to vent that frustration in our many forums, locally, regionally and nationally. But the issue here is, is how are we going to change the situation for us and for our community so that we can make a difference in the reservations and in our urban settings where we have a lot of our people residing.

So I leave you with my greatest spirits and prayers that I know that we can come up with it. We at the National Council of American Indians, our objective here is to assist in facilitating it. So as we come up with these solutions, whatever they are, whether they are legislative or whether they're congressional or administrative policy issues, we're going to help you advance. But we have to do it together. We have to do it as a team to make it work.

I was reading a little article and I just happened to glance at the top of it. It was referring to the top whiners. Well, quite frankly, we're not whiners. We have rights and we have obligations to our communities and to our people. So what we have to do is very constructively and very progressively and aggressively advance these proposals that we need to advance to the administration and to the Congress so we can fix the problems that we have in front of us so we can serve our communities and make the system work.

And I leave you with one analogy. Dr. Brown, I've always been very impressed with him for many reasons. But one of the things I've always appreciated is his ability to use metaphors and examples to try to get a message across. But I do believe that Indian country represents the eagle. And even though it's turbulent times down below here, but if we fly higher, we'll find the sunshine, we'll rise above the clouds. And in sunshine, we will meet it, and that is what our communities are expecting. So it's a matter of having the will, it's a matter of having the attitude, it's a matter of being focused. And it's a matter of being creative and solution-oriented. That's what we're all about.

So I thank you for your being here. I have to go over to finish off our conference here this morning and I look forward to coming back here and joining in with you to listen in and listen to solutions. Thank you very much. In fact, in conclusion, let me introduce a very special guest we have here, one who has been with us throughout this whole process with this administration. I even lost track of when she was actually finally appointed.

But this person truly understands our problems. We have been talking with her since the beginning regarding some of the concerns that we have, so she clearly understands the frustrations that we have from our small communities to our largest communities and the diversity from Alaska to Florida. So she's very clear about that and very clear that we need to step up and the administration needs to step up to help bridge those gaps, if you will.

But I would appreciate a very warm welcome and deep sense of appreciation for making her time available here on a Saturday. Please join me in welcoming our Assistant Secretary for Children and Welfare Administration, Olivia Golden.

(Applause.)

MS. GOLDEN: I want to say thank you, also, to President Ron Allen; to Dr. Eddie Brown; to the National Congress of American Indians for inviting me to have this chance to speak. It's an honor to be here and I also wanted to tell you that Kevin Thurm (phonetic), the Deputy Secretary of HHS, who I know has been with you before, wanted me to say that he also had wished he could be here and that, for me, it is an honor to represent him and Secretary Shalala in having the chance to speak to you.

I also wanted to introduce to you briefly the other people from the Administration on Children and Families who are here to be with you today; many of them you probably know. From our Division of Tribal Services, John Bushman and Ray Apodaca (phonetic), from our Administration on Native Americans on behalf of the commissioner, Gary Kimball (phonetic), Doug Gudeski (phonetic) is here. And a moment ago, I saw Steve Henigson (phonetic), who is our regional administrator from Seattle. There's Steve. And we very much want to be here and available to be able to provide information and help.

For me, one of the reasons that this is such an opportunity that you invited me to speak with you today is that it's a chance for me to report on what's happened since I spoke with many of you at the forum convened by HHS and NCAI in Seattle in October of 1996. At that forum, where welfare reform had just been implemented and we talked about it and the tribal leaders worked on a statement, at that forum I made a commitment to you that we would seek to implement welfare reform in a way consistent with the United States trust responsibility to our country's tribal nations and also consistent with our government-to-government relationship with the tribes.

And today is a chance for me to report to you on our accomplishments since that time, as well, I hope, as a chance to talk about where we go from here.

So what I wanted to do in keynoting this forum today was really three things: The first is to offer you an overview of TANF, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families or welfare reform provisions, an overview of what I see happening across the country as well as in Indian country specifically.

Second, I'd like to report to you on what we've done to carry out the commitments we've made to you, and third, I wanted to leave you with some ideas for reflection as you go through this forum today on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for all of you.

To start with the overview of what I think has been happening in welfare reform, I wanted to start with some of the central themes, and the way that always works best for me is to think about stories. So I want to start by telling you two stories, one about a family and one about a tribal community program that I was just hearing more about this morning.

The family is not from the tribal community, but a mother that I just spoke to in New Hampshire about a week ago. I've been traveling a lot to try to have a chance to talk to parents and talk to people engaged in welfare reform. And she was a former welfare recipient; very recent former welfare recipient. She had just gotten a job in November. And she had gotten a clerical job after finishing a clerical skills course. And she told me it was her first job in six or seven years, since before the birth of her youngest child. And she said to me, she said, "I was jumping up and down. I told my children about the job, they were jumping up and down. I was on Cloud 9 for a week." What really came through most of all in her story was just the joy that came with the dignity of having work to support her family.

The second thing that came through in her story were the kinds of supports she needed to get there. She needed child care. Her youngest at the time I talked with her was 4 or 5, and she needed child care. It was very important to her that she had a regular child support check coming in from the children's father, because that made it possible for her to make ends meet. And she clearly had also needed the support of other people in coming to the belief that she could take a next step and take a job.

The second story is about the Silletts (phonetic) tribe and confederated tribes in Oregon, which I had heard a little bit about last week and was just hearing more about that program. That's an integrated program, bringing together lots of different pieces to enable families to move to work. And the pieces I was just hearing about were focused on life skills and readiness for the job, a focus on child care, real flexibility so that whatever families need could be there; and again, the importance of child support once someone takes a job as a way of making sure that they could keep that job.

What I think is in common between those two stories and the many other stories I've been hearing as I travel the country is several themes. The first theme is work. It really is central to the welfare reform legislation; that is legislation that it's about work, about people's ability to move from welfare to a setting where they can support themselves through work. A second theme which is in both those stories -- and again, I think it's nationwide -- is the theme of the kind of supports that families need in order to find work and to succeed in it, because staying in work, having earnings increase, being successful on the job is really what we want for families -- for all families in tribal communities and not in tribal communities.

Third, I think there are some very specific supports for families that are turning out to be especially important in many places: Child care, good settings for young children to be in while parents work, child support, because for many of the parents on welfare it's going to take a job plus some support from the parent who is not living with the family in order for the family to make it. Those two are so critical that they're also addressed in the legislation itself.

And there are others, of course: health care, lots of other kinds of -- transportation, lots of other supports that families may need to find jobs and to succeed in them. So, work, supports for work and for success on the job, child care and child support in particular.

The fourth theme, I think, is the theme that no one approach is going to work across the whole country, that the idea behind the legislation is that states and tribes need to be free to be creative and flexible in how they design their programs in a way that works for their communities. And the fifth theme is that the legislation does provide for some important new tribal roles; provides for child care resources that go directly to the tribe, it provides for a choice for whether a tribe chooses to implement the TANF, the welfare reform provisions or work with the state on those provisions, and it provides, also, for a choice in relation to child support.

So whether or not a tribe chooses to implement the TANF provisions itself, there's an important new role for tribal communities in relation to states in putting the pieces together for families.

So those are, I think, the big picture themes from the legislation. Let me just tell you about a few other features of the legislation and then try to give you a little bit of an overview of how I think it's working in practice at this point. I said that the legislation has a central focus on work, and that shows up in a number of ways, shows up in requirements for individuals to work, and also in requirements that are imposed on states and if the tribe chooses to implement TANF itself, requirements that are also imposed on tribes.

The most one particular one is the participation rate requirement that a percent of families are engaged in a variety of work activities. The legislation specifies those requirements for states for tribes; it says that the Secretary will determine them, and as we've been working through tribal plans with those tribes that are carrying out TANF, we've been working on what those percentages should be. So that the legislation puts front and center the idea that people should be working, should be engaging in different kinds of work activities and should be moving into the work force, and that that's central for welfare reform.

The legislation has also called temporary assistance for needy families and focuses on the idea that welfare assistance should be temporary and a transition to access to the work force, so the legislation has a time limit for federal assistance; in the case of states of five years of support with federal resources with 20 percent of the caseload possibly exempted from that. In the case of tribes that choose to operate TANF again, that's subject to a specific discussion with the Secretary, a specific decision by the Secretary of HHS, that again, the idea is that it's temporary assistance that provides support for a family over a period of time.

Other key elements of the legislation in addition to the TANF provisions, it does have a title and a whole section on child support with the idea that tough enforcement of child support is really critical to a family's ability to succeed, and it has a whole section on child care. And finally, as I said in relation to the tribes, it has a provision for child care resources to flow to the tribes. The Secretary made the choice to pick the maximum set-aside in the law of 2 percent of the dollars going to tribal communities. In TANF, it provides for a tribal choice and in child support for a choice.

