BIA Shakeup: 189 Out in Cold
BIA Shakeup: 189 Out in Cold
In a diplapidated temporary building at 3800 Newark St. NW, 189 employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs work in slow motion, exiled from the main BIA structure downtown.
They were dispatched to Tempo 8 last Dec. 4, ostensibly to await the repair of BIA headquarters at 1901 Constitution Ave. NW, that had been badly damaged during its occupation by militant Indians Nov. 2 to Nov. 8.
By now the main building has been repaired, freshly painted, equipped with new or replacement furnishings, and reoccupied by the administrative staff. But its top two floors are vacant.
"We were exiled to a condemned building," said the head of a department assigned to the barracks-like structure that had been scheduled for demolition.
"Some feel the move was punitive," he continued. "The supporters of Bruce are here and Crow's friends are in the renovated, carpeted, paneled offices downtown."
Louis R. Bruce Jr. was BIA commissioner at the time of the occupation, and John O. Crow, a long-time BIA employee, was deputy commissioner. The two men differed on what the government's Indian policy should be. (Bruce was sympathetic to the demonstrators' demands, for example, while Crow urged a hard line against them.) Both resigned under pressure after the occupation.
Carl Shaw, chief of public information for the BIA, said it is "entirely untrue" that supporters of Bruce were singled out for transfer.
But he did acknowledge that many of those working at Tempo 8 are likely to lose their jobs in the proposed reorganization.
"We had a demolished building (last November), and the best way to get people back to work was to send some to other available space," Shaw said. "In assigning employees to Tempo 9, some consideration was given to the reorganization. Most of the RIFs (reduction in force) will come from the Tempo."
He said when the reorganization is accomplished, "we eventually will return to one building."
Little orther than routine work is being done, said one GS-15, because "we're cut off. The mail service is bad. HEW has repossesed the furniture, so we work, when we do, out of boxes. Nothing productive is happening here. People are being paid $36,000 a year to sit around."
"The only hope a lot of people have is Marvin, and he's fading fast," he said. (Marvin L. Franklin, 56, an Oklahoma City oil executive and former chairman of the Iowa Indian antion, was named asssitant to the secretary of the Interior for Indian affairs on Feb. 6.)
Franklin visited Tempo 8 the day after his appointment. He saw typists "sitting at their desks wearing gloves because it was so cold." He said the next, worst step would be "back to the teepee."
The new BIA director is aware of the complaints, public affairs spokesman Shaw said yesterday, but he is hopeful that problems will be solved with reorganization. It calls for reducing the Washington staff by 285 employees to 715, and transferring another 50 jobs to the field.
One BIA employee noted that while Franklin has said the bureau needs to change, he has appointed "three oldline bureaucrats" to be his top aides.
So while the reorganization remains in the planning stage, the complaints from Tempo 8 increase.
In Room 2624, Beverly Hicks, secretary to T.V. Cornelius, acting director of economic development, lamented that "the phone seldom rings, maybe a couple times a day."
"Work is at a standstill," said Mrs. Hicks, a Comanche-Kiowa from Oklahoma. "Before, there was activity all the time. I don't even see any Indians now."
The most activity occurs in her office when it rains, she said. Then the employees must place waste baskets under the holes in the roof to catch the water that pours in.
Two table lamps, placed on the floor of the sparsely furnished office, had been "salvaged from the old office," Mrs. Hicks said.
Their former quarters in the main BIA building "looked like the Taj Mahal," she said. It had been lavishly furnished by a former director. Her boss then, Ernie Stephens, "was ashamed when Indians stopped by, it was so plush. Now Indians would feel at home here," she said, noting the irony, "but none come."
Stephens quit after being transferred. He now works for American Indian Consultants, based in Phoenix.
Before the siege, services to Indians were dispensed through four program offices, three of which have been transferred to Tempo 8.
The heads of two of the departments, Stephens and community services director Ron Peake, have resigned, and a third, engineering director Alexander S. MacNabb reportedly is set to leave. Only education director James Hawkins, whose office stayed downtown, remains.
Stephens, Peake, and MacNabb were all self-described admirers of former commissioner Bruce.
James Egar, who was Stephens' top assistant, said he has been stripped of his assignments. So he now spends much of his time in Room 2617 studying law.
"It's the way they want it," he said.
Peake suggested that "one goal of the Trail of Broken Treaties (the coalition that seized the BIA building) was to abolish the BIA. Well, that has nearly happened."
Peake resigned Feb. 16, writing to Interior Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton that "it is my deep feeling that to remain in this key job would jeopardize my credibility and impair my word."
He will stay with the BIA, returning to his former position as director of housing assistance.
He has remained in Room 1715 at Tempo 8, noting that his successor, Ray Butler, agreed that "one office here is as bad as another."
Peake said he was responsible for programs making up about 40 per cent of the BIA's half-billion dollar budget, and "for a while I didn't even have a chain. I'm not one of those guys who has a sexual attraction to his furniture, but it was hard on moral to hold a staff meeting with half a dozen GS-15s sitting on the bare floor."
He said he believes Bruce and his appointees were "on the road to changing the delivery system (an objective of both the Nixon administration and the militant protesters) when the demonstration occurred.
"Since then, we have regressed rather than changed," he said. "The old bureaucratic approach has settled in."