Baker talks about taking the helm at Rocky Boy's reservation

Harlan Baker said he remembers how a massive flood in 2010 devastated Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation and upended the lives of its residents.

"You had people that had no place to go during that time," Baker said. "There were families that were displaced. There were people who couldn't get out of their homes because the roads were washed out."

Now it is Baker who people at Rocky Boy will look toward in times of turmoil and tranquility.

  Baker, a two-term member of Rocky Boy's governing council, the Chippewa Cree Business Committee, was elected chair of the committee in November. He defeated fellow Business Committee member Beau Mitchell after the two beat four other candidates, including then-chairman Ken St. Marks, in the October primary.

New health clinic

The 2010 flood destroyed Rocky Boy's health clinic, and one of Baker's his priorities is completion of its replacement.

Construction of the new facility has been carried out in phases, Baker said.

He said if the tribe receives the next round of funding from the federal government as expected, the new clinic should be open by August.

Debt

The financial debt the tribe now carries is another consequences of that flood and several successive floods that hit the reservation between 2010 and 2014.

Baker said the tribe spent $30 million in projects from flood damage.

Instead of receiving federal disaster relief money through the state, the tribe signed what Baker said was an unprecedented agreement with FEMA in this region to directly receive the money from the federal government, rather than through the state.

Of the nearly $30 million, the tribe was reimbursed $12 million. The tribe had to go $18 million in debt to pay for the rest, Baker said.

"It was a learning curve, and we learned a hard lesson," he said.

Baker said the agreement between the tribe and FEMA was something new for both parties at the time, and both could have gone about things better.

One of the problems, Baker said, was FEMA approached the tribe as if it was a city or county rather than a reservation.

"We're not like a municipality. We don't have a tax base to survive off of," he said.

Water project

Another longtime project Baker is hoping to see complete the Rocky Boy's North Central Montana Regional Water system project. The project will provide an estimated 30,000 people on the reservation and north-central Montana counties off the reservation with treated water.

"I hope to see that water coming to Rocky Boy, to my people," Baker said. "At the end of the day, it is a health thing for our people. Clean water, clean and healthy water."

Baker said the project, authorized by Congress in 2002, is one of the largest water projects of its kind, and is now estimated to cost more than $300 million.

The project includes a water treatment plant at Tiber Dam that would treat up to 34 million gallons of water a day, an intake facility and more than 100 miles of pipe.

However, when Congress authorized the funding, they did not include the full necessary funding for the project, Baker said. The project is funded in pieces.

The tribe must lobby Congress each year to advance the project, he said.

The federal government temporarily froze funding to the project in 2013 after the U.S Department of the Interior's Inspector General discovered that millions of federal dollars Congress authorized for the project had gone missing.

A complicated embezzlement scheme involved theft of federal funds authorized for the water project, as well as other projects at Rocky Boy, and included several prominent officials who have since pleaded guilty and been sentenced.

Baker said the freeze did not significantly impact the project. The federal government now reimburses the tribe for completed projects.

He said the arrangement also requires the tribal government to work on keeping better records and becoming more fiscally responsible.

Baker said the intake facility has been completed and 19 miles of pipe has been laid. He said he hopes the tribe will break ground on the project's water treatment facility this spring.

Economic development

Baker said distance from other communities makes economic development and attracting private business difficult.

"We're so remotely located that any kind of economic development is a hard sell for us," he said.

One place where Baker said the tribe sees opportunity is with Plain Green, the online lending business owned by the tribe and located on the reservation.

He said the tribe hopes jobs and revenue generated by Plain Green, can spur greater economic development.

However, as a lender, Plain Green which provides short term loans online, faces difficulties in meeting federal regulations.

That includes regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a U.S agency created under the 2010 Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

"They are making it a little tough for that business to survive, but those are issues we are dealing with internally," he said.

Police department

The reservation is also looking for a new police chief. Allen Primeau was suspended in May before being terminated in October.

At the time of his dismissal, Primeau said he did not know why he was fired.

In a press release, the Law and Order Subcommittee said at the time that the subcommittee received multiple complaints of Primeau physically and verbally abusing prisoners.

The statement said that video footage emerged of Primeau behaving inappropriately with a fellow officer, though it did not go into greater detail.

Primeau later described the video as him engaging in horseplay with another officer.

Baker would not go into detail about the circumstances surrounding Primeau's firing, only saying that the position for a new police chief is now posted nationwide and that they hope to have a candidate for the position within the coming weeks.

Baker, who was chair of the Law and Order subcommittee during his first term on the Business Committee, said he hopes to reorganize the department by lessening the administrative burden on the police chief.

Baker said the police department and jail are both overseen by the chief of police and that's is creating some overlap and difficulties.

"What I am hoping [to do] is to separate that out so that it lessens the administrative responsibilities on the chief of police and he can concentrate basically on law enforcement," Baker said.

Better communications

Only a month into his term, Baker said he is looking forward to his time as chairman, with two new members on the business committee and better communication.

Baker said whenever he is in the tribal office building, his door is always open to those who want to come to him with questions and concerns.

He said each Monday he and the business committee have what he calls Monday Roundtables, where they get together for coffee and openly discuss issues in an informal setting.

"We all kind of know what everybody is doing, what direction we are moving," Baker said.

The position of tribal chair brings with it more responsibilities than those of a business committee member. The chair must put his name on every funding contract and grant that comes to the tribe and the daily responsibilities are greater and more numerous.

Baker said that his time on the Business Committee gave him some experience of the challenges that lay ahead in his new position.

"I am sure as a councilman, I had sleepless nights, and I am sure I will have sleepless nights as a chairman," he said.