The record

by an Osage citizen

The front page states the issue in brief. This is the record behind it: what the enacted documents, committee recordings and public statements show, in order and in full, with each figure, vote and closure traced to its source. Where the record does not establish something, I have tried to say so.

In early August, Daposka Ahnkodapi, our people’s immersion school, was closed only days before classes were to begin. The Osage Nation Visitors Center was scheduled to close shortly afterward, and Harvest Land is expected to close in December. The stated reason was a significant budget shortfall.

The number at the center of what followed was $60 million. It appears in several different parts of the record: as an outlay enacted in April, and as the figure against which nearly $98 million in departmental requests was measured in July. The August emergency order itself states no figure; it cites “constraints in the budgetary outlay”, and the August 7 Treasury release identifies that outlay, the FY2027 figure of $60 million, as the emergency’s driver.

Following that number requires moving between current events, enacted law and earlier practice. This page separates what the sources say, what comparisons between them support, and what remains unknown. Enacted measures are cited by number throughout: ONCA for an act of the Osage Nation Congress, ONCR for a resolution.

What happened in July and August 2026

The $60,000,000 Executive Branch outlay was established by ONCR 26-12, adopted by Congress on April 27, before Principal Chief Tillman took office on July 11. The Clerk’s certification on that resolution records the vote as eleven in favor, none against and one absent, with then-Congressman Joseph Tillman among the eleven. The current administration therefore inherited an established figure its own head had voted to adopt as a legislator.

On July 24, the Chief issued a statement explaining that his administration had inherited an approximately $60 million budget authorization, while submitted Executive Branch budget requests totaled nearly $98 million. In his words, “we must identify approximately $38 million in reductions“. Those numbers are consistent with one another at the level of rounding in the Chief’s statement: approximately $98 million in requests against approximately $60 million produces approximately $38 million in reductions.

On August 4, the Chief issued Executive Order 26-01 declaring a State of Emergency. The order gave the reason as:

"shortfalls with projected revenue and constraints in the budgetary outlay."

The order was effective immediately.

Against the order’s first-stated cause stands the enacted figure: ONCR 26-12, adopted April 27, set FY2027 projected revenue at $90,958,077. What the record holds about later revisions to that projection, and about the size of the shortfall the order asserts, is set out further down this page.

The same day, Osage News reported an interview conducted before the emergency declaration. The Chief said it was his understanding that departments had not been given “a cap or any clear direction” when creating their budgets. After receiving clearer expectations, he said, secretaries and directors returned to their departments and made reductions.

On August 7, the Executive Branch made the connection explicit: a Treasury Department press release described the FY2027 budgetary outlay as the “driver” for the August 4 State of Emergency. The $60 million at the center of the emergency was that outlay.

On August 13, the Chief described three priorities in a statement posted to Facebook. Under “Expanding Osage Language and Culture,” he wrote:

"By redirecting resources that currently serve approximately 90 students, we can invest in programs that reach many more Osage children and families. Our goal is to expand language and cultural opportunities, beginning with the more than 600 Osage students enrolled in public schools across the Osage Nation Reservation."

Statement posted by Principal Chief Joe Tillman on Facebook, Aug. 13, 2026

The statement also proposed expanding direct food assistance and asking Congress to dedicate 50 percent of retained revenue to the Permanent Fund beginning in FY2027. It described the school’s resources as being redirected, but did not identify those resources, the cost or funding source of the proposed programming, or the net savings expected after the redirection. Nor did it explain whether the redirection was an immediate action under the declared State of Emergency, a proposal for the forthcoming FY2027 budget, or something requiring further congressional action.

On August 14 the Chief lifted the emergency and asked Congress to raise the figure at the center of it. A press release states that he “has lifted the State of Emergency declared on August 4, 2026, citing that financial conditions no longer require the continuation of a State of Emergency”, and that he “has formally requested that the Osage Nation Congress amend ONCR 26-12 and increase the fiscal year 2027 budgetary outlay amount to the Executive Branch from $60 million to $82 million”.

What the release credits for the change is the audit: “The Osage Nation Treasury Department recently presented the final fiscal year 2025 audit report, which identified $7,223,992 in retained revenue”, and “This updated financial information eliminates the need for emergency measures”. That figure was already public on August 7, three days after the emergency was declared, in the Treasury Department release quoted above.

The closures announced on August 5 are not reversed by it: “The operational changes announced last week will remain as part of a broader effort to align expenditures with projected revenues, reduce long-term financial risk, and ensure the sustainability of essential services.”

The order that lifted the emergency is Executive Order 26-02. Osage News reports that in it, the Chief wrote: “The financial conditions identified in Executive Order 26-01 no longer require the continuation of a State of Emergency.” The order was signed and effective August 14. Osage News reports that it “provides no further explanation for what changed financially during the 10-day period” between the two orders.

