During a heated Committee of a Whole discussion during the 2024 Tzi Sho Session, Congress members were incensed over the lack of progress on the tribe’s first funeral home for which they appropriated money in 2022.
Congresswoman Alice Goodfox agreed with Congressmen Eli Potts, Billy Keene, and others who felt legal action should be taken against the Executive branch as an alternative path to moving the funeral home forward.
“Let’s go,” said Goodfox, her conclusion after expressing outrage that a sports complex is still moving forward despite Congress’ “no” votes and repeated objections to such a complex in Pawhuska.
“I just got a text from someone, and I don’t disagree with this,” she said. “‘Well, the sports complex is still going on.’ And guess what? This body said no. They said no! We can’t do that right now. We’ve got other things going on —bigger things! The health, and welfare of our people!”
Congresswoman Jodie Revard urged Congress to call Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear about the delay in construction before appropriating money to go to court. She said a call should be made out of respect and “because he’s Osage,” she said.
Memorandum
Congressmembers Maria Whitehorn, Keene and Potts underscored that a phone call would be redundant as they already knew the reasoning behind the slow movement on the funeral home.
Whitehorn read aloud from an Aug. 15, 2024, memo from Chief of Staff Jason Zaun to Standing Bear, “‘In my opinion, the proposed facility costs are difficult to justify. I do not believe that an average of 25 potential funerals supports the cost. These numbers assume each of the 25 funerals would be conducted at the facility. These numbers do not consider that Osage families use existing facilities within their local communities such as Kendrick McCartney Johnson, Powell, Hunsaker-Wooten, Stumpff, Chapman-Black, or Sien Shelton Funeral Homes to name a few.’”
Whitehorn said, “Just by reading this [memo], that’s been presented to us, leads me to believe that the Executive does not support this appropriation or this allocation of ARPA funds.”
In addition to the memo from Standing Bear’s office, Secretary Casey Johnson said the delay was because the existing plans for the funeral home exceed existing appropriations for the project, including a September 2023 additional appropriation that brought the total to $6,228,256. The estimated annual operations would cost approximately $648,019, according to Secretary of Social Services Teresa Bledsoe, who was charged with a committee to work on the project design.
Johnson said, “Secretary Bledsoe had a committee that worked on the design for … a full, a medium and a big one [funeral home]. We believed we had enough to finish the middle one. Two weeks ago, the architect and engineers … put it at $6.2 million. They are $1.8 million short. A&E [architectural and engineering] will not be complete until November.”
According to an email obtained by the Osage News, ON employees began working with the funeral home consulting service Native Advisory in September of 2022. It is unclear if there were additional consultants hired as the planning progressed.
Johnson told Congress that the Executive did not expect to execute a contract before December 31, 2024, which is the deadline to obligate ARPA funds. The deadline to spend ARPA funds is Dec. 31, 2026.
Chief says lawsuit ‘not the way’
Chief Standing Bear said that Congresswoman Revard has been in regular meetings with his office on the funeral home, but he has never heard that Congress would be agreeable to a smaller build to move on a faster timeline.
During the Sept. 5 Congressional session, Revard’s remarks critiqued the length of the Executive Branch process for pricing, designing and bidding projects. Regarding the funeral home, which Congress first appropriated ARPA funds for in April of 2022, she said, “I’m more concerned about responding to our people. … The reason we don’t have a funeral home can’t be because of timing?”
Goodfox agreed with Revard, insisting that with an appropriation made over two years ago, the tribe should not be struggling to commit to a contract by the end of 2024.
Chief Standing Bear said there is no “slow roll” and he never received a call to prioritize the funeral home.
He said that while the Nation could do a smaller project build on a funeral home, Congress’ existing plans are exorbitantly expensive and fail to show how a funeral home is going to benefit “the majority of our people.”
“No one has a real estimate of what cost it has to operate,” he added and said he proposes to take the ARPA money currently designated for the funeral home and put it toward other projects. “Then, go ahead and … trade gaming money from our casinos for that ARPA money,” he suggested.
