Navajo Nation Council special session started and debate heating up over list of capital improvement projects for the Navajo Reservation’s 110 chapters. It’s now 12:46 pm and the Council chamber is filling up with chapter officials to show their support for their CIPs so the Council will finally approve a Five Year CIP Plan, which prior Council’s since the mid-1980s have failed to do because each Delegate wants his or her chapters’ CIPs on the list.

DELEGATE LORENZO BATES
Remember the law, Appropriations Act, because it mandates that all CIPs go through a process and if CIPs are coming from the Council floor without going through the CIP process then the Council must waive those portions of the law.

DELEGATE LORENZO CURLEY
According to the provisions of the Appropriations Act, it states that all the projects have to be Project Ready and they all have to have gone through process. And so were they all processed according to the law? I have some projects submitted to CIP Office and they don’t appear on the list. And this list has projects that are outdated and some have even been completed. And I want to ask Mr. Bates, if the mere fact that projects were submitted to the CIP Office, does that make projects in compliance with law.

DELEGATE LORENZO BATES
I don’t know.

DELEGATE KATHERINE BENALLY
legislation 0118-13 has projects and each project has work sheet that asks if language wrong, did it get design, did it get approval from chapters.