Two things sit behind that. The first is arithmetic. The Chief’s July figure was approximately $38 million, the distance between nearly $98 million in requests and the $60 million outlay. The August 5 release credited the three closures with approximately $5 million in FY2027 relief. An outlay of $82 million would absorb $22 million of the $38 million, which reduces the gap rather than closing it.

The second is what was lifted. Executive Order 26-01 declared a State of Emergency under general executive authority and did not invoke 15 ONC § 1-104, the section of the Code that defines a national emergency and limits the term to six conditions, as set out below.

What was appropriated to the affected programs?

The FY2026 appropriation acts show what two of the three programs received. One of the three is Daposka Ahnkodapi, the Nation’s immersion school. The August 10 hearing on its closure, at which a graduate addressed Congress in Osage and elders and a former principal of the school also spoke, is recorded further down this page.

ONCA 25-96 appropriated $2,597,099 to Daposka Ahnkodapi for FY2026.

The Osage Nation Supreme Court has named that kind of obligation directly. Ruling on a separate appropriations dispute in 2016, it held that Congress

"must take a finite amount of funds and distribute them throughout the Nation without compromising anyone's constitutional obligations, which include preserving Osage language and culture, developing services to improve health in children and elders, establishing an early learning program for Osage children, and preserving natural resources."

Osage Nation Supreme Court, Standing Bear v. Whitehorn, SCO-2015-01, p. 10

of 35, decided March 8, 2016

The visitor center figure needs stating carefully, because the act funds two of them. Section 65 appropriates $107,197 to the visitor center at Fairfax and Section 66 appropriates $805,201 to the one at Pawhuska.

The August 5 press release names the closing facility only as “the Osage Nation Visitors Center” and gives no town. It does date it, saying the facility has operated “since opening in 2018” and describing its FY2027 operating budget request as having “approached $1 million”.

The Nation’s own announcement of that opening supplies the town. Its dateline reads “PAWHUSKA, Okla. (Nov. 1, 2018)”, it announces “the grand opening of the Osage Nation Visitors Center”, and it gives the address as “Osage Nation Visitors Center, 602 East Main Street Pawhuska, OK 74056”. The facility that closed is the one that opened in 2018, and the one that opened in 2018 is in Pawhuska.

The Fairfax building is separate and later. Osage News reported in February 2026 that “The build is complete” but that “There was no network put in the building”, and that “it will continue to be empty” until security and internet access were installed. The Wahzhazhe Cultural Center director, who directs both, drew the same distinction in describing the plan for Fairfax: “If you’re familiar with the (Pawhuska) Visitor Center here, it’s going to look mostly the same.”

Harvest Land is not a line item in the appropriation act because it was funded by federal CARES Act and American Rescue Plan Act grants rather than by tribal appropriation. The August 5 press release gives the cost of continuing it: “Once federal funding expires, continued operation would require approximately $1 million annually in tribal funds.”

These are FY2026 appropriations, not a calculation of what closing the programs saves in FY2027. They give the scale of what the affected programs were budgeted, not the savings attributed to the closures, and they do not show how the overall Executive Branch reduction was distributed or how particular programs were selected.

The programs themselves are documented separately on Sovereignty: the Nation’s description of each program, its funding, its functions, and the questions that remain.

The closures did not only stop programs; they ended jobs. Osage Nation HR policy sets a floor for how that happens: at least ten working days’ notice, plus a written Reduction in Force plan, built jointly by HR, the Principal Chief and the Department Secretary (or designees), coding every affected position “essential” or “non-essential” and advancing Osage Preference throughout the process.

"Whenever it becomes necessary to reduce the work force, the Nation will endeavor to provide affected employees with at least ten (10) working days' notice... A RIF plan is to be implemented by the Department Secretary, Director of Human Resources and the Principal Chief of the Osage Nation (or designees) using discretion throughout the process to advance Osage Preference. The plan will identify the number of positions by classification and identify incumbents to be displaced."

Osage Nation Employee Handbook (Universal, eff. Jan. 1, 2026), Chapter 7, "Reduction in Force"

A reduction in force gets more paperwork than an ordinary termination. A 2019 Osage Nation HR policy gave it less right to contest: an involuntary termination for misconduct, poor performance or similar cause “may be appealed through Due Process,” but “Separations due to RIFs or layoffs do not qualify for Due Process appeal.” The current Handbook’s due-process guarantee sits under a section titled “Termination”; Reduction in Force is filed several pages over, under “Separation.” Whether that puts a RIF inside or outside the guarantee is a question the text does not answer directly. Whether the notice period ran its full ten days, and whether a RIF plan meeting these terms exists, for Daposka Ahnkodapi, the Visitors Center or Harvest Land is not something the documents collected for this record show.

