25 U.S.C. § 4043 — Authorities and functions of Special Trustee

(a) Strategic plan. (1) Within 1 year after the first appointment under section 4042(b), the Special Trustee^* must, after consulting Indian tribes and appropriate Indian organizations, submit to the Secretary^*, the House Natural Resources Committee, and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee a comprehensive plan for every phase of the trust-management business cycle. The plan must ensure that the Secretary properly and efficiently carries out trust responsibilities to tribes and individual Indians in compliance with this chapter. (2) The plan must identify all reforms needed in the Department^*, Bureau^*, Bureau of Land Management, and Minerals Management Service policies, procedures, practices, and systems; provide ways for tribes to help manage their trust accounts and identify investment options consistent with the Secretary’s trust duties that can promote community economic development; and set a timetable, including a proposed Office^*-termination date. (b) Duties. (1) The Special Trustee must oversee related reform efforts in the Bureau, BLM, and Minerals Management Service and ensure policies, procedures, systems, and practices let the Secretary comply with this chapter. (2) For the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Trustee must monitor reconciliation of tribal and Individual Indian Money accounts so holders receive a fair and accurate accounting; ensure policies, procedures, and systems properly account for, invest, and maximize trust-money returns within statutory limits and provide timely periodic reports of collections, payments, investments, and returns; and ensure complete, accurate, timely ownership and lease data for Indian lands. (3) The Trustee must ensure BLM policies and practices enforce federal drilling, production, accountability, environmental-protection, and safety requirements for Indian-land leases. (4) The Trustee must ensure the Minerals Management Service enforces timely and accurate production and royalty reporting, including auditing leases to check production and royalty calculations. (c) Coordinated policies. The Trustee must ensure agency policies and systems are coordinated, consistent, integrated, and described in comprehensive written procedures for each trust-management phase; standardized trust-accounting procedures are used throughout the Bureau; the Bureau’s investment, general-ledger, and subsidiary-accounting systems are integrated and adequate; the Bureau land-records system interfaces with trust accounting; and MMS and BLM asset systems interface with the Bureau’s appropriate asset and accounting systems. MMS must properly collect, account for, and pay the Bureau royalties and other Indian-land-lease revenues. BLM and the Bureau must give landholders timely periodic reports of all Indian-resource-lease transactions. (5)(A) Each fiscal year the Trustee must develop, with participating program managers’ advice, a consolidated Trust Management program budget proposal that enables efficient discharge of trust duties and implementation of the plan, and submit it to the Secretary, OMB Director, and Congress. (B) Each participating manager must send the Trustee the office budget request when it sends it to superiors and before sending it to OMB for the President’s budget. (C) The Trustee must review each request, certify in writing whether it is adequate to discharge the trust duties and implement the plan effectively and efficiently, and notify the manager. (D) The Trustee must keep certification records. (E) A manager may not submit, and an Interior official may not approve or authorize, a reprogramming or transfer involving appropriated trust-management funds in the budget unless the Trustee approved it. (d) Problem resolution. The Trustee must give needed guidance to help Department personnel identify problems and solutions and implement reforms. (e) Access. The Trustee and staff may access all Department records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, files, other material, and officers and employees that the Trustee considers necessary. (f) Annual report. Each year the Trustee must report to the Secretary and the two congressional committees on agency progress in carrying out the plan’s reforms and timetable.