Overall, I think the one other key theme that I think emerges from the legislation for tribal communities is the critical nature of the conversations between the tribe and the state in designing plans that will work for families whether or not a tribe chooses to operate TANF on its own. Because in all cases, tribes have something critical to bring the to the table. The state can't afford to ignore tribes because tribes are bringing some of the key child care resources and some of the key knowledge of families to the table. So whether or not a tribe is operating its own program, it's critical for families that there be effective conversations going on.

When I get to reporting on what we've done, one of the roles that the tribal leaders asked us to play after that Seattle conference was to attempt to do everything we could to make sure states would come to the table, and I want to report to you on some of the things that have happened in that arena.

But before I do that, let me spend a few moments on an overview of welfare reform and what I see as I travel in terms of what's been going on nationally, and then just a little bit on the tribal plans and on what's been going on in tribal communities. Later on, you'll hear from Ray Apodaca and John Bushman in more detail on that.

Nationally, if you look across the country at the year and a half since welfare reform was implemented, the national big picture is that we've had the chance to implement it in a time of an extraordinarily strong economy. And so we've clearly seen people going to work, some people going to work and continuing to receive additional supplements from welfare; other people going to work and leaving welfare. But we've seen from the evidence we've got changes in the employment of people on welfare and people who have left it.

We don't know a lot beyond that yet about the effect on recipients. And there is some national research going on. Dr. Brown is doing some research specifically in tribal communities. Over time, we're going to know more. But right now, what we know about families, as I said, that more people are working, that people who are leaving welfare, some have income increases; that's often the people who are working. Some people have income decreases. We haven't seen, yet, the substantial hardships that many people had expected. We haven't seen evidence, for example, of children being placed in foster care or of homelessness, but we also have early and scattered information. So we haven't seen that yet.

And we have seen that when families go to work, they still need other kinds of supports in order to be able to make it. So that's kind of what we know about families. What we know about state choices, state policy and funding choices -- and these are really important, I think, in terms of the effects on tribal communities of state choices -- we have not seen evidence of some of the really bad things that people were predicting. People were predicting at the beginning that there would be "a race to the bottom" -- that is, that states would take this flexibility and choose to sharply reduce benefit levels to families and take other actions that would be designed to really cut assistance available to families. That has not in general happened. States have mostly not changed benefit levels; they've mostly focused on policies that are about work. For example, states have increased the flexibility of their policies in letting families keep some of their welfare resources to supplement a paycheck, and that's called an "earnings disregard."

States have made some investments, but it's a challenge. We've been challenging them to make more investments. Let me explain that. As you know, welfare caseloads have gone down dramatically across the nation. They've gone down about 30 percent since this administration came into office. That means that states have extra resources; they have money that they're not spending on cash benefits for families.

We've been challenging states. The President has been challenging them to reinvest that money. It's resource --

(End side 1, tape 1.)

-- work. The key issues that I'm seeing around the country that are remaining issues we have to address -- and I want to highlight these because some of them may apply in your communities -- transportation is an issue in many places that there are jobs and there are families, but they're not in the same place. Housing is an issue in lots of different ways, but, for example, that people do get work but they still can't afford housing on the salary or the hours that they have. Health care and child care are issues.

All those are areas where some states, but not all, are choosing to invest resources to solve the problem. Investment remains a message that we have to keep giving to the states because some of them are choosing to use the additional resources partly to solve other problems rather than focusing on low-income families.

We've also been really challenging states to invest in all families, not to invest only in some geographic areas or in families who might be easier to move to work. There are also a lot of issues, and I think these may feel familiar in tribal communities, about rural areas or inner-city areas that may have a lack of jobs even when the economy as a whole is really doing very well.

Finally, I'm hearing a lot about issues of job retention, of people getting a job, but then of the need for continued investment and support after people get that first job so that they can continue and progress. And those are all things that there are some resources out there to address and that we've really been pushing states to do.

Finally, just a couple of words on welfare reform in Indian country. At this point, we've received a relatively small number of plans for tribes to operate their own tribal TANF programs. We've received 11 plans and approved 10; that is the up-to-date number. Since we are still in the process of developing the regulations, which I'll talk to you about in a moment, that have the overview of the participation rate and time limit issues among others, we've worked through -- John Bushman and Division of Tribal Services have worked through in each of those tribal conversations individual time limits and participation rates and strategies for those tribes.

There are some extraordinarily creative things going on. This morning before I was talking, before I had the chance to speak here, I also, in addition to hearing about the Silletts plan, heard about the Red Cliff tribe and their plan. And my sense of what's going on in the tribal plans, which I know you'll hear more about during the course of the day, is that people are taking the opportunity to put strategies together that are very tailored to their own needs.

We've also done a lot of work to try to make sure of the financial viability of those plans to work with states, that they'll make an investment; the law doesn't require them to. We're really pleased, for example, that the latest tribal plan that we've approved from California, that the state is making a full match to the tribal resources. And we think -- and I want to come to this in a moment, that some policies that we've put out affecting the states have encouraged them and pushed them to make some of those investments.

Many tribal communities or the families in many tribal communities are being served through state TANF programs. It's early yet, and so we don't know a lot yet about how tribal families are faring within those state programs. But again, we have a sense that in some places, there are some creative conversations going on, and Dr. Brown's research, as it moves ahead, will give us a sense in one state, in Arizona, of both how families are faring in tribal programs and those who are served through the state programs.

That's a very quick overview of what's going on nationally. Now, let me say a little bit about what we've done in HHS to carry out our commitments. At the national meeting, the meeting that I mentioned to you in October in Seattle, tribal leaders prepared a tribal leaders' statement -- many of you were probably part of that -- which set forth ways that the federal government should act to support tribes in relation to the legislation. It had many helpful suggestions that have really focused on thinking, have focused a lot on providing information on technical assistance, on ways in which we might assist tribal leaders in determining what your options were and in carrying those out. And we've done a number of things to act on those suggestions.

First, let me tell you about one overall thing we've done, and then some specific commitments. One of the most important things we've done overall is in February of 1997, in recognition of our trust responsibility and of our government-to-government relationship with tribes, we created an office whose primary job is to carry out the tribal specific provisions of this legislation in Indian country and to assist you in making informed decisions about welfare reform. It's a division of tribal services located within our Office of Community Services, and John Bushman, who many of you know, directs that office. Many of you probably know him from his work with the United States Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the Department of the Interior. And John has really done an extraordinary job working with tribal governments, working where necessary with state and federal agencies and trying to make sure that we were providing information, carrying out regulations and guidance and in general doing what we need to do to support your implementation of the law.

Let me tell you about a few other things we've done that we think are important, and I want to report to you both so you have a sense of what we are proud of, but also so you can tell us what we haven't done and what we need to do next; I think that will be useful if that's one of the things that happens today.

The first of the commitments that has shaped what we're doing is a commitment to provide you with information early as you are making key choices. In particular, the choice about whether or not to operate the TANF program. The Division of Tribal Services has been a key part of that, and so has some work we've done through the administration for Native Americans under the leadership of Commissioner Gary Kimball. There, we've put some resources into providing tribes and Native American communities with the tools that you need to make sure that your decisions on welfare reform fit your community-based goals and objectives.

We've awarded five competitive grants and one contract that are intended to provide tribes and Native American communities with the information and the opportunity to make your own decisions. The grants have gone to the Catawba Nation, the Alaska Cook Inlet Tribal Council, the Northwest U.S. Portland Area Indian Health Board, Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, and the Californian Indian Manpower Consortium. And in addition, we've made a commitment, investment working with NCAI to assist with this conference and with other consultations.

What we've been finding from this information dissemination is that we've been able to put together forums and opportunities for tribal, state and community leaders to talk about mutual concerns and share information in order to make good decisions. So we're hopeful for more feedback today, but our sense is that that's been an important strategy. If you hadn't pushed us on it, we probably would never have made that resource commitment to make sure it happened.

A second commitment -- the first was about early information provision as you're making decisions -- the second is to assist and support you as you implement your choices across welfare reform or TANF, child care and child support. And I just want to note several things that we've done. One way, obviously, of supporting your work is the work that the Division of Tribal Services has done in negotiating around plans and providing specific tribe-by-tribe guidance as well as broader guidance.

In the child care arena, I want to highlight a couple of things because I'm very excited. I mentioned to you that in terms of resources, the Secretary made the maximum choice for the resources going out to Indian communities representing an increase in dollars from '96 to '97 and then again from '97 to '98.

The other thing we've just done in child care is we've just let a three-year contract to a Native American contractor to strengthen child care services in tribal communities for Native American children and families across the country. There is going to be a lot of information available to you as you shape your child care programs. There will be a toll-free information and referral line, a database of promising tribal models, a tribal child care home page for people who would like to get their information through the computer, a newsletter, a tribal conference, and also on-site technical assistance. It will really improve our ability to have an expert get out there and work with you as you're trying to resolve child care issues.

