BIA Appropriations

In response to a congressional request, GAO conducted a study to answer questions raised by the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) Southern Pueblo Agency (SPA) regarding the level of funding it received for its Self-Determination Grant and Indian Action Team (IAT) programs. Specifically, the study focused on whether: (1) the BIA merger of the two programs' funds in its annual budget request resulted in the nine SPA tribes receiving fewer funds than they should have; (2) BIA appropriately applied the reductions to the fiscal year (FY) 1983 and 1984 requests for Self-Determination Grant and IAT-related funds; and (3) the 25-percent reduction in the SPA program funds between FY 1983 and 1984 was consistent with BIA-wide reductions.

The study showed that, although the SPA budget requests for FY 1983 and 1984 programs were merged and subsequently reduced by Congress, this did not result in SPA and its constituent tribes receiving less money than they should have. Specifically, GAO found that: (1) BIA headquarters and its Albuquerque area office allocated the appropriate share of FY 1984 program funds to SPA and the Indian tribes it serves; (2) in FY 1983, the tribes served by SPA received more program funds than were provided for them in the BIA budget request for that year; and (3) an apparent 25-percent reduction in the FY 1984 SPA funds for Self-Determination was consistent with the overall reduction to the BIA FY 1984 budget request.