Tribal leaders tell House subcommittee ITARA stalled by narrow BIA interpretation and staffing shortfalls

Witnesses told the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs on 2025-02-26 that the Indian Trust Asset Reform Act of 2016, known as ITARA, has not delivered its intended expansion of tribal self-governance because the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) have applied a narrow interpretation of which trust assets qualify and because agency staffing shortfalls are causing lengthy delays.

The hearing, titled “Federal Indian Trust Asset Management: Progress Made, but Improvement Needed,” opened with the chair saying the session would examine why only two tribes have completed demonstration projects nearly nine years after ITARA became law. The subcommittee heard tribal leaders describe stalled applications, inconsistent agency guidance, and requests for statutory clarifications or a permanent extension of the demonstration authority.

ITARA created a 10-year demonstration program allowing tribes to submit Indian trust asset management plans (ITAMPs) to assume management of specified trust resources. Several witnesses said the Department has effectively limited allowable assets to forestry and surface leases despite the statute’s broader language. Glenn Gobin, a member of the Tulalip Tribal Council, said, “we were told in unambiguous terms that a demonstration project was limited to forestry resource and surface leases,” and described his tribe’s effort to include reservation tidelands in an ITAMP.

Tribal witnesses and advocates asked the committee to clarify ITARA’s scope or amend the law to remove what they described as administrative barriers. Amber Schultz Oliver, executive director of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, urged changes including eliminating an initial application step in section 203(a) that she said functions as a gatekeeping requirement, and explicitly permitting tribes to include the full range of trust resources in ITAMPs.

Cody Desautels, president of the Intertribal Timber Council, told the panel that Coquille and Cow Creek tribes had implemented ITAMPs and that those projects demonstrated benefits from tribal management. He said the demonstration projects “dramatically reduce approval timelines for forest management projects,” allow tribes to pursue local priorities faster, and have enabled tribes to “swiftly access growing markets for forest products while optimizing revenue generation.”

But witnesses said those examples are the exception. Multiple speakers described extensive delays in approvals and an uneven outreach effort so many tribes never learned the program was available. The 2023 Indian Forest Management Assessment Team (IFMAT) report, cited during testimony, recommended extending ITARA and improving BIA guidance; witnesses urged the subcommittee to pursue implementation of those recommendations.

Members also raised concerns about BIA and Department of the Interior staffing levels. One lawmaker said “over 2,000 Department of Interior staff have been fired, terminated, or maybe they’ve just retired,” while a separate witness said reports indicated as many as 118 BIA employees were expected to be terminated; witnesses warned that reduced staffing constrains the agency’s ability to review and approve ITAMPs. Desautels said when the Coquille ITAMP was approved in 2020 the BIA had about 8,000 employees and that the workforce has since dropped roughly by half, increasing the risk of further delays.

The Tulalip example underscored a separate disagreement about scope. Gobin described reservation tidelands that the tribe says were never relinquished and that host ancestral sites, subsistence fisheries and habitat; he said a narrow agency reading prevents tribes from including such tidal areas despite trust-holdings claims and treaty protections. Witnesses requested that Congress explicitly clarify that ITARA applies broadly to tribal trust resources so tribes can include assets beyond forests and surface leases.

Several witnesses also asked the committee to ensure funding follows authority. They said tribes taking on functions previously performed by the BIA need funding mechanisms—whether through existing contracting authorities such as PL 93-638 self-governance contracts or other authorizations—so tribes can implement on-the-ground work once an ITAMP is approved.

Committee members pressed witnesses on remedies, including administrative extension of the demonstration project by the Secretary of the Interior, statutory changes to remove the initial application step, clearer agency guidance on the definition of “trust resources,” and ensuring funding accompanies any transfer of responsibilities. Multiple members voiced support for field hearings in the Pacific Northwest to see tribal forest management examples on the ground.

The subcommittee did not take formal action; members asked witnesses to submit additional written information. Under the committee’s procedural announcement at the hearing, members may submit follow-up questions to the record through 2025-02-28, and the hearing record will remain open for 10 business days for answers.

This oversight hearing highlighted a split between congressional intent—granting tribes flexible, broader authority under ITARA—and the Department of the Interior’s current implementation choices and resource constraints, and it set out a path of recommended fixes: clarify statutory scope, streamline administrative steps, ensure outreach to tribes, and align funding with transferred responsibilities.