And finally, we're also trying to look in the rest of what we do and see where there are opportunities to make linkages. I think you're going to hear from Don Sykes later today; he heads our Office of Community Services, and he's looking for ways that Office of Community Service programs could help you to spur economic development and create jobs and put those pieces together with the welfare strategies.

The third commitment -- I said early information, assistance and implementation -- a third critical commitment is clearly to broad consultation with all of you as tribal leaders. We made a substantial commitment to that in developing the tribal TANF regulations. We did a broad consultation strategy before we drafted. We're now at the stage where draft regulations are being reviewed within the federal government and we're aiming for publishing them in draft late this spring. When they get published, that means you get another chance to comment, and then we take those comments into account in doing a final regulation.

The Office of Child Support Enforcement is also about to begin consultations as they try to draft regulations that will carry out the new choices around child support enforcement. So you should be looking for that opportunity to comment.

And finally -- and this is, I think, really the fourth commitment that's shaped our strategies -- in the tribal leaders' document from the meeting in Seattle, all of you suggested very forcefully to us that it was important for us to play a role -- I think the words of the document were "as a facilitator and mediator" -- to make sure or to do what we could to influence the nature of state participation in state tribal conversations, to try to do what we could do to bring key people to the table.

The biggest single thing we've done -- and we've done a variety of policy steps -- but the biggest single thing we've done was to issue a policy announcement which told states that if they put resources into tribal TANF programs, they could count it as "maintenance of effort." What that means -- you don't need to know the technical details, but it basically means the states could take credit for that money. The law tells them they have to spend some money on maintenance of effort, and we made the decision that they could take credit for money they invested in tribal programs as maintenance of effort. That's been a big incentive to some states.

I understand that California and Washington State and I think now Alaska have expressed a commitment to put resources into tribal TANF programs, and we're hearing that it's at least in part as a result of that policy choice. So we're very glad that that had the impact we wanted it to have.

Let me close by saying a few things that I hope will frame your own deliberations for the rest of this session. The agenda looks to me like an extraordinarily rich one, and I really think that President Allen's words, that "Indian country is a very creative set of communities," certainly reflects everything I've seen when I've had the opportunity to visit tribal communities and see the ways in which you have a history and an experience of putting programs together in ways that work.

I guess what I want to highlight is that I feel our responsibility to you very strongly, I take it very seriously. At the same time, of course, I know that you feel your own responsibility to the families and the children in your communities even more seriously and it will take all of us to make this actually work.

I would actually ask you to reflect on three opportunities and challenges as you go through the remainder of today's session on welfare reform. The first -- and this really builds on President Allen's point about the creativity -- is that this is an opportunity for you to cross boundaries within your tribal services to link up and connect programs that may not have been connected in the past and to design services in what might be a totally new way that's going to be effective for families.

What I've been hearing about both the tribal TANF programs and those state programs that are effective is that they really involve starting from the children and families and from what families need to move to work and to succeed in work, and then building backwards to think about the kinds of services. And that probably means connecting up with child care, early child care, education services in a way that you may not have been doing before. It probably means connecting with the economic development side of the world. It may mean all kinds of things that I can't even predict or think of. But I would just encourage you to seize the opportunity to be as creative as you think will work for families.

Second -- and this is probably something that goes without saying, but it just may be something you will be interested in reflecting on today -- I would urge you to insist on being at the table for state decision-making, whether you're running a separate program or not. Because either way -- and I'm seeing nods over there; there's probably a great story behind that in Oregon -- either way, for this to work, for these programs to work for families, it's going to be critical that the state makes its decisions in a way that supports families' needs for child care and child support and job services, and that state decisions and tribal decisions fit effectively in ways that work for families.

I guess what I just want to highlight is that you're bringing a lot to the table. The law does give you some things that you're bringing to the table in the way of child care resources, in the way -- in terms of what families are going to need from you and the way that will need to be linked up with what they need from the state, and the way we judge and assess states is going to give them some pressure to talk with you about what's happening in tribal communities. So I just want to urge you to insist on being at the table in ways that I know many of you have a long history of doing and to let us know if there are ways we can assist in it.

Third -- and again, this is something that probably everybody here has already made by being willing to be here on a Saturday morning -- I would just urge all of the key members of tribal leadership who are here to maintain a personal commitment and investment to welfare reform strategies. I've certainly been learning myself that welfare reform is one of those far-reaching changes that I can't oversee by delegating; I have to be out there, I have to be visiting, I have to be talking to families. I think I've been in six states in the last three weeks trying to make sure I was really understanding at a very local level what was happening.

I'm really hoping to get, soon, out to see a tribal program right at the beginning of TANF. Just before, I was in the Salt River tribal community in Arizona and had the chance to talk with families from a tribal jobs program who talked with me about -- one mother in particular talked to me about the enormous power of now having a GED and being able to talk to her 15-year-old son about education in a way she had never been able to do before. And I'm very eager to now get a chance to visit some communities and see what's happening and where the creative ideas are and what's working and not working for families.

But I guess I just want to highlight that it seems to me that those of you who are here who have made the commitment to your time on a Saturday morning have already done this, but I just want to underline for you that this is centrally important for families, and the more personal investment and involvement you and your colleagues as key elected leadership are able to make, I think the better in terms of success for families.

So I guess I just want to close by again saying that I appreciate your inviting me to speak and having the opportunity. It's a real honor. That I also appreciate your commitment, your history of the kinds of work you've done for families and for tribal communities. The kind of creativity that I've seen in your communities is just extraordinary, and I think Ron Allen is right to highlight that as a huge asset.

I want to pledge to you on behalf of President Clinton, Secretary Shalala, and myself that we at the federal level are committed to assisting tribal children and families. We want to do what we can to support you in making sure that welfare reform achieves its promise, and we want to ensure that the trust responsibility of the United States to our country's tribal nations is fulfilled, and that the government-to-government relationship that we are committed to having with you is carried out fully and effectively.

So I guess I want to say thank you for your own history and experience of extraordinary commitment, and I want to wish you the best of luck as you go through what looks to me like an extremely demanding and valuable day. Good luck, and thank you. (Applause.)

DR. BROWN: Assistant Secretary Golden, we again want to thank you for your time and for your interest. We know that you have a very busy schedule and will have to move forward on some other assignments and tasks you have today, but we want to again thank you for taking the time to be with us here today.

MS. GOLDEN: Thank you very much.

Panel 1- Tribal TANF Plans

DR. BROWN: We're now going to move ahead. We're going to call those members of the first panel to come forward. And as they're coming forward, we're going to talk a little about the ground rules today. So if those panel members can come forward of Panel 1 and please be seated up here. Is Leland here in the audience?

Because we have such a packed agenda here today, we want to make sure that it's an agenda where people have a chance to not only listen -- this is not an opportunity to just be spoon-fed here this morning, but also an opportunity to react. So we've asked each of the panelists to keep their comments brief in looking at just what some of their experiences have been in doing some very creative kind of positive things, as well as what they see as challenges and maybe some of the concerns that they may have to share with you.

We've asked each of them to keep their comments under five minutes and we will be watching that very closely, so I ask: Be patient with me if we tend to push you a little bit in keeping to that time. Then after that, we would ask them to have some kind of interaction between themselves a short period of time, and then we're going to have this microphone and another microphone out in the audience and we're going to do a "Jerry Springer" kind of discussion here. (Laughter.)

DR. BROWN: So we don't want -- we do have a couple of bodyguards out here to keep any fights down to a minimum, but we do want as you're listening here to develop your questions. Now, there are several things, as pointed out by the Assistant Secretary. We know that every state will be different and that every tribe is different. Some of the things you hear may not relate directly to your tribe at that point of time, but I assure you as we move through the day, we will get to some of those variations of some of those questions.
 

Again, we have some very distinguished panel members here that we really want to take use of their valuable time and asking questions and making sure that we get every bit of information that we can from them.

I'm not going to do justice here on introductions as well because of time. I'm going to keep this very limited. We all understand that to be a member of this panel, you've got to have extensive experience, in-depth knowledge and really know everything there is to know about your particular subject. So with that in mind, let me just -- you're on the hook today.

With that in mind, let me just briefly introduce individuals. We have first of all Mr. Ray Apodaca, who is here representing the Division of Tribal Services. Mr. Bushman, is John -- okay, we're delighted to have John here. As many of you may be aware, John was injured, had an accident a number of weeks ago, was severely injured, by the way, and we're quite surprised to see him here today, but he has a very strong interest in the program, and I think he came here to watch over Ray and listen to his comments here this morning.

