by an Osage citizen
The record holds every document this rests on.
The first things the Osage Nation moved to close were the school where its children learn to speak Osage and the farm built to feed its people. The Executive Branch named one cause: a $60 million budget figure it called the driver of an emergency.
Osage law at 15 ONC § 1A-104 requires Congress to set that figure and does not say how to calculate it. This is a record of where the number came from and what the enacted documents and recordings establish, set beside what they do not, so you can weigh for yourself whether that figure accounts for what happened.
In early August 2026, Daposka Ahnkodapi, our people’s immersion school, closed days before classes were to begin. The Osage Nation Visitors Center, which receives visitors to Osage country, closed soon after; most enrolled Osage live off the reservation, which makes visitors of our own people too. Harvest Land is scheduled to close on December 31. Executive Order 26-01 cited “shortfalls with projected revenue and constraints in the budgetary outlay.”
One number sits at the center of what followed.
Congress established a $60 million Executive Branch outlay for FY2027.
The Chief who later named that figure as the emergency’s driver had voted for it four months earlier as a member of Congress. He had also voted in 2020 for the act that abolished the Revenue Advisory Commission and removed the former explanation of what an outlay was for.
The enacted acts and roll calls establish his participation. They cannot establish what he personally understood or intended.
Osage law defines an outlay as anticipated expenditures for a fiscal year. 15 ONC § 1A-104 requires Congress to set one for each branch, but does not say how to calculate it.
In 2026, the Executive Branch treated the $60 million figure as a spending constraint and named it as the driver of a State of Emergency.
Congress had used the figure as a limit before. In September 2023, it reduced budget requests to bring them under the Executive Branch outlay. For FY2026, Congress set every branch’s outlay at $0 and then appropriated $75.9 million to the Executive Branch. At a September 10, 2025 Appropriations Committee meeting, a member described it as the first time since the outlay limits were applied to law that the Executive Branch had no number “that they had to try to fit into.” The next outlay was $60 million for FY2027, but the closures began in August 2026, while the FY2026 appropriations were still in effect. The fiscal-year limit and the program closures therefore operated on different calendars.
Three numbers that are not the same
Three figures formed the sequence: Congress enacted a $60 million outlay, the Chief asked to raise it to $82 million, and the administration said departments had submitted nearly $98 million in requests. When the Chief said approximately $38 million in reductions were needed, he was comparing the requests with the enacted outlay. Neither figure was the enacted projected revenue, which Congress set at $90,958,077. The table separates the categories.
| Figure | What it is | Who set it |
|---|---|---|
| $90,958,077 | Projected revenue: what Congress expects the Nation to take in | Congress, ONCR 26-12 |
| $60,000,000 | Executive Branch outlay: required by law, with no calculation method stated in 15 ONC § 1A-104 | Congress, ONCR 26-12 |
| Nearly $98,000,000 | Departmental requests: what Executive Branch departments asked for | Executive Branch departments |
Osage law requires Congress to set projected revenue and each branch's outlay in an annual resolution. Congress must adopt that resolution before it introduces annual appropriation bills. (15 ONC §§ 1A-104(A), 1A-104(D), 1A-105(D))
Projected revenue can change. Congress raised the FY2026 projection from $88,310,077 to $97,610,077 on the first day of that fiscal year. The FY2025 audit later identified $7,223,992 in retained revenue available for future appropriation. The enacted revenue resolutions and audit summaries collected for this record do not state the amount held in reserves or owed on prior-year obligations, or how much projected revenue is expected to recur.
These figures do different jobs. Congress uses an appropriation to give a department budget authority to incur obligations. Projected revenue is what Congress expects the Nation to take in. The outlay is the branch figure defined above. A branch can be over its outlay and still inside projected revenue: the Osage Constitution caps the annual budget at projected revenue, not at any branch’s outlay (Art. VI § 24). Projected revenue does not include the mineral estate, which the record addresses separately.
The nearly $98 million in requests clears the $60 million outlay by roughly $38 million, and clears the $90,958,077 projected-revenue ceiling by roughly $7 million: the gap the Constitution actually caps is a fraction of the gap the outlay figure describes.
What changed in 2020
Until 2020, Osage law said what an outlay was for and gave a Revenue Advisory Commission a role in setting it. ONCA 20-40 removed that language and repealed the Commission. The act left the duty to establish an outlay in place.
| Osage law, 2019 to 2020 | Osage law today |
|---|---|
| A Revenue Advisory Commission approved revenue estimates | Commission repealed |
| Congress set outlays using those approved estimates | No replacement method stated in § 1A-104 |
| Outlays stated what each branch should budget | That sentence removed |
| Outlays were set five years ahead | Five-year requirement removed |
| Appropriations restricted to no more than 98% of projected revenue | Restriction removed |
| Branch budgets were due to Congress by July 15 | Deadline moved to August 15 |
| An outlay was required | An outlay is still required |
With the cap removed, the binding ceiling is the constitutional one: the annual budget may not exceed projected revenue (Osage Nation Constitution, Art. VI § 24).
Two provisions remained. The Code still defines a budget outlay as “the amount of anticipated expenditures for a given fiscal year,” and § 1A-104 still requires Congress to establish one. ONCA 20-40 removed the sentence saying that outlays stated what each branch should budget. The definition describes anticipated spending. Article VI § 24 places the annual-budget ceiling at projected revenue.
How we got here
March 2017. Osage voters amend the Constitution at a special election, requiring that the budgetary process be set forth in Osage law. The vote comes while the Standing Bear v. Pratt case is under way, and passes with 82.18 percent in favor on a turnout of 1,470 of 15,007 registered voters.
2019. Congress answers with the Budget Control Act, creating the Revenue Advisory Commission and writing into law what outlays are for: the amount each branch should budget.
