Shirley blasts $50 million plan for legislative building
By Bill Donovan
Special to the Times
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| Font: N / N+ / N++ WPresident Joe Shirley Jr. came out swinging Monday when he appeared before the Navajo Nation Council to give his state of the nation address.
His target: a proposal now winding its way through the tribal council for a new 75,000-square-foot legislative complex projected to cost $50 million or more.
Shirley told the lawmakers he'd heard the loan cap could rise as high as $125 million, which indeed it did in an amendment passed late Wednesday.
The reaction to his criticism was a stunned council that just barely - 37-35 - voted to accept his report.
In an interview Tuesday, Shirley said he realized that a lot of the delegates would not like hearing what he had to say about a project many say should have been built years ago.
"I halfway expected (that reaction)," he said.
The proposal, sponsored by Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan, is contained in a resolution to enact the Navajo Nation Legislative Facilities Act of 2008. Legislation No. 202-08 calls for construction of a new council chamber, administrative offices, and offices for the 88 delegates. The original council chamber would become a museum.
The resolution also would approve an unsecured $50 million loan from KeyBank, appropriate $150,000 for Morgan to hire a construction manager, and waive parts of at least six tribal laws aimed at ensuring fair bidding, hiring and dispute resolution practices are followed.
Shirley said Tuesday that he felt he needed to bring the issue up so the Navajo people would know what's going on, especially since the council hasn't announced plans to hold any public hearings on the proposal.
"I feel the president speaks for the people," Shirley said, and he questioned whether the Navajo people would support spending millions for new council quarters when other needs, such as new jails, are more urgent.
"The Navajo people cried out when the council spent $50,000 for (delegate) rings. This expenditure is one thousand times that," Shirley said. "One construction manager, hearing of these plans, foresaw oak-paneled rooms and marble floors for this cost."
Legislative officials have countered the extravagance claims by displaying a conceptual drawing of the new complex that shows a large but not ornate building.
Shirley, however, told the council that based on the figures cited in the legislation, the price would exceed $500 a square foot.
He contrasted that with the Shiprock Alternative School, which is about twice the size of the proposed project and cost $20 million.
Shirley predicted that when tribal members learn of the plan, it will provoke an outcry similar to that expressed in 1987, when then Chairman Peter MacDonald Sr. spent more than $100,000 to refurbish the chairman's office.
After MacDonald's removal from office, the council enacted changes intended to prevent a future leader from acting as autocratically as MacDonald had. Key powers were transferred to the speaker, who is elected every two years by the delegates.
In addition to questioning cost and council priorities, Shirley said he was concerned about how the council plans to pay for the building. Morgan has arranged a loan commitment from KeyBank in Phoenix, according to a draft letter from the bank that accompanied the legislation.
The loan would be repaid from the general fund, which Shirley said would cost about $19 million a year. Tribal financial officials put the cost at substantially less - under $5 million annually to repay a 15-year, $50 million loan.
But the loan agreement would require the tribe to keep at least $50 million in the Undesignated Unreserved Fund at all times, something the council has almost never done even though tribal law requires it as well.
Shirley said that since fiscal 2004, the council has appropriated $82 million in one-time expenditures from the UUF, often in the form of piggyback amendments that mischaracterized the expenditures as emergency appropriations. Whenever it spent beyond the limits established by tribal law, the council would vote to waive the law.
Morgan's bill includes waivers for a number of other tribal laws, including some that govern fairness in bidding and hiring, in order to fast-track construction once the project is approved.
"We cannot enact laws and then not follow them," Shirley said. "We have done that too many times by waiving the laws that have been put in place and conducting business as there are no laws, especially where Navajo Nation funds are concerned."
While the size and complexity of the proposal - the resolution title alone is over 90 words long - indicates that it's been in the works for months if not years, this is the first glimpse of it that the Navajo public has gotten.
Several delegates have indicated that when the resolution comes up for discussion this week, they will take a long, hard look at the cost and how it will be paid.
