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- By Native News Online Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A team of researchers from three leading universities released a proposal for fairly allocating $8 billion earmarked for tribal governments under Title V of the CARES Act.
The proposal follows a study earlier this month by researchers from Harvard, the University of Arizona and UCLA that suggests the Trump Administration miscalculated in its initial distribution of $4.8 billion to many of the 574 federally recognized tribes.
In a new report, the researchers proposed a three-part formula that puts 60 percent weight on each tribe’s population of enrolled citizens; a 20 percent weight on each tribe’s total of tribal government and tribal enterprise employees; and a 20 percent weight on each tribe’s predicted rate of coronavirus infections.
Treasury’s first distribution of $4.8 billion to tribes in early May was “rife with arbitrariness and error,” the researchers said, adding that the new proposal straightforwardly allows Treasury to correct these problems such that the overall $8 billion is allocated equitably across the tribes.
Read the full report here.
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