good morning the committee on natural resources will come to order please bipartisan list of twenty five co sponsors including thirteen members of this committee h r twenty five twenty three would amend the indian long term leasing act of one nine hundred fifty five to authorize indian tribes to negotiate and execute certain leases once travel regulations have been approved by the secretary of interior as tribal governments become more and more sophisticated in business savvy it sometimes becomes necessary to manda existing laws such as a case with the indian long term leasing act which authorizes tribes to enter into twenty five year leases every year traps come to our committee seek an extended lease and authority and nearly every year we amend the act to assist the tribes the navajo nation has long been a self governing and to deny command their ability to incorporate traditional government structures into their modern day government in two thousand legislation was passed to granted navajo nation the authority to negotiate and execute business agriculture public use religious educational recreational or residential leases of travel trust land without additional secretary approval once travel regulations i've been approved by the secretary of interior the measure that is the subject of today's hearing would extend that authority to all federally recognized tribes i want to thank the gentleman from new mexico mr heinrich for his valued leadership on this issue and for bringing this important legislation to our committee and the number of  twenty five twenty three although this bill is called the helping expedite and advance responsible tribal former home ownership act or the hearth act or short the legislation actually concerns more than just leasing of tribal lands for housing purposes it's fundamentally a congressional policy over recognize indian tribes and what i consider mr chairman to be the right direction from what i understand the impetus for the bill originated certain tribes that want to reduce the kind of red tape and any fish and see that is inherent within the federal bureaucracy while the provisions of the bill are strictly voluntary and nature i firmly believe that tribes which do choose to more control over leasing their land governed by separate indian mineral leasing laws which was amended in two thousand and five to give tribes control over energy development on their land through tribal areas to resource agreements as chairman i think it would be helpful for this committee in the near as anyone else they find a house they like they work with their bank to gain approval for financing for a mortgage and they make an offer to the seller however before they close on the sale they need approval from the bureau of indian affairs often unable to hold a mortgage approval for that long i know there are many families who would prefer to stay and raise children in the community where their family for generations but instead have moved to nearby cities because they want to the director of the bureau of indian affairs at the department of interior and i am here today to provide the department's testimony on a twenty five twenty three otherwise known as the hearth act which as you mentioned  long term leases did ministration in this department support tribal self determination and self governance we want to work closely with congress to address the lease approval processes that will help not just to expedite housing opportunities but economic and other developmental opportunities for tribes the departments we share the committee's desire to address these issues and we could support this bill if it was amended to address concerns that are laid out in the testimony we look forward to working with the committee and the staff to address these concerns as we understand it the purpose of the hearth act to certain sections of twenty five u s for fifteen told out at their discretion to approve and enter into certain leases without the approval of the secretary if those any federal you recognize indian tribes that drive with the same restrictions and we support the increase in authority to tribes but we do need to point out there be impacts to the department  that if it were passed for example we would like to clarify the secretary's trust responsibilities for enforcing tribal you approve leases we'd also like to study further  to evaluate including the process for the secretary to approve new departmental regulations secretarial process for approving tribal regulations the hard fact it also require functions we agree with the factors to be considered interview i set forth we look forward to working through our concerns with a committee that concludes my testimony and i would welcome your questions be consistent with the department's regulations right now for example we do not have specific residential lease regulations we are in the process of developing those so we would look to see if they're consistent with the regulations that we have on residential leases we do not have regulations so that's a little bit more of a difficult question to answer system of record for all of our records it is constantly being updated i would say we are it is not entirely current at any given moment because of the volume of the workload  build a timeline for that or not as i said we would have to staff up to make sure that did not take so long i think it would streamline the overall process if we don't have to approve the very much for making it out here to join us this morning and mr aravind executive director of the division of natural resources of the navajo nation mr i want to thank you very much for coming all the way this morning to talk resources chairman president surely also senses to you and your committee i also want to thank you for the opportunity to come before you today to testify concerning h r twenty five twenty three the heart that this lease and the heart that the navajo nation is the first tribal nation to be authorized to sign business and residential leases without prior approval of the bureau of indian affairs a corresponding tribal self determination contract or compact with the department of interior in july of two thousand and six president surely no longer will the navajo nation be required to final approval from the bureau of indian affairs develop its own land no will it be required to wait years for the federal government to responsibilities declared in the purpose of a streamlined process for guiding tribes through this federal bureaucracy is essential to the successful implementation of the second the cost of implementation has been fully born  points such as rock trees and natural landmarks these existing surveys are insufficient to probably assess in approve loan applications the navajo nation currently only has twenty five percent of our land confirmed by instrument privacy document control digital records and tribal trust documentation the navajo nation through division natural resources has moved forward implementing this data system within the natural man department to support records of activities or document control required by regulation the system is designed to expand services to other navajo divisions and apartments including navajo the navajo government this system is used to establish these processes however there is a has so far only transferred the cost and burdens of compiling and approving the lease information without benefits of allowing final conveyance both the heart and now a lease next month's improve a real commitment to transfer complete responsibility to the tribes not determination on that piece as far as the importance that we see with this project tremendous economic benefit not only in the ass aspects of wind power within the next two years so that doesn't rock project is very important to us it will bring additional capital to the nation that we can then expand on our economic development by looking at renewable development in the nation nation right now i don't have the leases but those are looking at equity and mortgage we've got about seventy five people who are ready to do that right now but we can't do it because we can't get the title conveyed over from the back to those individuals and we're not sure where it's it's like it goes into a black hole and we just wait for it to pop back out so we've gotten the documentation put together and we're just awaiting to convene so that in some instances it does come back that they have issues with the historic data which means we have to go back and fix all of that noted bringing our younger people back because i'd like to remind members of the committee who are the movers and shakers of your community it's that twenty five to four i call into soccer moms and the basketball that they're the ones with the energy they're the ones on the school council the ones on the city council they're the movers and shakers of a community we're looking at that process to begin to develop that whole process we've been doing this i've been pulling nickels and dimes out everywhere i can in order to get this thing going because we finally came to determination in two thousand and seven we can't wait let's just go do it and so that's what we've been doing looking at the development of that given the necessary personnel to follow through on that and because these records are so sensitive there has to be training and there has to be security involved in this so all of this cost money and right now like i said we're looking at eight to ten million to get ourselves up to speed in terms of initial personnel and then also getting the  data system in place so that we can convey that now we've done that with individual natural resources we're also conveying this over land parcels data so we can have not only surface information description but also  because within my division i have all those areas as well as cultural mineral rights water rights all those parcels of land but again it starts from the very basics we only have twenty five percent of our land in the national parcels of land and so basically what we're looking at congresswoman is eventually coming to the point where we take over the title plan that we have under our jurisdiction or n follow through it we have to do an environmental we have to do an archaeological we have to do all those things what we've now designated is to have chapters go out and develop a plan by which they are now the only way they can actually get things going is to get a new system new computer system altogether i think they started it got a new computer system about four or five years ago and it was antiquated m or something like that then they wouldn't have the problem of not being able to update their software or hardware timely and that would be comparable to the tribe system you know we're we're we're probably in the twenty first century to be still in the nineteenth century you know we have the laptop computer do getting rid of some of the backlog that they have funny again everything i think points to funding you know