So Ray is going to be talking from his vast experience and knowledge at various levels of government over the past few years. He will be followed by Beth Meyers, who is the Family Service Division Chief of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chipewa. You know, Wisconsin has had the best-kept secret for the last 15 or so years, because no one knew that up in Wisconsin, they have been subcontracting from the state running their own AFDC, Food Stamp, Medicaid eligibility programs for the last 15 years. So as when welfare reform came about, the tribe was well-positioned and is moving forward in taking over their TANF program and have now said, "we want the Food Stamps, we want Medicaid eligibility, let's have it." So we're delighted to have her here today.

The next individual will be Gerald Heminger, Jr., a councilmember from The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux. And what you will notice that each representative here are from a slightly different kind of a tribe or different situation. Sisseton-Wahpeton has the extreme honor of being from that notorious state of South Dakota. And so we've all heard rumors of South Dakota and welfare reform; now we're going to hear the real story. They are a very interesting tribe in that they have gone TANF in a state which does not have an historical working relationship with tribes. So it will be interesting to hear their situation.

That will be followed by Mr. Joe Finkbonner, the Life Center Director from the Lummi Nation from Washington who is a tribe that has not done TANF, but has looked at some other ways of looking at working with the state. Part of what we call -- I think Tony referred to as "those pondering tribes," is that right, Tony? I think most of the tribes that are considering it are pondering whether to TANF or not to TANF are a part of that area.

So we have a good selection here. We're going to kick it off with Mr. Apodaca and again, we'll keep you down to the five minutes. If you could share with you the experience, give a little information and then be ready for questions.

MR. APODACA: Thank you. Good morning. I thought I was going to have the opportunity for the first time to get up and say "I'm John Bushman, you can have anything you want," but he showed up, so I can't do that.

(Laughter.)

MR. APODACA: He decided to come over and watch me.

Let me just very quickly go through some points that I think are important to look at, starting with -- the Assistant Secretary mentioned earlier that there are currently nine tribes and one consortium who have approved plans. There is also an eleventh plan that is currently pending final approval for a May 1 start-up date. And we are aware of either by conversation or by actual exchange of paperwork and notices and so on of at least nine other tribes and regional consortia that are in different stages of consideration and planning on TANF plans.

We expect this to increase quite a bit as the tribes are beginning to look at themselves and understand their capacities and also become more comfortable with the concept of TANF. In terms of plans, I'm glad that we have the selection in the panel here and that you will have the opportunity to talk to different people, because the plans vary; and rightfully so according to the particular needs of the populations they're going to serve according to the particular tribe's geography, economies, your particular relationships with the non-Indian communities and everything -- all the other factors that affect the welfare of your people. And they should vary.

That has basically been the underlying theme or the underlying direction that we would like to take and, hopefully, to help the tribes to take -- is that there is no magic little box that you fit into, but that you have to be creative, you have to be innovative. You have to really look at what works for you -- not what works for somebody else; what works for you and for your people.

I'm going to concentrate most of what I'm going to talk about because of the time limitation on the NPRM, the Notice of Proposed Rule Making. We currently have been -- we have finished the NPRM and we have chosen to go to NPRM and not to an interim final which we could have done because of the time frame involved, because we do want a full opportunity for comment for the tribes. We want to really understand what you want to see in this, and have, through John's leadership and direction made a total commitment to as great a flexibility as we can within the perimeters of the law, of course, itself, which we are bound by.

The NPRM is in the Department right now for clearance. In fact, I was just talking to John earlier about the fact that next week we are going to be doing a departmental briefing. We hope to get it out as quickly as possible and then, of course, we have to deal with the OMB process which can take up to 90 days before actual publication.

However, we have made a commitment that as soon as we have a concrete idea of date, of any time frame, we will immediately let NCI know so that they can in turn help us let you know and be prepared for the publication of the NPRM, so that we can get your input and we can proceed with coming up with final regulations.

The philosophy with which we approach the NPRM and the regs is to set out general rules incorporating the provisions of the law into regulation while maintaining as much flexibility as absolutely possible. We did not seek in any way to augment statutory definitions, but rather to standardize some of the basic definitions and set the basic perimeters to insure compliance with the intent of the law. In doing this, we've allowed for maximum flexibility. Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about.

In being flexible --

(End side 2, tape 1.)

-- in defining service population, in defining Indian family, for example, the tribes will be able to define family in such a way as to better reflect your traditional family structures and relationships, not those of the average American in New York City or someplace else that you're not familiar with. We're also, in defining it, allowing in defining a service population to define who you choose to serve, both in terms of area and in terms of actual population. We're going to let -- a tribe can choose, for example, to define -- to serve enrolled members and their families only; all Indians in your service area or reservation.

Indians and non-Indian families. You can even, through agreements with the state, serve populations outside of your traditional reservation boundaries or traditional service areas -- again, with negotiation and concurrence with your states. Because it's a block grant, we're also making allowance for the tribe to provide services under TANF that are not commonly or normally considered public assistance. In this light, for example, we're proposing that such things as child care, work subsidies, transportation services, subsidies and allowances that cover living expenses, education and training can be included in the definition of assistance, which is something that states are not doing in most cases.

We're allowing flexibility in participation rates, and you tailoring your participation rates, to meet your needs. We're allowing flexibility in the establishment of time limitations. And, in fact, when you read the NPRM, you're even going to find that you can even set varying rates, varying time limits for different parts of your service area to reflect economic needs and situations and so on.

In addition to the NPRM, we've completed work on the TANF guidance document of which there were copies at the table and I hope everybody got one. If you read the guidance document, you basically are getting a preview of the NPRM, because we're not substantially going beyond that, other than adding on reporting requirements and data collection items.

Finally, we are committed to eliminating unnecessary data collection, unnecessary reporting to simplify as much as possible and give you the benefit of giving priority to serving people and not to bureaucratic processes.

I notice from Dr. Brown that he's waving his hand over there and telling me that I need to conclude. The only thing else that I would add is that we would urge, we would hope that as tribal leaders, as program leaders, that the discussion of TANF becomes, if it's not already, a priority item on your agenda, and that it become an integral and ongoing priority item in your human services programs.

DR. BROWN: Mr. Apodaca, what I understand, then, you're talking about some regulations that are going to come out that are going to be very flexible. You're not talking about letter-of-the-law kind of very intricate kinds of regulations. Is that correct?

MR. APODACA: That's correct. Our flexibility obviously in no way is intended to circumvent the law itself; we have the law that we're all bound by. But within the perimeters of that law, we are being as absolutely flexible as possible in allowing the tribes to be creative and to come up with what addresses their needs and not what we think should be their needs.

DR. BROWN: Any surprises that we can expect?

MR. APODACA: I don't think so. I think to some people in the department, our flexibility is a little surprising, but --

DR. BROWN: Okay.

MR. APODACA: -- but in terms of the tribes, I think you'll like what we've done. And, certainly, you have the opportunity to come back and comment on it.

DR. BROWN: Great. Thank you. Next, we have Beth Meyers, with state of Wisconsin Red Cliff. Please.

MS. MEYERS: Well, I wasn't at the planning meeting last night, so I didn't realize we only had five minutes, so I'll talk very fast. There are some important things that I want to share with you. The Red Cliff Tribe of Wisconsin is very unique. As Mr. Brown said earlier, we administered the AFDC program for over 20 years with a state contract. We are one of five tribes in the nation to do that. Stockbridge Muncie of Wisconsin was another tribe, and I believe the Vice Chairman is sitting up here in the audience, who may have some important information to share later.

In taking on TANF, it was a natural progression for us to do that. We actually received more money taking on the federal program than we would have continuing to contract with the state of Wisconsin, even without the state match. So when you're negotiating your TANF program and when you're thinking about it during the planning process, you want to look at how much money the state is spending on your population today versus how much money they spent in 1994 and see if that matching fund is a moot issue or not. For us in Red Cliff, it was a moot issue.

A little background on Red Cliff. In addition to operating the TANF program since October of 1997, we also administer the Medical Assistance and Food Stamps programs with the state contract. We have the state and federal child care programs. We operate the BIA general assistance program. We have an Indian Child Welfare Department. We have a cooperative agreement with the county in our area to do our child support enforcement and all the money collected goes directly to the family.

Without a doubt, one of the deciding factors in operating the TANF program was that we had the basic support of services to help tribal members in need of temporary assistance, and that's real important -- temporary assistance; that's what it's all about today.

Coordinating tribal TANF with other social programs is critical to helping tribal members become self-sufficient. And when you're talking about the social supportive services, it's important to keep in mind that those should include: education and training, mental health and AODA services -- in Wisconsin, we call it AODA, Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse. I'm going to do this very quickly.

I am an ex-welfare recipient. I know what it's like to wait for the welfare check that will maybe make it 20 days out of a 30-day month. I know what it's like to wait for the food stamps that will come that will buy 20 days' worth of food in a 30-day month. I'm committed to helping tribal members with a better life, to get past that.

