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In a debate timed to coincide with the Sept. 21 opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, three lawyers offered diverging perspectives on whether a federal judge has overstepped his boundaries in adjudicating a longstanding dispute over the Interior Department's handling of Indian trust funds.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered the Interior Department to sever Internet connections three times while presiding over the Cobell v. Norton case. The class action lawsuit, initiated in 1996 by Eloise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and executive director of the Native American Community Development Corp., alleges that the Interior Department has mismanaged the Indian trust for more than 100 years.

Lamberth first took the unusual step of asking the Interior Department to disconnect computers from the Web in December 2001, after learning of potential weaknesses in Interior's system for securing electronic trust fund records. In the ensuing court battles, he also held Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt of court.

The Interior Department has mismanaged the trust fund, but Lamberth abused his power by disrupting the department's Internet connections and holding Norton in contempt, said Richard Pierce, a law professor at The George Washington University, during the debate Tuesday. Pierce is the author of a controversial law review article entitled "Judge Lamberth's Reign of Terror at the Department of Interior."

Keith Harper, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in Cobell, and Jamin Raskin, a professor specializing in constitutional law at American University's Washington College of Law, challenged Pierce to the debate to give him an opportunity to defend that article.

In Pierce's view, the judge has engaged in a "constant stream of unfounded attacks" against government officials. The attacks are often defamatory, unnecessary and detrimental to the careers of Cabinet secretaries, government lawyers and other federal officials, he said.

Computer shutdowns at the Interior Department have had a serious impact on the agency's ability to carry out its mission, Pierce argued. The Bureau of Indian Affairs within Interior remained offline for years after Lamberth's orders.

But Harper and Raskin discounted Pierce's arguments as an attempt to undermine an important case. Aggressive action is needed to solve a problem "Interior has refused to fix" and hold officials accountable for mismanagement, Harper said.

The Interior Department acts as a trustee of the fund, and failure to manage billions of dollars properly has "sucked the financial lifeblood" out of communities, Harper said. Without Lamberth's drastic actions, Interior officials may never have felt any pressure to shape up their management practices, he said.

"At what point, if not now, do we say a federal court can intervene?" Harper asked.

Harper added that Lamberth appropriately asked Interior to disrupt Internet service for computers connected to the trust fund records. A broader disruption became necessary only because of the department's "outdated" computer systems, he said, a circumstance beyond Lamberth's control.

Park and Report

Former National Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers' case for reinstatement may have picked up indirect support last week when a National Academy of Public Administration report concluded that the Park Police need more resources to do its job successfully, but NAPA officials contend that calling for more resources was not the report's intent.

Chambers was fired July 9 after she told The Washington Post in December 2003 that the agency needed 800 additional officers and faced a $12 million shortfall. The Park Police placed her on administrative leave later that week.

In its concluding remarks, the NAPA report states that the Park Police need more resources. "Given its heightened responsibilities after 9/11 for protection of the nation's most important icons and urban national parks, USPP cannot be an effective guardian of urban national parks and also attempt to be a full-service urban police force without a substantial increase in resources."

William Gadsby, vice president of NAPA studies, said those comments were taken out of context in a Tuesday Washington Post article. The piece, Gadsby said, likely led to a letter from House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., to Interior Secretary Gale Norton quoting a section of the report that says the Park Police need more resources and that NAPA's report echoes the comments for which Chambers was fired.

"It would appear the grounds for her removal were far more tenuous and insubstantial than has been claimed and demand to be critically reexamined," Hoyer said in the Sept. 21 letter. "The report strengthens the conviction shared by many that Chief Chambers was removed from her post for reasons that had nothing to do with competence, but because she dared to tell the truth about an important security matter."

The Post printed a correction on Wednesday.

"If you take the time to look at the report, the primary message of this report is that they need to set a priority-setting process so they can sort out what they should be doing and what they should not be doing," Gadsby said. "If you don't move to set priorities, you can't do all things, so you have to make a choice."

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which is representing Chambers, closing arguments in her reinstatement case ended Sept. 14 and Judge Elizabeth Bogle of the Merit Systems Protection Board will make her decision within the next few weeks.

COMMENTS

• "If you don't move to set priorities, you can't do all things, so you have to make a choice." Huh? Even if one does set priorities, all things typically don't get accomplished. With inadequate resources, all needed things can't get done. That's what setting priorties is about, selecting choices intelligently rather than in an ad hoc manner. GovExec.com reader Posted September 28, 2004 12:49 PM