This record has heard from reliable sources, whose identities are held privately, that Daposka Ahnkodapi employees’ actual notice fell short of that ten-day floor.

Congressman Billy Keene, posting on the Osage Community for Responsible Citizenry Facebook page, disputed HR’s continued citation of the emergency to laid-off employees directly:

"Have seen official Osage Nation HR communication is still citing a 'State of Emergency' as the culprit for letting our Osage employees go... That lie, that stain is still being spread."

Congressman Billy Keene, Osage Community for Responsible Citizenry (Facebook), reviewed 2026-08-24

What does "budget outlay" mean in Osage law?

Public officials have described the outlay differently. This record uses the definition enacted in Osage law.

15 ONC § 1A-104 states:

"A. The Osage Nation Congress shall adopt an annual projected revenue resolution. B. The Congress may supersede or amend projected revenues by subsequent resolution. C. The Osage Nation Congress shall fulfill its constitutional duties to enact an annual budget, which does not exceed projected revenue as allowed by Article VI, Section 24 of the Osage Constitution. D. The projected revenue resolution shall establish budgetary outlays for each branch for a given fiscal year. E. Revolving fund balances shall not be included in projected revenue, but shall be available for appropriation in accordance with Osage law."

15 ONC § 1A-104, complete

Subsection D is the command. The Code also expressly defines the term it uses.

15 ONC § 1A-101(13):

"'Budget outlay' means the amount of anticipated expenditures for a given fiscal year."

15 ONC § 1A-101(13)

Throughout this page the term carries that meaning, and the word doing the work in it is anticipated.

An outlay is a statement about expenditures that have not happened yet. That is what allows it to guide a budget: a branch learns what it should plan to spend before it budgets.

A different instrument, an appropriation law, is held to a stricter standard. The Osage Nation Supreme Court, in the same 2016 opinion quoted elsewhere on this page, wrote:

"We completely reject Congress' argument that it 'is not required to appropriate in sums certain.' An appropriation law that does not specify a sum certain places all funded entities in the untenable position of not knowing whether they have the funds necessary to function."

Osage Nation Supreme Court, Standing Bear v. Whitehorn, SCO-2015-01, p. 11

of 35 n.24, decided March 8, 2016

That holding addresses appropriation laws. The outlay statute is different: subsection B, quoted above, lets Congress supersede or amend projected revenue, and the outlays set from it, by a later resolution.

That definition supports one inference about timing, offered here as analysis rather than an operative rule. If an outlay is meant to anticipate expenditures, then the date of the resolution matters: a figure adopted after branch budgets have already been submitted cannot have guided those submissions.

The Code also fixes when the year begins. 15 ONC § 1A-101(31) defines a fiscal year as “the period beginning October 1st of each year and ending September 30th of the following year.”

Those two provisions together make the adoption date testable against the record, and the enacted resolutions carry their own dates.

ONCR 24-19 established the FY2025 outlays on April 22, 2024, about five months before that fiscal year began.

ONCR 26-12 established the FY2027 outlays on April 27, 2026, about five months before that fiscal year began, the same interval as FY2025’s.

ONCR 25-21 established the FY2026 outlays on September 2, 2025, twenty-nine days before FY2026 began, and ONCR 25-26 revised them on October 1, 2025, the first day of the fiscal year they governed.

The section of the Code quoted in full above requires that the projected revenue resolution establish outlays, but it does not state when the resolution must be adopted. The timing rules live in the next section, set out in full further down this page. 15 ONC § 1A-105(A) makes branch budgets due to Congress by August 15, and § 1A-105(D) bars a budget from introduction as appropriation legislation until that fiscal year’s projected revenue resolution is effective. The Code therefore fixes the sequence, but not the date of the first step. ONCR 25-21 was adopted September 2, 2025, eighteen days after the branch budgets for the fiscal year it governed were due.

What the electorate required in 2017

The requirement that a budget process exist in law did not originate with Congress. It was put to Osage voters at the special election of March 20, 2017, as a question amending the Constitution:

"Shall Article VI Section 24 of the Osage Nation Constitution be amended to add language providing for a constitutionally mandated law governing the annual budgetary and appropriation process?"

Ballot language approved by the Osage Nation Election Board

It carried. Article VI § 24, which the Constitution annotates “3/20/2017 Election”, now reads in full:

"The Osage Nation Congress shall enact, by law, an annual expenditure of funds which shall include an appropriation of operating funds for each branch of the government for each fiscal year. The annual budget of the Osage Nation shall be governed by the principles of transparency and accountability, and the budgetary process encompassing those principles shall be set forth in Osage law. The annual budget shall not exceed projected revenues."