When I was on welfare, no one at the state agency offered any supportive services. They offered me child care in my last year of college, but by then my kids were in grade school, so I didn't need it. No one ever offered me assistance with mental health or AODA issues. Going through the trauma of a divorce -- anyone in the room -- I'm sure some of us have also gone through that and you know what it's like.

So hold your state to it. As Olivia said earlier, states have a decrease in their caseload. Their funding was based on '95 or '94 funding, whichever was in their best interest to accept. Make sure that the resources that they have are going to provide supportive services to your tribal members. And we have to continue to work with Congress. Invite your senators and your representatives to your home. Introduce them to your struggling families. I think that goes a lot farther than us continuing to send the letters in.

One of the things we're doing in Red Cliff that I'm very excited to share every time I talk to a group of people is, in January, we did a mental health assessment of our TANF and general assistance population. We assessed their mental health needs and their AODA needs. From the information that we gathered, we're going to develop a 12-month curriculum, and then we will address those needs during our monthly meetings. That is very exciting.

We're not to the point yet where we're creating jobs for this population because we're still trying to get the population job-ready. Maybe in the second or third year, we'll be working on the job creation. Initial summaries from this mental health and AODA assessment show that suicide and alcohol and drug abuse are still a very serious issue for tribal members. When Congress passed PL104193, I believe it was their sense, of the Congress, that tribes have access to all the funding available to agencies to administer these welfare programs, and tribes must demand a level playing field and be given access to the same funding sources that states have.

The 60-month limit means that we have to get our tribal members into the work force as soon as possible, and we're going to have to prepare them for that. And how often have tribal leaders heard, when we don't have access to the same funding that states have, "Oh, that was an oversight." We can no longer accept that, because we're in this to help and we want to have access to everything everyone else has.

One of the examples is, states have an evaluation component to their TANF programs. Red Cliff has asked Secretary Shalala repeatedly for an evaluation program, and repeatedly, she has said "Gaween" (phonetic) to us, "no." Tribal governments are mature contracting agencies that deserve the bonuses that other governmental agencies receive. Unfortunately, we don't have those.

States have access to TANF and Welfare to Work performances bonuses; tribes do not. And I'm excited to tell you today in Red Cliff, our TANF population, we are exceeding our work requirements. We have 100 percent of our two-parent families in a work component, and we will not receive a bonus for doing that. We have proof that we can do as good, if not a better job than the state in providing these services, and we should be rewarded for that. And who knows our families better than we do? You know your families and you know what they need.

I have been fortunate to come to some of your homelands and work with your staff, and I just want to share with you -- and I'm sure you already know

this -- that your staff is working very, very hard on this issue. It's a difficult process and it does not have immediate results. I'm sure they could use a word of encouragement from you when you get back home and that would help them to continue to work on this issue.

Part of the difficulty with the process of negotiating welfare reform programs is that we're up against the written word. And an example is -- I have it here -- Eddie is walking around and I'm getting a little nervous.

MR. APODACA: Keep looking away from him. That's what we do in South Dakota.

MS. MEYERS: Good. The BIA sent this out. It is their Indian Affairs Strategic Plan. And in here it states that, "the BIA meets 87 percent of the tribal members' basic need defined as food, clothing and shelter." If that was a true statement, we wouldn't be here today. So, please, I'll leave this copy with NCAI. Take a look at it and call everyone at the BIA and call the President and cite this example and say, "No, we're not going to put up with this anymore." If you're going to write this, then let's hold them to it.

The maximum amount here in Red Cliff for GA is $240, and that's not anywhere near 87 percent. Am I out of time, Eddie? Dang. Okay, thank you very much. (Applause.)

DR. BROWN: Please remember you'll have a chance to ask questions.

MS. MEYERS: Oh, good.

(Laughter.)

DR. BROWN: Beth, but let me ask: Does the tribe continue to contract food stamps and Medicaid eligibility from the state of Wisconsin?

MS. MEYERS: Yes, we do.

DR. BROWN: So you are actually running those programs as well through a special subcontract through the state?

MS. MEYERS: Right.

DR. BROWN: Okay. Good. Next, we have Mr. Heminger from Sisseton-Wahpeton. Please.

MR. HEMINGER: Good morning. Thank you, Eddie. I'd like to say good morning to each and every one of you here and I'd like to thank you for being here. I believe I leaned back and asked Norm, "Have we had this many tribal people at any of our forums on welfare reform," and I don't believe we have. This is a pretty good outcome.

We at Sisseton had a course of about seven meetings over the last two years and we came to Washington quite a few times, been to the state of Washington, to every meeting that was put on -- myself and Richard Cable (phonetic), our program manager, most of you probably know him. And on our decision to administer TANF is, we feel we have a young council back home; I'm 39 and I'm right in the center of them -- we've got three older than me and three younger than me. We have a seven-member council. And we feel that we can do just as good as anybody else can to serve our own people.

So that's why we've taken on TANF and it's been a good thing for our participants. We have integrated 477, the work opportunities and TANF into one program. When you walk into the office, it's about as big as this area here is, square. We have seven offices in there plus the program manager. So when they walk in the door, we sort of lock them in and we don't let them out until we help them. We get them the services that they need.

(Laughter.)

MR. HEMINGER: But some of the problems that we've run into with TANF is that we don't have enough money for economic development. We have reduced our caseload from 225 down to 165 participants. We need to create some more jobs. As a councilman, I also chair the reservation planning back home and I've been on the council now for six years. We're looking at expanding our Dakota Western Bag Factory. We doubled in size last year and we didn't build it big enough, so we're looking at expanding that again.

We did build a new Dakota Magic Casino, like a lot of the tribes did, and we put up an interim casino. Right now we're looking at getting financing. Next week, we meet on that in Minneapolis, and we hope to create there up to about 700 jobs. Currently, we have 312 in the interim facility, so we're going to have plenty of jobs available, but not everybody can go to work in a casino. Myself, I would hate to go to work in a casino.

We are looking at a day care-child care facility, building a new one. Currently, with the plans that we have drawn up, it's going to cost us $1 million-plus, because that's one of the big concerns from our participants is that we need child care services and we need transportation; that is our second biggest problem.

Those are our two biggest problems that we've run into is child care and transportation. With integration of TANF into our other programs, we did have -- our community college did hire a TANF person, and one thing that the states haven't done that we have been able to do is to allow our participants to go to school and get a GED or get their high school diploma, get them into a one-year course, because we are on a 60-month period, so we have done that ourselves there at the tribe.

And I have a question for John Bushman, but I'll save that until we ask the questions. So that's pretty much what we have done. And we serve three counties. Our tribe is a little over 10,000 members and we have about a little over 6,500 living on the reservation. I guess from our side, we would encourage any of you tribes that are looking at it to take a serious look at it. Mr. Brown did say we have the honor of having Senator Daschle on our side; legislation was sponsored last year by him and we did get $1 million for the South Dakota tribes that have their own approved TANF tribe, and so far we are the only ones. So we're looking at $1 million being available to ourselves.

(Laughter.)

MR. HEMINGER: With that, I would like to thank you. Being a Sioux from South Dakota, what I would like to do is continue to look this way, and when Mr. Brown goes out the room, I'll turn around and we'll all continue to talk.

(Laughter.)

MR. HEMINGER: Thank you.

DR. BROWN: Thank you. Beth and Gerald, are either of you receiving state match?

MR. HEMINGER: We are not. We did get some services from the state. They did help out with transitional funds just to get the program going.

DR. BROWN: Okay, Beth?

MS. MEYERS: As I stated, we are not receiving matching funds, but if we would have continued to contract with the state of Wisconsin, the tribe would have received less money even without the matching funds.

DR. BROWN: Gerald, you mentioned one thing and we keep hearing 477. What has that meant to your tribe? You indicated you are a 477 tribe. Just very briefly, what does that do for you?

MR. HEMINGER: That allowed us to integrate all our services into one area, one administration, public law. So it came out a couple of years ago. It's been real good for our services. It's been a benefit more to our participants than anything. We can have one person administer everything and it allowed that, and integration of other services that were there. So it's been great.

DR. BROWN: So you put all of your dollars into one kind of pot with one audit, one single reporting agency, rather than reporting to the Department of Labor, HHS and the BIA you just go where, through the BIA?

MR. HEMINGER: We just do it ourselves, yes. We didn't tell them that. That's the new secret today. (Laughter.)

DR. BROWN: Great. Let's now turn to the Lummi Nation in Washington, please.

MR. FINKBONNER: Like I said earlier, my name is Joe Finkbonner. I'm the health and social services director for the Lummi tribe. Last night when we had our briefing, they told us we had a three- to five-minute spiel we could give, so I threw mine out the window since it was longer than three to five minutes, so I'll try to go off some of the bullets and some of the process we went through in deciding to do what we did.

