ANCs compete with tribes for $8B in relief

      Congress allotted $8 billion for COVID-19 relief in Indian Country, but distribution has become contentious after it became clear that the Treasury Dept. is allowing Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) to be eligible for the funds.

      Leaders of federally-recognized tribal governments sought CARES Act funding to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

      However, they later learned that the Treasury Dept. is allowing ANCs to apply for the funding, which is likely to greatly reduce the tribal governments’ share, Kevin Allis, chief executive officer of the National Congress of American Indians, told Law360.

      Allis said the tribal governments believe Congress intended the coronavirus relief money to go to tribal governments and not to ANCs, which are for-profit corporations with shareholders.

      Many of the ANCs are involved in federal contracting under the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development program. In 2018, the 13 ANCs had revenues of $10.5 billion.

      On April 20, six tribes filed for an injunction to block the Treasury Dept. from distributing any of the $8 billion to ANCs. They claim the CARES Act language defining who is eligible for the funds does not include ANCs.

      The ANCs are pushing back. Several representatives wrote an opinion column in the Indian Country Today online publication on April 16 asserting that Congress intended the ANCs to be eligible for sharing the $8 billion.

      “The CARES Act is unambiguous: Alaska Native villages, Alaska Native regional corporations, and Alaska Native village corporations are ‘tribes’ under the law,” the ANC representatives wrote.

      But Allis says that is not the case. "You have to make the stretch that the board of a corporation incorporated under state law is somehow a governing body in a political sense to give it the status that would be necessary to receive government relief funds," Allis told Law360.

More information:
Law360: https://bit.ly/2RZFgue
and: https://bit.ly/2XQJQ1z
Indian Country Today story: https://bit.ly/2KA3UgZ

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