Osage Nation Constitution, Art. VI § 24

Two commands sit in that text. The first is the ceiling cited elsewhere on this page: the annual budget shall not exceed projected revenues. The second is easier to miss, and it is the reason the laws below exist at all: the budgetary process itself “shall be set forth in Osage law.”

Osage News reported complete but unofficial results the same evening. The amendment passed with 82.18 percent voting yes, against the 65 percent a constitutional amendment requires, on a turnout of 1,470 of 15,007 registered voters.

The Supreme Court read the amendment while it was new. It was adopted mid-case, during Standing Bear v. Pratt, SCO-2016-01, and both branches briefed its effect. The court wrote that “No reasonable argument could be made that the annual budgeting process should not be governed by transparency and accountability”, and treated the second command as pointing to implementing legislation still to come, declining to rule on effects not yet before it.

What follows is the law Congress enacted to set that process forth, and what it removed from that law ten months later.

Where the method went: the 2019–2020 legislative history

The chapter the 2019 and 2020 acts rewrote was older than the mandate, and a court had already removed parts of it. ONCA 13-67, effective October 21, 2013, first built the chapter as the Budget Parameter and Limitation Act. In August 2017, in Standing Bear v. Pratt, SCO-2016-01, the Osage Nation Supreme Court struck several of its provisions as unconstitutional intrusions on the Executive Branch: the phrase conditioning salary procedures on congressional approval, the language reserving approval of annual salaries and of new positions to Congress, the bar on line item shifting into lines absent from an appropriation bill, and the command that budgets be organized by divisions. The same opinion upheld the chapter’s line item shifting restrictions, its requirement that a projected revenue report precede appropriation legislation, and its budget request form and support documentation requirements. The court stated the boundary in both directions. On execution:

"Article VII, section 1 vests the Principal Chief with control over the execution of Osage law, and Congress may not revoke or reduce the Chief's power to execute the law or the Chief's authority to control how subordinate officials execute the law."

Osage Nation Supreme Court, SCO-2016-01, Aug. 11, 2017

And on appropriations, restating its March 2016 holding in Standing Bear v. Whitehorn:

"Appropriations are only enacted by law, meaning any changes to that law would require another act of Congress."

Standing Bear v. Whitehorn, SCO-2015-01, as restated in SCO-2016-01

The sections in force today read consistently with that ruling: 15 ONC § 1A-107 states the salary rule without the approval phrase the court struck, and § 1A-108 carries the Treasurer’s line item authority the court upheld. The acts below then rewrote the chapter the court had struck provisions from.

ONCA 19-40, effective April 26, 2019, created a body to produce the estimates the resolution would rest on.

"Pursuant to Article VI Section 22 of the Osage Nation Constitution, The Osage Nation Congress hereby establishes the Osage Nation Revenue Advisory Commission. The Revenue Advisory Commission shall consist of three (3) members with voting rights."

ONCA 19-40, enacting 15 ONC § 1A-103

ONCA 19-57, effective June 28, 2019, then required Congress to build the resolution using that body’s work, directing that Congress determine the amounts “with the assistance of the Osage Nation Revenue Advisory Commission approved revenue estimates”.

In that version the section was titled “Projected revenue and budget outlay requirements”, and subsection D carried two numbered parts. 15 ONC § 1A-104 as it stands today carries neither.

"1. Budget Outlays shall state the amount of tribal funding each branch of government should budget for the respective fiscal year. 2. The Projected Revenue Resolution shall establish anticipated Budget Outlays for the next five fiscal years."

ONCA 19-57, enacting 15 ONC § 1A-104(D)

The first numbered part described the outlay as guidance issued before budgeting: it stated the amount of tribal funding each branch should budget.

ONCA 20-40, passed April 27, 2020, removed all of it in a single act. Its own title states what it does:

"to remove the revenue advisory commission… to strike the budgetary outlays for five (5) years going forward"

ONCA 20-40, from its enacting title, April 27, 2020

The act also repealed two provisions that sit outside this section: § 1A-103, which established the Commission, and the definition of “revenue failure”.

Set side by side, the section reads as follows before and after that act.

The gap in the current section therefore came from the 2020 amendment, not from the section as enacted in 2019.

Why those provisions were removed is not stated in any of the three enacted acts quoted above, which record what changed rather than the reasoning. The recordings from the meetings say more than the acts do, in both directions.

How the 2019 mechanism was described and used

The act that built the mechanism carries its own name in its own text:

"This Act may be cited as the 'Budget Control Act.'"

ONCA 19-40, enacting 15 ONC § 1A-102

It reached the floor on a second attempt. Its predecessor, ONCA 18-57, carried the same sponsor, was enrolled on April 11, 2019 and was vetoed five days later. The veto message set out four numbered objections: a deadline that would have required the annual budget six months before the fiscal year began, the reach of the 98 percent restriction, whether the projected revenue resolution was itself subject to veto, and a conflict between two sentences on revolving fund balances. It invited a rewrite rather than closing the matter:

"Should Congress address these matters and resubmit a revised bill, I would be inclined to sign a version which remedies the problems identified."