Currently, we're just one of those hedging on the fence of whether we should do TANF or not. Our tribal council right now is pretty risk-aversive, because we, in August '97 closed our casino; and, hence, we didn't help our job market any at all. Not to mention the financial debt that went along with that. Our tribe is very hesitant about taking on risk without fully knowing what that risk is. That was part of the problem, that the data that was there -- we had kind of a sense of what it was, but we also had our own experiences with our GA program of knowing that when it was what the BIA there was a caseload of 23, and then once we took it over, it went up to 115.

So we know that it's the old Field of Dreams scenario, you build it and they will come. We feel that that will go true as well for any TANF programs that we start offering, is that that's when we'll truly see what our caseload will be. There's lots of data on the state level about Native Americans with access to Medicaid or MAA services, and consistently, Native Americans, if you look at our poverty level and eligibility, access service is at a far lower rate than the general population.

So just using -- extrapolating that logic further, we figure that with TANF services, the caseload that is proposed by the local CSO, we figure that it's going to go up -- probably considerably if we start operating our own TANF program. So the common factor and common thread in all of that was that if we brought the services to our tribe, that way the tribal members and Native Americans of Wahkiakum County would start accessing the services out on the reservation, rather than having to go through the different culture of local CSO in Bellingham. So that's what we've chosen to do.

We've been working with the employment security department and DSHS in Bellingham, which is very close to our reservation, but it's still a huge barrier for our tribal members because of the transportation issue. To establish the Work First Services -- Work First is the TANF state activities with regard to TANF -- out at the Lummi reservation. We're still in the draft form in two -- in both those contracts, but we're very close to having those complete.

What we plan on doing is consolidating a lot of our programs that we already have together, at least under one roof, and still maintaining their integrity behind the scenes. But as far as the client who comes in the door, our plan and theory is that they not know who it is, whether it's a state employee or a tribal employee that's greeting them and intaking their information.

That should all be benign to them; they shouldn't have any idea of what is going on behind the scenes, and it should just work in a seamless environment and that's what we're trying to do by consolidating our -- we're formerly a jobs program, now we're NEW. We have JTPA; we operate general assistancew where I said. We also have a training program which is for our LIBC employees, but we plan on expanding that further to the community members overall, and we also are going to work our human resources, TARO, and we've got a dislocated workers' federal grant as well, which all of these programs are going to be housed together because they're largely employment-related. So that's where we're moving towards. And the big issues and big concerns for us are jobs, transportation and child care.

DR. BROWN: Thank you. Let me ask, then: What are your future plans? Are you going to TANF or not TANF?

MR. FINKBONNER: We're approaching this with the premise there of operating TANF. But what we're trying to do is remove the risk factor, and that first to accurately identify what our caseload is going to be. In '94, we were operating casinos so we had 200 tribal members that were working that are not working now. So we know that the '94 data will be somewhat off, compared to what it is now.

DR. BROWN: Okay, excellent. We have two microphones, one at this end and one at this end. What we would ask for you to do if you have a question, to ask your question. If you have a brief statement, please make the brief statement. As you raise your hand, we'll deliver the mike, not in your control, but to you.

QUESTION: Good morning. I have a quick question with regards to some of the problems you stated -- child care and transportation. It seems like economic development, we have to start focusing on harboring money into developing child care -- you know, whether privately, tribally or whatever. But that is a big problem for all the nations. Thank you.

DR. BROWN: Any comment to that?

MR. HEMINGER: I think it's very important that when you look at TANF that you not look at TANF in isolation and do exactly what they're doing, is look at the whole picture. Because TANF by itself is not going to work unless you've got all the support services. When you're taking that mother out of the household and making her work 15 hours, 20 hours a week, in addition to the time she might have already been doing to get an education to better herself or anything she might have been doing to take care of the children and the elders and all of the problems you have anyway, unless you have those other support services, you may get her a job, but in the process you injure the family, you begin to affect the whole structure of the family. So you have to take it in the broad sense. Child care, obviously, is a very important factor, but we cannot forget elder care, either.

As you know, back home that's a really important thing. And that's not something that's being looked at in most state plans, by the way.

DR. BROWN: Okay. Please, when you respond, the panel members, please speak into the microphone so we make sure it gets recorded. Please, we have a question over there.

QUESTION: I have a question and a statement, and I guess I'll make my statement first, is that welfare reform really is about jobs, and we need to shift our focus in a lot of ways to economic development and take a look at the federal legislation for next year in Department of Labor and in Department of Transportation and see how we can get sewer and water and infrastructure built on reservations to attract business to start creating jobs, so that we have an opportunity to be successful in the future.

I think that's the biggest barrier that we're going to face is long-term success. My question is around the service delivery description, and this is for Ray, I guess. In the food stamps waivers that went through the description for a service delivery area was based on an old criminal code, from what I understand. And that's not consistent with the message that you gave on your NPRM. Is there going to be a way to make those definitions consistent so that you can design programs that are going to be -- if you do food stamps, are you going to be able to use the same service delivery area as you would for the rest of your program?

MR. APODACA: Basically, the service area is the reservation boundaries or BIA-defined service areas. But like I said, you can go outside of those areas through a negotiation with the state. You can reach an agreement with the state to service your population outside, or on or near populations.

But it would require working with the state on that simply because you're going into their service areas and you want to ensure that you're not duplicating services and getting into problems that way. But there is an opportunity for negotiation of an area different than the BIA-defined or the reservation.

DR. BROWN: Thank you. We have a question here.

MR. BOWMAN: My name is Frank Bowman (phonetic). I'm Vice Chairman of the Stockbridge Muncie tribe in Wisconsin and we were one of the first to implement the TANF program. But prior to that, there was a numerous amount of planning that needed to be done. That is: identify your resources externally-internally. Unify all your resources to a one-stop center, such as we have done with the use of the JEPA (phonetic) education and day care monies that are available both federally and state. And I would urge that all tribes look at this, because this program could be your way of working with your people instead of the state working with your people.

Thirdly, I guess that some of the problems I've seen so far is there's a mention of child support enforcement. I have yet to see the dollars for that to come through. I have yet to see the mechanism to access that. We do have a tribal court system. And the other problems that I've seen were DOL, Welfare to Work. If you are with a state that had a jobs program funded by the state, your count was not taken into consideration for the rewards of dollars that DOL would give out to those who had tribal jobs.

I have talked yesterday, in reference to this in hope to have these allocations put more in line at this time. All in all, I think prior to TANF and with the TANF being used by Stockbridge Muncie, we have reduced our caseloads in half. We have trained our people. We are the largest employer in Shawano County. We employ our people, we employ surrounding communities. I think that's one way to foster, one way to grow and one way to learn. Thank you.

DR. BROWN: We have a -- please.

MR. WHITEFOOT: Good morning to everybody. My name is Bobby Whitefoot. I'm the tribal chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians in Minnesota. I want to make a comment, and I regret that I wasn't able to address the Assistant Secretary on the matter of the federal responsibility based on treaties that the United States has with respect to Indian tribes. I think one of the statements she left out is, early on, tribal leaders conveyed to the department and the administration this is purely a federal responsibility of the welfare reform program.

There are instances that haven't been talked about yet, but there have been some adversarial relationships with respect to the tribes and the states. And these forced relationships has created somewhat of a mixed type of reaction, a mixed type of programs. I want to pose a question to anyone here with respect to what's happened in Minnesota. I'm confused as to what the thoughts are or what the intentions are.

But in Minnesota, of course, they've enacted legislation that would allow tribes to enter into their own TANF programs. Now, I think there is only one tribe that's going to do that. However, aside from that, the state of Minnesota has enacted policy about a month ago that said that if your unemployed rate is over 50 percent, you're exempt from the time limit. And there are five reservations in the state of Minnesota that were exempt, Red Lake being one of them. We're a little bit concerned about this time limit being misconstrued as --

(End side 3, tape 2.)

-- I guess I'm kind of confused there as to exactly what this is all about. And, mind you, this policy was issued without consultation of tribes. Within the last month, I have talked with them about turning this into an opportunity, if nothing else to buy some time.

On our particular reservation, all our land is held in trust, and so we have a difficult time attracting business to the reservation. And as you other gentlemen said, we are the largest employer in our county, just by the tribal government. So I want to ask anyone here, panel or anyone in the audience: Has any state offered to forego the time limit if your unemployed rate is above 50 percent, because I --

DR. BROWN: Let's see if we can have some responses to that. We know -- and what this gentleman is addressing, that this summer in the amendments to the welfare reform, it indicated that any tribe that had 50 percent or more unemployment would be exempt from the five-year lifetime limit. And they took away the 1,000 population so that any tribe -- the question is that in states, whose population statistics are going to be used to determine the unemployment over 50 percent? A number of the states have chosen to go with BIA labor force statistics of the potential unemployment, which sometimes tends to be even more liberal than the unemployment statistics, so that there are a number of things that are happening there.

