Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is delivering on its promise to allow Tribal governments and organizations to consolidate important federal funding for job training, workforce development, and other economic development purposes into a single plan, with a single reporting requirement, administered by the Department of the Interior. The new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to implement the Tribal “477 Program,” named for Public Law 102-477, has been signed by 12 federal agencies—including the Departments of the Interior, Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and Justice—and will go into effect immediately.
The 477 Program requires an interagency MOA to facilitate meetings between participating Tribes and federal agencies, to prepare an annual review of achievements, and to create a forum for resolving interagency differences and conflicts between the federal government and Tribes in administering the statute. The last MOA was signed by the same 12 federal agencies in 2018 without Tribal consultation. Tribes have been clear since that MOA was signed that it made it more difficult for them to take advantage of the program and consolidate their funding, and they immediately sought the renegotiation of the MOA.
In October 2021, Vice President Harris addressed the Annual Convention of the National Congress of American Indians and committed that the...
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