Executive Veto Message on ONCA 18-57, Apr. 16, 2019

On April 22, 2019 the Congress was told the bill was back because that veto had been answered:

"the bill did receive a veto… It was compromise. It addressed all four points that were raised in a veto message."

Congressman Eli Potts, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 22, 2019

The case made for it was that the requirement came from the electorate. The enacted act names its sponsor, “SPONSOR: Eli Potts”, and the chair recognized him by name to close on the bill:

"It's clear that the nation needs a budgetary process established in law. It was a mandate from the Osage people in March of 2017."

Congressman Eli Potts, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 22, 2019

The following day a member described one of the concessions that produced the final text, saying that “we actually compromised with executive on pulling out the treasurer from sitting on the board in the Budget Control Act”.

When the first resolution written under the new law reached the Appropriations Committee on June 17, 2019, a member asked how the figures had been produced:

"To figure the outlays, did you just use previous closed fiscal years, or how did you get your budgetary outlay number?"

Appropriations Committee, June 17, 2019

The answer described a calculation. Each branch’s share of projected revenue was taken from its fiscal year 2019 appropriation as a percentage, and those percentages were carried forward:

"So we mirrored those percentages, applied those per branch."

Congressman Eli Potts, Appropriations Committee, June 17, 2019

The same committee stated what the resulting figures were for. The resolution “provides direction to the branches of government on” the funds available, and on June 24, 2019 the outlays were described as the amounts

"that should not be exceeded in preparation of the fiscal year 2020 budget if we hope to come in under projected revenue"

Congressman Eli Potts, Appropriations Committee, June 24, 2019

That is guidance issued before budgets were written, the use the former subsection D described.

One thing these recordings do not contain is any debate about the Revenue Advisory Commission itself. Across the April to July 2019 sessions I hold, the phrase “revenue advisory” occurs once, inside a reading of the statutory definition of revenue failure.

What the Revenue Advisory Commission actually did

The Nation published the Commission’s own minutes, and they show the method in operation.

At its meeting on December 30, 2019, the Commission voted to direct the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, “Pursuant to 15 ONC Section 1A-103 B:2:”, to communicate with the Osage Nation Tax Commission, Business Enterprises, the Controller of the Nation, “and any entity with anticipated revenue to the Osage Nation for a given fiscal year” to arrange delivery of revenue estimates ahead of its next meeting.

At its meeting on February 25, 2020, it reviewed ten numbered communications from those entities, recessed, reconvened, and then approved revenue estimates line by line, voting “to communicate the approved revenue estimates to the Osage Nation Congress and the Appropriations Committee”.

The approved figures were:

Osage Nation Tax Commission, $2,275,000. Osage, LLC, $0. Osage Nation program and other tribal revenue, $6,555,085. Restricted revenue, negative $4,000,000. Osage Nation Gaming Enterprise, $52,606,282. Osage Home Health, $0. Osage Utility Authority, $0. Two further entities were recorded as non-applicable.

These are figures for revenue to the Nation rather than an entity’s gross receipts. The Commission had asked entities with “anticipated revenue to the Osage Nation for a given fiscal year” for their estimates, and the enacted revenue resolutions state the gaming figure the same way, as the “annual projected revenue distribution to the Nation from gaming”. They were approved on February 25, 2020. The $37,847,531 FY2021 tribal revenue projection quoted later on this page comes from the fiscal analysis prepared for ONCA 20-40 and dated April 26, 2020, two months after. Neither the Commission’s minutes nor that fiscal analysis states why the gaming estimate and that projection differ.

The minutes describe the procedure in operation: request estimates from each entity with anticipated revenue, review the responses, approve them by recorded vote, and transmit them to Congress.

The Commission ran short-handed for most of its life. 15 ONC § 1A-103 provided for three members with voting rights. Both sets of published minutes record two present and the third absent, the February 2020 minutes noting “The following member was absent: Congressional Budget Analyst (vacant)”. Every motion in those two meetings passed two to nothing.

The seat was filled at some point after February. At the Commission’s April 21, 2020 meeting the recording opens with all three answering the roll, and the budget analyst seconds a motion, so by then the body was complete.

The two members recorded present at both the December 2019 and February 2020 meetings were Speaker Joseph Tillman and Congressman Eli Potts, who chaired the Commission. Tillman had co-sponsored ONCA 19-40, which created the Commission. Potts is the sponsor named on ONCA 19-57, which supplied the statutory statement of what an outlay was for.

Both men were later recorded voting on the act that removed that mechanism, Tillman for it and Potts against, on the roll call set out below.

