During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) questioned Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum about a proposed 79% reduction in funding for Board of Indian Education school construction.
00:00Just in time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Secretary, I appreciate our conversations, your responsiveness. I want to bring up what is in the skinny budget and just quote from it real quick.
00:16The National Park Service responsibilities include a large number of sites that are not quote-unquote national parks in the traditionally understood sense, many of which receive small numbers of mostly local visitors and are better categorized and managed as state-level parks.
00:33I just want to strike a note of caution with that sort of approach. I love our Big P national parks.
00:41Behind me is a picture of a non-Big P national park. It is a national preserve. It is the Valles Caldera National Preserve.
00:51We've been talking in New Mexico for 100 years about this being a national park, and we finally settled on the approach of a preserve in part because we wanted the natural resource management of a national park with the ability to also have world-class hunting and fishing
01:10and the visitors that come with all of those things.
01:14So I would just urge you to look as you develop this list, and many of these units have been created in statute.
01:23Many of them that are not necessarily a Big P national park are incredibly important parts of our national park system, our history, and our culture, and I just hope you will approach that with caution.
01:39Absolutely. Absolutely. And with consultation. And thanks for bringing the beautiful photo behind you.
01:47Yeah, if you get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it and bring your fly rod.
01:51Is that you in the photo?
01:52Actually, it is.
01:53Yeah.
01:54I thought it might be.
01:57Tell by the angle of the wrist.
01:58Have you discussed with any particular states this approach yet, or is it still in the sort of formation?
02:08This is completely in the idea formation stage.
02:13BIE school construction costs.
02:16I'm not going to question your effectiveness at finding ways to reduce overhead and push forward on-the-ground deployment for better resource management.
02:29But this particular account, and I was talking to the chair about this on the way over, really concerns me.
02:36The president's budget calls for a 79% or $187 million reduction in the BIA school construction account.
02:50This is a place where we have a $4 billion construction backlog.
02:55It's not overhead.
02:56I mean, this is money to actually build schools.
02:58It's not money to pay administrators.
03:02And so you and I have talked about the incredibly poor condition of some of these BIE schools.
03:11How are you going to move the needle on BIE school construction with this budget line item?
03:21It's interesting that we've got in BIE about 125,000 kids, which is about exactly what we had in North Dakota.
03:28In our K-12 system.
03:30But, of course, these are spread across the nation.
03:32Not every state has got a BIE school.
03:35And we've got a complicated situation that some places you've got a BIE school next to a tribal school next to a public school.
03:42That's a scenario I've seen.
03:44And I think that part of this is we've got to take a look at the sort of the system-wide.
03:48In terms of dollars in states like my own state of North Dakota, we put more dollars into BIE than we do into tribal and into public.
03:56And yet the outcomes are the worst.
03:58So there's not a, I'm not, you know, when I have my education hat, I'm not seeing a correlation.
04:02I think the school construction and deferred maintenance, I mean, that's an issue across parks, across refuges.
04:08I mean, it's across all of government, federal government, we've got a deferred maintenance issue.
04:13So the construction thing I just set aside, but I think, you know, where I would start my focus on BIE is, you know, how do we improve outcomes for those kids?
04:22And then are there opportunities for us from a school construction standpoint to look for any opportunities with tribes or with public schools to not, you know, to, if we fix the problems, but can we do it?
04:35I mean, I know there's a case in our state where they're less than a mile apart.
04:39I think we can both agree we've got to do better for these kids.
04:42Yes.
04:43The president's budget proposes a almost $200 million cut to the Bureau of Land Management Conservation Programs.
04:50In your confirmation hearing, you told me that you would not make any wholesale changes to monument designations in New Mexico without first meeting with local elected leaders and citizen groups in the state.
05:04Do I still have your commitment on that?
05:06Yeah, absolutely.
05:06Great.
05:07Appreciate that.
05:08I think you do.
05:09I think you do know there have been concerns.
05:11People have come to me about the buffer zone related to that and how it infringes on tribal allati rights.
05:18So we're listening to all sides of this thing, but we'll keep in close consultation.
05:22I think you're talking about a particular mineral withdrawal, and my question was related directly to the monuments, which is a separate issue.
05:32But I'll be happy to engage with you on both.