It has also been interpreted that while it's a blessing in that it gives tribes that have high unemployment time, it is also viewed in some ways as a curse that, well, gee, if we have no limits, then people can stay on it forever. I would be interested to have some reactions of anyone -- the panel or the audience -- in regards to that.

We have a hand in the back there. And again, we'd like to ask you to keep your comments or statements brief or your questions brief so that we can get as many people in as possible.

MR. GRANT: I don't do anything brief.

(Laughter.)

MR. GRANT: As people who know me will tell that. Tony Peterson will tell you that. I'm John Grant. I'm with the Klamath tribes in Oregon. We were the first TANF award in Indian country. One of the things that we were working with on TANF had to do with that 50 percent issue. As far as the TANF plan goes, we did use BIA labor statistics, labor force statistics, and we are exempt. But we are not acting in our plan as if we're going to give our clients exemption forever, so to speak, or for the 24-month or the five-year or 60-month limits.

What we've done in our plan, we've done -- actually, in our plan, we followed what was called "the Oregon option," where, in actuality, you can only receive 24 months of TANF payments or services within an 84-month period of time. But there were a number of exceptions written into our plan so as that -- for example, if a client were just participating and making progress in their TANF plan, they would not have the 24-month limit. Now, that's not the exact language of it, but we can keep a client on as long as we've determined that they're making progress.

Even if you have a TANF plan that you have time limits on your work -- my mind is half fried, I only got four hours of sleep last night -- I'm still on Pacific time -- even if you have a plan that you're exempted from the five-year total limits -- yes, I see a smile back there -- the time limits -- you can still, in your regulations, the way you implement your programs, still keep pushing people into the program still requiring them to do work activities, you can continue to require them to do all those things that would get them work-ready.

When you write your plans and you submit your plans, you submit them in such a way as to make it advantageous to the tribes so you will not face all those penalties. But at the same time in your terms of your implementation, you implement your plan as if you had these time limits available. So with that, I'll give it back the microphone.

DR. BROWN: Because of time, we have time for two quick questions before we go to commercial break here.

MR. WOLF: Hi. I'm Dale Wolf, and I'm with Great Lakes Intertribal Council in Wisconsin. I'd like Beth to perhaps talk about the process of working with the state and what Wisconsin did for the last two and a half years because I think that was critical to the success that tribes had in either acquiring TANF programs or working effectively with state TANF programs.

MS. MEYERS: Well, Dale, I think you could probably answer your own question better than I could. As the Deputy Director of Great Lakes Intertribal Council, Dale has been working with the Welfare Reform Task Force for the tribes in Wisconsin. We have met at a minimum of quarterly. We had state staff there with us. The state initially was shocked and I think their feelings were a little hurt that we would have went with the federal TANF program. But we were taking care of our own needs and it was definitely in Red Cliff's best interest to go with the TANF program.

We worked through some of those hurt feeling issues. The state, I'm happy that the tribes in Wisconsin have as good of a relationship as we do with the state of Wisconsin. I hear other horror stories of how states won't even talk to tribes. So we were very fortunate, and Great Lakes Intertribal Council was very instrumental in helping foster that relationship and keep us all on line.

DR. BROWN: We had one more question here.

MR. HONGA: A comment, statement. My name is Waylon Honga (phonetic), I'm from Walapai in Northwest Arizona. And through my tribe's experience, borrowed millions of dollars to give our economy a shot in the arm. I was at the forefront of that because of my status as a council member and because of in my job. But I developed a presentation to explain economic development and I guarantee I can show anybody what it is. And to practitioners and people who know economic development, I'll bore you to death, but there are a lot of people out there that don't get it. And I just wanted to say, it's 15-page presentation and I have a couple of copies with me I'd be glad to share with anybody who is interested.

DR. BROWN: Thank you. In closing of this, I want to give each of you a 30-second response to the question: Given all the -- while we see the pluses and minuses of TANF and all of the concerns and the fact that regulations aren't out yet and the fact that we have only, what, 11 tribes that have submitted or been approved of plans and probably only nine actually in operation right now, which means by far, the mass majority of tribal governments have not decided at this point in time or have not submitted formal application to TANF. If I were to give each of you 30 seconds, you tell me why tribes should TANF or go for TANF.

Please, let's start with Ray and move on down 30 seconds only.

MR. APODACA: Some people will look at the fact that there's not a mass of tribes doing TANF as a negative. I think it's a positive. I think it's a good sign that tribes are taking the time to examine the thing, really study it and really understand, like in their case, before they jump into the thing. The other thing is, why should you do TANF? Because nobody -- the state and the federal government, no bureaucrat sitting anywhere else in the world can tell you what's best for your people and knows how to deal with your people like you do at the ground level. You're there, you're in touch, you're the best to do the job. And as tepid as it is in some cases, you're still the best one to do that job.

DR. BROWN: Okay, Beth?

MS. MEYERS: I agree with Ray. Take on the TANF program if you are ready to help tribal members foster their self-sufficiency skills, boost their self-esteem, address their AODA and mental health issues and make sure that there is job creation going on at the same time and job development. We know our tribal members better than anyone else. We know their needs. We know how to do it.

DR. BROWN: Thank you. Gerald.

MR. HEMINGER: Yes. I guess back in South Dakota we probably have the most redneck governor out of all 50 of them.

(Laughter.)

MR. HEMINGER: And by taking on TANF, we're helping our own people and we're strengthening our own sovereignty. And that's one whole thing behind it all. Our tribe is a treaty tribe, and that's one of the reasons that we took it. We figure, like these other panelists have said, we can help our own people better than anybody else can because we know them, we live with them, we see them, and we're there every day.

DR. BROWN: Okay, Joe, who is kind of part of the pondering tribes at this point in time. (Laughter.)

MR. FINKBONNER: I see the major advantage in a tribe operating its own TANF program, as reflected in some of the comments already stated. But also, that nobody is going to have the dedication to your people like your own tribe will.

DR. BROWN: Okay. There you have it. We have the panel. Please give them a hand.

(Applause.)

DR. BROWN: While panel number two is coming to take their place, you know we don't have breaks here, so we're going to ask you to just not all get up at the same time, but as you need to, to please take care of whatever you need to take care of. And we're going to try to move forward with the panels. So we will have the next panel begin to take their place and we will expect everyone to come back shortly.

(A brief recess was taken.)

DR. BROWN: One of the things about welfare reform -- and it's been said a number of times, but I don't think it will hurt repeating, is that in order for welfare reform to be effective, it really involves three major elements. And that is, you've got to have training and education. You cannot put people to work unless people have an education and skills and training. But in the same essence, if people have training and education, they have to have jobs to be able to go to. So you need those two components working closely together.

Tied to that, however, because you're working with welfare recipients, you've got to also talk about support services of how do you help bridge that individual going from welfare to work, and that is you've got to have support services such as day care, transportation, health care, et cetera.

Today, as you see our outline, we are addressing all of those. Welfare reform, in order to bring that together, says that states have to have a plan or that tribes must submit a plan. We've just talked with the panel about concerns and issues as well as exciting things that have been happening for those tribes that have submitted plans or thinking about submitting plans.

Panel 2 - Job Creation and Job Training
 

Our next panel is going to address that critical and crucial element of training and employment. We've often heard that there is a major what they call an "employment gap in the United States." They say that when you look at the number of people that are on welfare that are going to need jobs and you look at the number of jobs -- because here, we're not talking about rocket scientists here, we're talking principally of entry-level jobs -- that is there enough jobs for the individuals to go into.

Then, when you add that -- when you're looking at reservations, Indian communities or Indian nations and you understand the unemployment factor there, we are then challenged with the idea: How does one create not only the education and training in those areas, but also the jobs to go with that -- the education.

So we're saying that some of the greatest challenges will be in the area of economic development, employment and training and those kinds of aspects. So today we have, again, another very distinguished panel of individuals to address that. We're going to go by the same rules that we followed on our earlier panel.

We have Mr. Tom Dowd, who is Chief of the Division of Indian and Native American programs with the Department of Labor. Now, I think this is important to mention because we have predominantly been talking about health and human services. But this summer, through a special appropriation bill, a Welfare to Work program was added to the JTPA which now becomes a major component of welfare reform. So Tom is here to represent that aspect of it.

We then have Mr. Norm DeWeaver, Director of Indian and Native American Employment and Training Coalition. Many of you are probably most familiar with his newsletter that comes out -- very succinctly written and direct and to the point and has been a real leader in working with Indian communities to focus in on what those employment and training issues are, what those positive elements are and how do you go about bringing all of that together.