Its schedule ends abruptly. A meeting was noticed for April 21, 2020 with an agenda including “Possible Action Regarding FY 2021 Revenue Estimates”. The meeting set for the following day was cancelled by formal notice stating that the Commission “WILL NOT BE MEETING ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020”. Five days after that, ONCA 20-40 repealed it.

The recording of that final meeting shows no estimates were approved. The discussion turned instead to not having anything to work from:

"I know how you can have a meeting, but how can you have a meeting that results in anything that's tangible and useful to the Congress?"

Revenue Advisory Commission, Apr. 21, 2020

A member observed that “legislatures all over the country, municipalities, everybody” with the same responsibility were producing figures, asked that the Nation’s revenue projections for 2020 and 2021 be updated, and the Commission adjourned.

Six years later, the same statutory gap was stated on the record. When the Appropriations Committee took up the FY2027 outlays on April 23, 2026, the member presenting them described the same gap in 15 ONC § 1A-104, quoted in full further down this page. The Commission had been abolished in 2020 after approving estimates once, in February of that year.

The same member was explicit at that meeting about what the revenue figure is. Presenting the resolution, which states total projected revenue of $90,958,077 of which $2,440,000 is restricted, the member put the unrestricted portion at about $88 million and said: “I keep saying it’s a projection.” Among the enacted resolutions, Executive Branch releases and public statements collected for this record, I have not located a competing revenue forecast produced by the Executive Branch for FY2027.

What Congress said when it repealed the mechanism

ONCA 20-40 was not adopted without discussion. The recording of the April 27, 2020 session shows amendments offered to keep each of the provisions the bill removed, and each was defeated.

One would have preserved the requirement that Congress determine the amounts “with the assistance of the Osage Nation Revenue Advisory Commission approved revenue estimates”.

A second would have restored the two numbered parts of subsection D, including that outlays “shall state the amount of tribal funding each branch of government should budget for the respective fiscal year”. Its proponent described what removing them would do:

"This bill in its current form would remove the guidance that it provides to the other branches of government regarding the amount that there should have been a budget for."

Congressman Eli Potts, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 27, 2020

A third would have enlarged the Commission rather than abolish it, adding the Assistant Chief, the Treasurer and the Legislative Budget Analyst to make five voting members, and requiring it to meet in December, February and May, with the February meeting approving estimates from the Tax Commission, business enterprises, the controller and any entity with anticipated revenue.

All three failed.

During the debate a member asked whether, with the Commission gone, “there is a body now named in the bill that would actually work to craft some sort of outlay”. The floor was also told plainly what the effect would be:

"Each branch is now free to budget for as much or as little as they choose to."

Congresswoman Shannon Edwards, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 27, 2020

The clearest statement of the objection came in response to an argument that the bill left outlays intact:

"So budget outlays are still a part of the bill. We're just removing the language that says what a budgetary outlay is helpful for. A budgetary outlay without an amount is useless."

Congressman Eli Potts, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 27, 2020

The bill’s sponsor answered. The enacted act names him, “SPONSOR: R.J. Walker”, and the chair recognized him by name to close on the bill. By his own account he had helped write the law he was now amending:

"when I was Speaker, I worked for Congressman Potts in the Chief's Office, and I helped shepherd this bill through… that is the most important thing that we get accomplished is to improve our budget… And we did that by the Budget Control Act. It was better than what we had before."

Congressman R.J. Walker, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 27, 2020

On the Commission itself he said it had “not been effective. It’s been burdensome, cumbersome, and it has shifted all of the power to the Congress”, and that the amendment offered as a compromise was, in his view, “a separation of powers and unconstitutional”.

His argument for acting then was the pandemic:

"But we need to focus on the here and now. We're in an unprecedented global pandemic, and we are experiencing revenue failure, revenue shortfall, whatever you want to call it. We don't have the money. We're scrambling. We're looking in our piggy banks to pay the bills."

Congressman R.J. Walker, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 27, 2020

And he expected the provisions to come back:

"In the future, all of these are going to be considered by amendments that I have no doubt will be proposed. There's no doubt."

Congressman R.J. Walker, Osage Nation Congress, Apr. 27, 2020

The bill passed nine to three. Voting for it was voting to strike the provisions, not to keep them. Joseph Tillman was among the nine, and the enacted act carries his signature as Speaker of the Osage Nation Congress. Shannon Edwards, Eli Potts and Maria Whitehorn were the three against.

What the fiscal analysis measured

Congress had a fiscal analysis in front of it, prepared for ONCA 20-40 and dated April 26, 2020, the day before the vote. It is one page. It reproduces the bill’s full title at the head, listing every change the act makes, including removing the Revenue Advisory Commission and striking the budgetary outlays for five years going forward.

