Copyright © 1998 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Cherokee Press Association
Copyright © 1998 CPA
All Rights Reserved

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Auditors Launch Probe
"Into Cherokee Use of HUD Funds"

By Donna Hales
Muskogee Phoenix Staff Writer

Copyright © 1998 Muskogee Phoenix
All Rights Reserved

Published in the Muskogee Daily Phoenix &
Times Democrat, Thursday, January 22, 1998

Federal auditors began a probe Wednesday into whether the Cherokee Nation has properly spent federal funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

U.S. Senators. Jim Inhofe and Don Nickles and U.S. Rep. Tom Coburn, all Oklahoma Republicans, requested the investigation. Two HUD auditors and their supervisor, the assistant district inspector general for audit, are to be involved in the investigation.

"They (tribal accounting officials) are pulling the documents requested and cooperating," said Harold DeMoss, a tribal councilor who attended a Wednesday afternoon meeting with HUD Senior Auditor, Lon Kelster, at the tribal complex.

Kelster told tribal officials the objective of the investigation is to find out whether the tribe has withdrawn HUD grant funds according to its agreements with HUD. Auditors will determine if withdrawals are supported by expenditures and if expenditures were for eligible items according to a document provided to DeMoss and others at the meeting. Councilor expects investigation to answer questions about tribe's home renovations

The probe is to include open grants administered by the nation and at the least one Cherokee Housing Authority grant. The housing authority is a state agency located in Tahlequah but separate from the tribe's community development HUD projects.

DeMoss said the investigation should answer questions about the legality of the tribe's community development program spending more than $22,500 in HUD funds to renovate the home of a non-Indian. Sammie Hoskins, the mother of tribal Councilor Chuck Hoskin s.

Chuck Hoskins is on the committee that oversees community development projects. He told the Phoenix earlier that he didn't vote on whether to continue with the project involving his mother's home. His Indian father died before the work on his home began. He said he believed his mother was entitled to the help because she was married to his full-blood Cherokee father "for 53 years and raised three Indian children."

The renovations were started in January 1996, after his father died in December 1995. His mother is living with him and has never returned to the home, which is sitting empty, Hoskins said in December 1997. He said his mother plans to move into the home, but didn't say when.

Bud Squirrel, director of community development, told the Phoenix earlier this month that HUD was not notified that the Indian home owner died before the project began.

All forms sent in to HUD in connection with the renovation project were sent in the dead man's name, not his non-Indian wife's name, Squirrel confirmed. He said application for the HUD renovation funds require a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood card an d number.

Squirrel said in December that one other non-Indian widow of a Cherokee whose house was slated for HUD renovations also received the renovations after her husband died. He said this month that forms were turned in as though the work was done on an Indian home.

A former acting director of community development, Steve Woodall, said political pressures were applied to move people ahead on lists and to spend more on renovations than HUD allowed.

In fiscal year 1996, the over-runs were about $250,000, Woodall said. Tribal funds were used to make up the difference. But there was no vote of the council to use those tribal funds, he said. The committee of which Hoskins is a member, authorized the tri bal funds be used, Woodall said. There was more spent on the Hoskins home than the $20,000 maximum HUD allowed, Woodall said.