Opinion ID: 779976
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: New or Expanded Contracts

Text: 47 As all parties agree, the 1996 and 1997 Appropriations Acts specifically addressed funding for new or expanded tribal contracts: $7,500,000 shall remain available until expended [for the ISD Fund] ... for the transitional costs of initial or expanded tribal contracts. 110 Stat. 1321-189, 110 Stat. 3009-212, 213. As all parties also agree, tribes requested far more than the $7.5 million available for new or expanded contracts, and, pursuant to its queue or priority list system, the IHS awarded CSC funds to tribes ahead of plaintiffs on the priority list. 48 Plaintiffs argue that the shall remain available language placed no cap or limit on the amount of CSC funds which could be awarded to tribes for new or expanded programs, so IHS' failure to award more than the $7.5 million violated both the ISDA and plaintiffs' compacts with the government. We disagree. 49 The Ninth Circuit in Shoshone-Bannock Tribes considered this very issue. It concluded as follows: 50 The appropriation language is arguably ambiguous. The language, $7.5 million shall remain available until expended is not an unambiguous cap, as was the of which not to exceed language of the [1995] appropriation. By themselves, the words might mean that $7.5 million is available, without necessarily implying that other money is unavailable. Alternatively, they could mean that, of the total appropriation, only $7.5 million is available for the contract support costs. The House Appropriations Committee provided explanatory language in its report on the appropriation. The Committee Report speaks to a concern it had to contain the cost escalation in contract support costs, and says [t]he Committee has provided $7,500,000 for the Indian Self-Determination Fund ... to be used for new and expanded contracts. This Committee Report language lends itself to the second reading, that only $7.5 million is available, not the first. The most natural reading is that the Committee gave attention to how much of the total appropriation should go to contract support costs for new and expanded contracts and decided that $7.5 million was all they wanted to spend. 51 Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, 279 F.3d at 666 (footnote omitted). 52 The Ninth Circuit found further support for its conclusion in § 314, by which, the court opined, Congress eliminated the ambiguity retroactively. Id. Thus, the court concluded: 53 The availability language in the fiscal year 1996 appropriation either plainly limits the funds available for contract support to the $7.5 million appropriated for that purpose or, if we were to take the interpretation most favorable to the Tribes, is at best ambiguous, leaving room for an argument that the remaining $1.7 billion is also available. But the ambiguity, if there is any, is cleared away, both by the Appropriations Committee report explaining the $7.5 million appropriation when it was made and, with no possible ambiguity, by the 1999 that's all there is language in § 314. 54 Id. at 667. 55 Plaintiffs respond that the term shall remain available has a particular meaning in appropriations law: the language in the ISD provision is about when a stated sum of money may be spent after the current fiscal year on CSCs for `initial or expanded' contracts, not how much may be spent in the current year for that purpose. Appellants' Op. Br. at 35. But the two decisions of the Comptroller General plaintiffs cite in support of that interpretation do not, in our view, support it. 10 We agree with the Ninth Circuit that a better reading of the language is that Congress intended to limit the amount available for new or expanded CSCs to $7.5 million.