Its own description of the legislation is a single sentence:

"This legislation would remove the restriction on appropriating more than 98% of tribal projected revenue."

ONCA 20-40 Fiscal Analysis, Apr. 26, 2020

Its estimated impact is a single figure:

"In FY 2021, this legislation may make an additional $756,951 of tribal projected revenue available for appropriation."

ONCA 20-40 Fiscal Analysis, Apr. 26, 2020

That figure is the arithmetic of the cap alone. The analysis projects tribal revenue for FY2021 at $37,847,531, notes that 98 percent of it is $37,090,580, and identifies the $756,951 remainder as what the bill would release.

It closes by reporting no problems with the bill:

"At this time, there are no technical or mechanical defects with this legislation."

ONCA 20-40 Fiscal Analysis, Apr. 26, 2020

Reading that page in full, and it is a single page, the analysis prices the 98 percent cap and assesses nothing else. The Commission, the sentence stating what an outlay is for, and the five-year projections appear in the title printed at its head and in none of its description, estimated impact, assumptions or implications.

Osage News reported the session and the same three objections, and quoted the sponsor calling the criticisms “overstatements and exaggerations”. One objection recorded there does not appear in the floor recording reviewed: that the bill “did not receive initial consideration in a committee meeting”.

The Code itself records what happened next. Each section of the Osage Nation Code carries the acts that amended it, and 15 ONC § 1A-104 lists four:

"ONCA 13-67, eff. Oct. 21, 2013; ONCA 19-40, eff. Apr. 26, 2019; ONCA 19-57, eff. June 28, 2019; ONCA 20-40, eff. Apr. 27, 2020."

15 ONC § 1A-104, amendment history

The list ends there. 15 ONC § 1A-103, which established the Commission, now reads “Repealed by ONCA 20-40.”

So 15 ONC § 1A-104 has not been amended since April 2020. The current section still requires an outlay, but no longer says what the figure is for or how it is to be set. The Commission approved revenue estimates rather than producing revenue, so its removal changed the method, not what the Nation took in. That was the statutory setting in August 2026, when the Executive Branch declared a State of Emergency citing the budgetary outlay.

The Code separately defines another term, “budget authority”:

"'Budget authority' means the amount stated in the enacted annual projected revenue resolution that the Osage Nation Congress may appropriate."

15 ONC § 1A-101(10)

Those are two separate statutory definitions.

The resolution includes a projected revenue figure and separate budgetary outlays for each branch. The statutory definition of “budget authority” refers to “the amount stated” in the enacted annual projected revenue resolution that Congress may appropriate, but does not identify which figure within the resolution supplies that amount.

That is one place where different readings of the same enacted documents can arise without assuming anything about the motives or abilities of the people reading them.

The two instruments behind that ambiguity, the Constitution and the Code, are not equally open to amendment.

What is fixed, and what is not

Article VI § 24 is constitutional text, and constitutional text is beyond the reach of Congress acting alone. 12 ONC § 8-101(B) states the rule:

"No article, section, or provision of the Constitution shall be amended except as provided in Article XX of the Constitution."

12 ONC § 8-101(B)

Article XX requires that Congress propose an amendment and that the Osage People approve or reject it at a general election, or at a special election called for that purpose. That is the route the 2017 amendment took, and Article VI § 24 stands today as the voters adopted it.

The law setting the process forth is a different instrument. Article VI § 24 requires that the budgetary process “shall be set forth in Osage law”; it does not state what that law must contain. 15 ONC § 1A-103 and § 1A-104 are ordinary legislation, and ONCA 20-40 amended them by ordinary legislation in April 2020 without touching the Constitution.

Osage law does shield one class of statute from something close to this. Article XI § 6 provides that an initiated law “is not subject to veto by the Principal Chief, and may not be repealed by the Osage Nation Congress within two (2) years of its effective date.” The same sentence continues: “It may be amended at any time.” Those terms attach to laws the people enact by initiative. The 2019 acts were enacted by Congress, so they never carried them.

The Osage People hold a direct check on an act of Congress, and it is bounded by a filing deadline. Article XI § 1 provides that they “may propose and enact laws by the initiative or reject acts of the Osage Nation Congress by the referendum.” Article XI § 2 requires an application containing the act to be referred, signed by at least one hundred qualified Osage voters. 12 ONC § 8-101(C) sets the window: a referendum petition “may be filed only within ninety (90) calendar days after adjournment of a legislative session at which the act was passed.”

Among the enacted legislation and meeting recordings collected for this record, I have not located a referendum petition concerning ONCA 20-40, and this record does not hold the Election Office’s own filings, which are where such a petition would be recorded.