February 2020. The Commission approves revenue estimates, the only time it ever does.
FY2026. The stated outlay is $0 for every branch. Congress appropriates $75.9 million to the Executive Branch anyway.
April 2026. Congress adopts ONCR 26-12 on April 27, reusing the FY2025 figure of $60 million for FY2027. Chief Tillman takes office July 11.
August 2026. The Executive Branch declares a State of Emergency and identifies the $60 million outlay as its driver. The closures are announced the next day. Ten days after the declaration, the Chief lifts it and asks Congress to raise the outlay to $82 million. The closures stand.
August 25, 2026. In his first interview since taking office, Chief Tillman says nearly $98 million in departmental requests against a $60 million outlay meant the administration had to “slam on the brakes.”
September 2, 2026. Eleven of the twelve members of Congress approve an Authorization to Retain Special Counsel, filed and certified by the Clerk under Rule 12.1, to investigate three allegations that, “if true, would constitute grounds for removal” of the Chief. Two of the three concern the State of Emergency and the closure of the three programs. Authorizing the investigation begins fact-finding; what the law provides sets out the procedure and where it stops, and the special counsel page tracks the process itself as it moves forward.
What is established, and what is not
The record establishes what the enacted documents and the recordings say: the votes, the figures, the language removed in 2020, and the words officials used.
The recordings show how the FY2027 figure was chosen. In April 2026, the member presenting the outlays told the Appropriations Committee that 15 ONC § 1A-104 does not explain how to calculate one. The committee returned to the FY2025 figure because FY2026 had stated the outlays as zero.
The departmental requests: The recordings and public releases collected here do not include the instructions or goals departments received when preparing nearly $98 million in requests.
The asserted shortfall: The financial documents collected in the record include audited statements for FY2023 and FY2025, but no report covering FY2026, which ends on September 30, 2026. Those statements do not show FY2026 collection trends, the Executive Branch’s cash position in July 2026, or the calculation behind the projected-revenue shortfall cited in Executive Order 26-01.
The closures: The releases, orders and appropriation acts collected here do not identify the authority relied on to halt the funded programs or who made each closure decision. At an August 10 committee hearing, a speaker urged Congress to compel sworn testimony on those decisions, the asserted shortfall’s relationship to $7.2 million in audited retained revenue, and the Executive Branch’s FY2027 timeline.
Where the record leaves us
The outlay has served different purposes over time. In 2019, Congress described it as an amount the branches should not exceed when preparing their budgets. In 2023, Congress reduced requests to bring them below the outlay. Congress has also appropriated above an outlay, including in FY2025, and appropriated more than $75 million in FY2026 after setting the Executive Branch outlay at zero.
Using the FY2027 outlay to constrain departmental requests therefore had precedent. The unresolved issue is how that budget constraint became the basis for a State of Emergency and the immediate closure of existing programs.
The timing also places the outlay vote beside the Nation’s stated priorities. In December 2025, the 2026-2030 Osage Nation Strategic Plan, based on eighteen listening sessions and 1,275 completed surveys, ranked Cultural Preservation, Sovereignty and Education among the Nation’s four highest priorities. It described language immersion as strengthening identity and intergenerational knowledge, identified Harvest Land as advancing food sovereignty, and listed the expanded Pawhuska Visitors Center among the Nation’s recent accomplishments. Congress adopted the $60 million outlay four months later. The Executive Branch announced the three closures four months after that. The program-level record sets out what each program did, what it was funded, and what the reviewed sources leave unanswered.
Reviewed in full, the plan did not require the government to preserve these programs in their existing forms. It does show that the closures reached beyond an accounting exercise and affected institutions connected to the Nation’s stated direction.
On August 14, the Chief lifted the emergency and asked Congress to raise the outlay from $60 million to $82 million. The closures remained. The public materials reviewed here still do not explain the separate projected-revenue shortfall, the authority relied on for each closure, why these programs were selected, what savings each will produce, or why the closures preceded the request to amend the outlay.
Those explanations may exist within the government. They do not yet appear.
What remains is a sequence. The school and the farm, tied to priorities the Nation set for itself, were closed first. So was the Pawhuska Visitors Center, a place that served outsiders and the many Osage citizens who return home as visitors. The emergency that justified the closures was lifted after ten days. The closures were not. The figure at the center was reached by reusing an earlier year’s number, under 15 ONC § 1A-104, which commands the figure and offers no method to set it, and the Chief who named it as the emergency’s driver had voted to adopt it as a legislator. The year before, the same outlay was set at zero while Congress appropriated more than $75 million to the Executive Branch, so it had not, that year, bound what the branch could spend. The limit itself was the outlay for FY2027, the fiscal year that begins October 1, and one Congress can revise at any time, while the programs the Executive Branch closed were already funded for the year under way. A citizen is left to ask why the losses fell where they did, and why they still stand.
A fuller reading of what this may mean is set out separately, as opinion rather than record.
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The record is the full account, with every source shown. Reference documents are the enacted PDFs behind every figure.
About this record
I am an Osage citizen, and this record is independent. No official named in this record was asked for comment before publication; any who respond publicly will have their responses incorporated as they become available. This record rests on public material: enacted legislation and resolutions, recordings of Congressional and committee proceedings, financial documents, public records, published reporting, and public statements, with each source named or linked where it is used. Every figure and date on this page can be checked against the document it came from. Every quotation can be checked against the document, recording or transcript it came from. Where the source does not name a speaker, this record does not supply a name.
This record is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or written on behalf of the Osage Nation government, the Osage Nation Congress, the Executive Branch, the Minerals Council, or any candidate or political organization.
Its purpose is to preserve the available record, distinguish documented facts from unresolved questions, and incorporate new information as it becomes available.