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This week, the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund hosted its biennial tribal water symposium in partnership with the Western States Water Council.
As KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio reports, Interior Department (DOI) officials took time to reassure tribes that the Trump administration is behind them – despite recent staffing cuts and Congress clawing back federal dollars.
Some of the federal agency’s top-ranking water officials encouraged tribes to come up with very creative solutions. As for the Colorado River and its ongoing negotiations, they warned that consensus is needed before 2026.
Otherwise, DOI will be forced to step in.
“We will if we have to, if we can’t get people to come to a settlement and agree. That settlement needs to include the tribes.”
Kathy Budd-Falen is an advisor to DOI Secretary Doug Burgum.
The seven Basin states and 30 tribes have until October 1 of next year.
“But if the interim guidelines expire, then Reclamation gets to run the river. And I’m telling you, you do not want a bunch of bureaucrats from Washington, D.C. running the Colorado.”
President Donald Trump tapped former CAP general manager Ted Cooke to helm the Bureau of Reclamation, pending Senate approval.
Agency-wide layoffs reportedly cut at least a fourth of all reclamation staff.
Former State Rep. Les Gara attends an August 4, 2021 dedication for a new Dena’ina place names project. (Photo: Jeff Chen / Alaska Public Media)
Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services (OCS) is failing to meet benchmarks set by a 2018 reform law.
That’s according to the final state audit released last month. About 70% of kids in OCS care in the state are Alaska Native and American Indian.
Alaska Public Media’s Rachel Cassandra reports in the second-half of a two-part report.
Former State Rep. Les Gara (D-AK) from Anchorage and introduced the legislation in 2017.
It aimed to make things better for Alaska’s foster kids by improving hiring and training practices – and the law required a series of audits to check progress.
Rep. Gara says the audit results are extremely disheartening.
“It’s like we handed the state the blueprint of all the gold standard practices to make sure children had a chance in this world. We handed it to the state, and by 2020 the state had lit it on fire. It’s sad.”
He says in the first two years of the law, the state saw some progress, but then the office dramatically lowered hiring requirements for caseworkers.
Instead of requiring a four-year college degree in social services or equivalent experience, now caseworkers can get hired with just a high school diploma.
A legislative consultant quoted in the audit called the training and support “woefully insufficient,” for most new hires.
The audit also found that the OCS hiring process was “strongly out of alignment with best practices” and that new caseworkers started with “little to no understanding of what the job actually entailed.”
Amanda Metivier helped write the legislation and runs the organization Facing Foster Care.
“This is not entry level work, holding the authority to remove children from their parents and investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect – and it takes a skill set that requires some foundation.”
Amanda Metivier. (Courtesy UAA)
OCS didn’t agree to an interview for this story, but spokesperson Brian Studstill wrote in an email that their hiring practices factor in the experience and education of the applicant.
He wrote that it’s “impossible” to actually cap caseloads because the agency can’t turn away families, but he wrote OCS takes many steps to keep caseloads manageable.
Deko Harbi, who entered foster care in 2021 when she was 16, had to fend for herself.
She says over and over, she couldn’t get the help she needed from OCS.
When she was a junior in high school, she says she left the chaos of her placement with her then-23-year-old sister without telling OCS.
She moved in with a friend’s family.
“Without them intervening [voice wavers] … and coming in to help me that last year of high school, I don’t think I would have graduated.”
She calls them her chosen foster parents – and says they were caring and helped her transition to adult life.
She says that’s how the foster system in Alaska could work if it were functional.
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