The day after the heated session, Standing Bear spoke to Speaker Pam Shaw and other members of Congress, but no one mentioned “cutting back and making a very small funeral home. If that’s their view, I can change directions,” he said. “I’m open to being reasonable with them. … the cost of construction has gone up, but I think they underestimated the funeral [home] cost.”
Chief says Congress ‘need[s] to adapt’
Standing Bear said Congress needs to accept that the funeral home project outlook has changed due to cost, and they need to adapt.
“We need architecture and engineering on everything they wanted, but they’ve got to quit changing their minds. I thought we had what they wanted,” he said, expressing confusion over whether Congress would accept an “affordable and tiny” funeral home on a faster timeline.
In his view, “affordable and tiny” would constitute a place where the deceased can be embalmed and then families would coordinate with one of the three village chapels for the rest of the funeral.
In Congressional remarks, Revard described an affordable contingency plan, saying they could buy a home to convert into a funeral home – an option she characterized as preferable to further delay. “What is so special about a building?” she said.
As for Congress’ repeated questioning as to why planning was being outsourced to contractors, rather than going through the tribal housing department, Standing Bear said the small staff size makes greater reliance on internal projects unrealistic.
“We have a small staff. We don’t have that many more employees than we had ten years ago. I thought we liked small government, I do. … We have a small government. That’s why we have to contract it out,” said Standing Bear.
“Congress needs to understand,” he continued, “if they want me to double the size of the government, they’re going to have to talk to me about it. Our people are working as hard as we can. It takes real work, not imagined work. Real work.”
Congress, he concluded, is not taking realistic views of either project scope or timelines.
“All these projects you see throughout the Nation, we do them in very careful steps. We’ve rebuilt the arbors. We’ve rebuilt the community centers. We rebuilt the Hominy roundhouse. We put new Casinos in. Maybe we make it look too easy, but it’s not.”
Congress may deem Chief’s response ‘irrelevant’
Standing Bear said “he was not,” as Revard suggested, “turning around to somebody saying, ‘stop.’ Put it on pause.”
Yet some members of Congress said the Chief’s response to the funeral home was irrelevant.
“This is not the first instance that we’ve had this administration not carry out the will of this body. … I don’t care what the answer is at the end of a phone call right now and frankly, I don’t want it spoken at that podium,” said Potts.
He continued, “My Constitution gives my Chief the ability to voice his opinion on whether a bill becomes law – and that was on the signature on that bill. And if he doesn’t agree with it, then he vetoes it, and we have the ability to execute our authority. I don’t care what’s at the end of the phone call. His job is to faithfully execute the law as we pass it, and we passed it with a signature. That was the time to speak.”
Goodfox agreed. “If we need to put a pot of money to the side to go to court, I guess so be it.”
Keene said, “We make the law, the Chief executes the law when he signed it. Therefore, there’s no ‘why.’ It’s on us to seek another way to get it done.”
Keene also noted that Congress waited months for financial reports mandated by law and did nothing when the law wasn’t followed. “It’s on this body to decide collectively how we want to proceed … what are we going to do about that?” he said.
Branches at odds
Chief Standing Bear said the Congress is not addressing or communicating their expectations, and they are also under-communicating their desires on project scope as it relates to timelines.
Potts asserted that there is a structural problem between the Executive branch and Congress regarding bill collaboration, but Standing Bear disagreed.
He said Congress is issuing hostile rhetoric in session, but not sharing their concerns with him during meetings.
After the Sept. 5 and Sept. 6 Tsi Zho sessions, Standing Bear said he still received no whiff of dissatisfaction from Congress with the funeral home’s progress, budget or timeline.
“In person at our meeting with the Speaker and other Congress members, with several members of my staff, I brought up [the funeral home]. There was no major conversation,” he said. “We had a lot of projects to cover and we are cooperating very well. There has been absolutely no hostility from … any member of the Congress.”
