Council, prez at odds over budget
WINDOW ROCK
Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye on Tuesday countered accusations that he was off the Navajo Nation when he signed the FY2017 budget and lobbed some accusations of his own, charging the Navajo Nation Council with trying to undermine the line-item veto approved by the Navajo people in a 2010 referendum.
This comes after Speaker LoRenzo Bates and the council deemed Begaye’s signature on the budget — after red-lining 17 line items the council had added — illegal, because Begaye was in Washington, D.C. the day it was sent to Bates along with a memorandum on his vetoes.
Russell Begaye
LoRenzo Bates
Navajo Nation law mandates the president to be within the jurisdiction of the Navajo Nation when exercising his line-item veto authority.
After these findings were made Bates and Council have demanded that the Office of the Controller execute their approved budget, rather than Begaye’s approved budget along with his vetoes. This move, Begaye said, goes against the people and proves council does not want to work with the Office of the President and Vice President.
“The Navajo Nation Council is continuing to negate the will of the people when it was the Navajo people that gave the president the line item veto authority,” Begaye stated in a news release. “Raising the issue that this particular action was taken outside of the Navajo Nation jurisdiction is both frivolous and a further attempt by council to negate the will of the people. By leaking the memo to the media before delivering a copy to OPVP, Speaker Bates and the Navajo Nation Council are being underhanded.”
Begaye said the line-item vetoes were signed on Sept. 24 on the Navajo Nation. But, on Sept. 27, which was the day Begaye sent the signed vetoes to Bates, he was attending a signing of the Diné School Accountability Plan with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in Washington D.C.
Begaye added he had vetoed the additions to the budget — including funds to develop an Amber Alert system, increase stipends for grazing officials, shore up the ailing Area Agency on Aging and retain the legislative district assistants — because the council had dipped into restricted fiduciary funds to fund general-fund items, and because all three governmental branches had already agreed to the original “strategic” budget.
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