Settle the botched Indian trust case

An exasperated federal judge has reached a logical conclusion regarding a century of botched accounting by federal bureaucrats handling Indian trust accounts: The government failed, miserably.

Finally, a decent, honorable and ultimately expensive settlement may be in sight for Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, who filed suit in 1996 on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.The elemental issue is the failure of the U.S. government to be responsible stewards of oil, gas and timber receipts and other royalties held in trust from Indian lands as far back as 1887.

After 11 years of stalling by the Interior Department, U.S. District Judge James Robertson concluded that an accounting required by the lawsuit was an impossible task. No amount of CSI-style forensic number crunching would produce a fair, timely answer. For starters, no one could produce something as basic as a beginning balance for the Indian accounts.

Robertson, based in Washington, D.C., skewered both the bureaucracy and Congress in calling quits to the endless accounting. Bean counters attuned to stretching the work through their entire careers were one problem, but the judge also chided lawmakers for not spending the money necessary to do the job right.

In the tortured history of this case, one federal judge was successfully challenged and removed by government lawyers. A special master in the case resigned over the Bush administration withholding information. Officials during both the Clinton and Bush presidencies were cited for contempt.

Bottom-line, honest, credible answers could not be provided because of sloppy bookkeeping or outright destruction of records.

Settlement estimates are huge, and they lurch between $27 billion and $100 billion. Past legislative efforts to broker a compromise were in the $7 billion range.

Bring in outside experts to mediate a number and oversee the mechanics of a distribution. As daunting as those challenges might seem, they move in the right direction. Resolving a class-action suit cannot be more difficult than getting the federal government to shut up and start thinking about the check it will have to write.

The judge said the parties will meet again in a month. Their option is inescapable: Settle this travesty.