Zah: Delegates support scholarship trust fund
By Marley Shebala
Navajo Times
WINDOW ROCK, Oct. 24, 2011
On Aug. 25, Zah and former BIA Navajo Area Director Donald Dodge announced their proposal for the scholarship fund to ensure all children born into the tribe could go to college.
They said this would be the best way to use a one-time payment of $50 million made by Peabody Energy and other defendants to settle a historic lawsuit brought by the tribe in 1999.
The lawsuit arose out of backdoor dealings between the Interior Department and Peabody while Zah and Dodge were attempting to raise the historically low royalty rates paid for Navajo coal.
Interior officials said the raise was justified but the Peabody lobbyist persuaded his personal friend, then Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, to derail it.
The lawsuit settlement was announced Aug. 4 but most of the details remain secret under a confidentiality clause.
However, news that it included a one-time payment of $50 million to the tribe leaked out, exciting a frenzy of proposals for special appropriations to spend the money.
So far only one of the proposals, Zah's scholarship trust fund, would turn the money into a permanent, interest-earning asset to help individual Navajos complete their education.
Zah said he's met with most of the 24 Council delegates and most of them support the idea.
But he said they don't support using the entire settlement for that purpose.
The amount they seem comfortable with setting aside for scholarships ranges between $20 million and $30 million, he said.
Zah said he'll be meeting with Delegates Jonathan Hale and Dwight Witherspoon sometime this week to begin drafting legislation for the scholarship fund and to increase funding for current applicants for tribal scholarships.
Hale and Witherspoon have said they will sponsor the proposed scholarship legislation.
On Oct. 11, Delegate Lorenzo Curley reported to the Council's Budget and Finance Committee that the balance in the Undesignated Unreserved Fund is about $45 million, including over $30 million remaining from the Peabody payment.
The UUF balance also contains a $6 million a year lease payment from Arizona Public Service for the Four Corners Power Plant, oil royalty payments, and other unexpected tribal revenues that were not anticipated in the annual revenue projections on which the fiscal 2012 budget is based.
According to the Appropriations Act, the annual projections are used to write the spending plan. Any unanticipated revenues are deposited into the cash reserves, which must be maintained at a level of 10 percent of last year's budget.
Since the 2011 budget level was about $170 million, the Council is mandated to keep $17 million in reserve. This leaves about $28 million is available for supplemental spending.