The House of Representatives passed a bill which would cement an agreement that gives Tribal governments the power to manage oversight of child welfare issues in partnership with the state. The agreement was reached in 2017 between the state of Alaska and Tribes under Gov. Bill Walker and continued in 2019 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The Alaska House Coalition reports that the state’s existing services are often under resourced in rural Alaska, which leads to a disproportionate number of Alaska Native children in state custody.
In his decision to vote against passage of House Bill 184, District 29 Rep. Ben Carpenter said, “I know that we’ve got some issues in our state in regards to OCS that need to be addressed and the dividing line or the inclusion of the problems in rural villages in rural parts of the state, the problem is larger there than it is in urban settings. That seems to be statistically what we’re looking at. The question that I have concerned over is occasionally OCS fails our families and our kids. There’s a process that happens when that’s the case. With the Tribal Compact Services arrangement or agreement that we have, what happens when that fails the family or the child? The question I’ve got is who’s responsible? If we’re, and I guess what I’m circling around to is the last sentence in the bill that talks about a government-to-government relationship. Who has responsibility when something goes wrong? Of course we don’t want things to go wrong, we want them to go right, but what happens when they go wrong? Who has responsibility? In this regard, which government has the responsibility? Does the Tribal government have responsibility for the failure or is it the state of Alaska government that has responsibility for the failure?”
The compact was designed for Tribal organizations to provide local child welfare programs on behalf of the state and offers the ability to leverage expanded Tribal resources to families. If fully implemented, the approach would improve the state’s existing services.
House Bill 184 passed 35-4 and now heads to the Senate for consideration.
Transcribed audio courtesy of KTOO 360TV.