Next, tied very closely to that, has been the question: What is the role of higher education? Now, we've got tribally-controlled community colleges out there that have been doing a very interesting and excellent job in really creating an emphasis for education for those individuals that are living and working in the community and have met a very great need in the community. But the question also says: What is the role of higher education -- tribally-controlled community colleges as well as the other surrounding universities and colleges in welfare reform, and how does the tribe work with that and coordinate?

So today, we hope to touch a little on all of those, so we will begin by talking with, or having Tom talk with us in regards to the Department of Labor, welfare reform and anything else that goes with that.

MR. DOWD: Thank you, Dr. Brown. And I want to thank NCI for the opportunity to be here with you this morning. I just want to share one important thing for you to put a little perspective on the Department of Labor's involvement with Welfare to Work and how it touches on welfare reform in general. And that is that within the Department of Labor, Division of Indian Native American Programs, we have, under Title IVA and 2B, the total sum of about $60 million.

That's the total amount of Indian money in the Department of Labor in a department that has well over $1 billion-plus money in employment training. So we make up a very, very small, less than a fraction of all the money in the Department, as accustomed with your knowledge with the Bureau of Indian Health Service and other agencies that have substantially more money in dealing with Indian issues.

So I want to share with you in terms of our relative size in the department -- and now Welfare to Work provides an additional $30 million -- but this still makes us a very, very small player in the whole area of employment training within the department, and I say this because I want to share with you that Secretary Herman has taken an extraordinary interest in the Indian program and in Indian country. And we thank her very much for that by virtue of the fact, again, that we are a very, very small portion of the overall Department of Labor budget. And she is to be applauded for her strong interest.

She's the first Secretary of Labor, to my knowledge, who has ever told the department, "I want to meet with tribal leaders and I will do that." And so January 13th, she met with the tribal leaders of Arizona in a formal meeting to discuss their concerns with regards to Welfare to Work and welfare reform in general. And she listened and came back, and I was fortunate to accompany her and hear directly myself, and she's instructed her staff as well as the Employment Training Administration to address the things we heard to the degree that the law permits and we have authority to do so.

Obviously, she heard the things that many of you are concerned with -- with the fact that there's a lack of jobs, that when you try to implement welfare reform in general, the need for child care and transportation. She heard from Indian country, from the leaders, themselves, that Indian country is best suited to develop the delivery strategies for serving Indian people, as we've heard this morning.

She strongly heard the need for an Indian policy in the Department of Labor, and so I will share with you without trying to scoop her, that we're very, very close to adopting a Department of Labor Indian Policy, the first in the history of the department. I would also share with you that she is working hard to try and increase the funding for the Indian programs through the administration. And she acknowledged the fact that she thinks it's critically important that her administration at the Department of Labor respect the government-to-government relationship in a way that perhaps has never been acknowledged before at the Department. So I want to say that as a background to give some context with regards to the size of the program and where the Department of Labor is with respect to Welfare to Work.

Let me give you a couple of quick dot points that I think are important. We have received 79 Welfare to Work plans. We have reviewed and approved about 25 of those. The remaining 50 or so have been reviewed initially and are pending additional information and some corrections. None of these are major and they will move forward.

Since Secretary Euhaldi (phonetic) attended NCAI earlier this week and announced that the Department will begin grants as early as next week, I will share with you also that the director of the department, the Welfare to Work program was implemented. I should say, never took one step prior to implementation without consulting the tribes. We've brought together representatives from 12 different tribes throughout the country to ensure that the implementation process would, in fact, be based on consultation with tribes and a commitment to tribal initiative and strategies with how they would see this program work best for them. And we're very pleased to know that this program reflects that.

We also worked with our partners at the Department of Health and Human Services, and particularly the Division of Tribal Services in trying to coordinate. Our implementation, therefore, is with their TANF responsibilities and Native Employment Works Program. We thank Mr. Bushman and his staff for the cooperation and the cooperation we've all received and worked together.

One last thing and then a couple quick more comments. We do have a home page, it's updated continually. It provides all the basic background information you may have with respect to this particular program. And I'd like to announce that as of this week and Monday, we have added two additional Indian staff to the Indian and Native American Welfare to Work Program. Mr. Jim Henry, Ms. Charley Archambault (phonetic), two individuals that come from Indian country with extensive background experience in welfare reform as well as employment training programs. We applaud the department for allowing us the authority to go forward and bring more Indian people into the department. We have more Indian people now in the department working in the Indian Division than we've ever had in the history of the department's interaction with tribes.

Let me just, then, use up my last minute here, I guess, to say that, yes, we agree with you that employment and training is fundamental to Welfare to Work. We also recognize that having jobs to place people in are fundamental. We realize that Welfare to Work does allow for job creation and we have tried to be as flexible as we can as permissible by law to ensure that tribes can describe how they want to, in fact, utilize the allowable activities to perhaps do that -- create jobs wherever appropriate.

And most importantly, that we are continuing on -- we don't see this as the end of the process now that we have regulations up, reporting forums -- we see this as a continuing process to work with the tribes in improving and distilling what we hope will be a program that is successful for the tribes. So I'll leave it there and then we've got other folks, and we'll take questions and see where you want to go with this.

DR. BROWN: Tom, before we leave you, let me just ask: We've heard about this Welfare to Work; now we heard, also, the new jobs program and the number of tribes that have new jobs and a number of the tribes that are also working JTPA programs. What does this Welfare to Work do that's different from any of the others? What does it add, or is it only for certain things? If you could just briefly describe that.

MR. DOWD: Yes, I'll be happy to do that as sort of basic 101. The employment training programs have always been, historically been predicated on providing employment training. The very opposite of the coin for Welfare to Work is put people to work, not train them. And so that is the opposite side of that coin, that is very different than what we've always been responsible for administering and working with tribes on. So that caused us all to think how best to use the resources we have. We have over 187 tribes and Indian organizations that have employment training programs currently. Many of them, of the 79, will be also administering the Welfare to Work program.

They have to now begin to look at their plans; how do we do employment training and utilize those resources, at the same time utilize our Welfare to Work resources for the eligible TANF recipients. The Welfare to Work program as you, again, probably already know, is targeted toward a specific slice of the TANF population. And so it is there, it's additional money, it's $30 million over two years that we didn't have before in Indian country, but it does have its narrow window of opportunity and we think it's an important one, and we're going to be working with tribes to help them to sort of sort through in their strategies how best to put those TANF recipients that are eligible into work.

DR. BROWN: Now, those programs are not for everybody. The new jobs certainly was only for those jobs that had continuing job programs. The Welfare to Work is only for those TANF tribes and those tribes that had new jobs programs. What about -- is there any opportunity in the future for those tribes that had not specifically developed employment programs, but may be considering to move in that direction, that they could be eligible for any of these programs?

MR. DOWD: Let me share that if a tribe has a TANF-approved plan, they're eligible. If they have a former Jobs Now Native Employment Works Program, they're eligible. Any tribe that does not meet those two criteria, though, still have an opportunity into what we call "substantial services." They can come forward and work with the department and negotiate, hopefully through providing this information, to substantiate that they have provided, through some form of employment training services, services to at least 20 percent of that population that -- or former AFDC or public recipient-eligible clients, as well as have served at least 50 in terms of total number.

So it's a combination of both. I want to make sure that we don't end up with programs that are extremely tiny, that the amount of money would be so negligible it wouldn't be much help. And we have a number of tribes who have come forward who have met that criteria and others we're still negotiating with -- trying to clarify what is their material and their data that, yes, you don't necessarily have to just be a TANF or new tribe to be eligible for the program.

DR. BROWN: Suppose I decide to be a TANF tribe next month, but did not meet any of those time frames for Welfare to Work? Can I still be eligible for the Welfare to Work program?

MR. DOWD: You can in FY '99.

DR. BROWN: Okay.

MR. DOWD: We've already met the deadline for '98. The issue here is in order to run the program on a formula, we have to be able to establish what is the total number of tribes that are going to be involved and have a cutoff.

DR. BROWN: Okay. Mr. Norm DeWeaver.

MR. DEWEAVER: Thank you very much, Dr. Brown. In the course of the last four years, I've been extremely privileged to be able to travel throughout Indian country and to listen, and listen in terms of what people are saying, what tribal leaders are saying, what participants are saying, what program staff people are saying.

On Monday of this week, I was in one of the farther reaches of Alaska and heard a story which really summed up for me a good deal of what the subject of this forum is and a good deal of the discussion over the last four years about welfare reform in Indian country. The story concerns a tribal organization in that part of the state had a board meeting, was considering what to do about welfare reform, what role to take with respect to TANF, with respect to helping people with cash assistance.

In the c