What the enacted resolutions show in practice

The longer series shows how the Executive Branch outlay and projected revenue changed from FY2023 through FY2027:

The resolutions also show how later revisions changed projected revenue without automatically changing the Executive Branch outlay:

A stated $0 is different from a blank. ONCR 25-26 expressly stated the FY2026 outlays as zero while projecting $97,610,077 in revenue, and revised the FY2026 projection that ONCR 25-21 had set at $88,310,077.

Remaining available is not projected revenue minus the Executive outlay. It is projected revenue less restricted revenue and the combined applicable outlays for all branches.

Looking beyond the Executive Branch also provides useful context because each resolution establishes figures for multiple branches.

FY2021 stands out. Congress stated the Executive Branch outlay at $48,090,184, the Legislative Branch at $2,069,781, the Judicial Branch at $455,814, and the Minerals Council at $216,547, each to the dollar. FY2022 used figures closely related to those amounts but rounded them, and later in the series the outlays become rounder still until the Executive Branch figure settles at $60,000,000. The resolutions I reviewed do not state why that change occurred.

The resolutions also contain a consistent calculation: projected revenue, less restricted revenue, less the total budget outlay, produces the remaining available amount. ONCR 21-02 states $56,300,085 in revenue against a $50,974,526 total outlay and reports $5,325,559 remaining, and the same arithmetic relationship appears in the other resolutions reviewed.

FY2021 is informative for a second reason. Congress enacted two projected revenue resolutions during it: ONCR 21-02 at $56,300,085, and ONCR 21-13 later at $82,124,990, an increase of approximately $26 million.

So was the outlay simply calculated as a share of projected revenue?

The FY2021 figures point the other way.

Projected revenue changed by approximately $26 million between the two resolutions while the outlay figures for the four branches and three villages remained the same. The inference is limited but useful: changing projected revenue did not automatically change the stated outlays.

What it does not tell us is what methodology was used. The eight enacted revenue resolutions from FY2021 through FY2027 do not identify one.

Part of it turns up in the amendment history rather than in the resolutions. From 2019 to 2020 the Code required Congress to determine these amounts using approved estimates from a standing Revenue Advisory Commission, and ONCA 20-40 repealed that Commission in April 2020. The resolutions from FY2021 onward are therefore all later than the body that was meant to inform them, which is consistent with the eight resolutions reviewed above showing no method.

A calculation is on the record for the year before that, quoted earlier on this page: the percentage method the Appropriations Committee described in June 2019. Among the enacted resolutions and committee recordings cited on this page, it is the only description I found of an outlay being calculated rather than carried forward from an earlier year.

The legislative history accounts for where the former method went. What, if anything, replaced it remains an open question.

What the recordings show, and how the FY2027 figure was chosen

The enacted resolutions show the figures. The recordings show what was said about them.

This section draws on transcripts of Osage Nation proceedings, made from publicly available recordings.

September 2023: the outlay operating as a limit.

On September 25, 2023, Congress reduced budget requests to bring them under the Executive Branch outlay.

The body was thanked for getting “back below the actual outlay”, which left “a balance in our unobligated funds”.

The reduction was described on the record as fiscally responsible. Whatever else the outlay was in 2023, it was treated as a figure that constrained appropriations.

September 2024: the gap is named.

On September 2, 2024, the Appropriations Committee heard that operating and direct assistance had grown “from under 50 million in 2018 to nearly 68 million in 2025”. The same meeting put Executive Branch requests about $2.4 million above the outlay, the Judicial request level with its outlay, and the villages above theirs. A week later, the Executive comparison had risen to $3.7 million over the outlay.

On September 17, the Tzi Zho Session heard that spending had continued to grow and “Their outlays are going to have to change.” The Treasurer had sent the committee a memo asking that the Executive Branch outlay be increased, and on September 19 the recorded response to it was: “I’m not hearing that everybody’s in agreement with that, but we got your memo.” Nothing in 15 ONC § 1A-104 required action on those statements.

These were comparisons made after the budgets existed, rather than guidance delivered before they were prepared. That differs from the June 2019 practice, when each branch was told what not to exceed before preparing its budget. The current section requires an outlay; the sentence saying the figure should tell each branch what to budget was removed in 2020.

September 2025: two readings of the same provision.

ONCR 25-21 set every branch’s outlay to $0 for FY2026. On the floor it passed the same day it was introduced, with the sponsor waiving her time and no one speaking for or against it.

The committee record for that day carries the reasoning.

The zeros began as blanks. The committee was told: “in drafting the bill, I just put zero because I wanted the committee to be able to fill this information out.”

The committee’s own duty was stated aloud in the same session: “That’s the responsibility of our committee is to set the budgetary outlays.”

Recognized on that question, Congresswoman Maria Whitehorn described what the Executive Branch had been left without:

"we already have a budget request from the… executive branch that hasn't had… the guidance from Congress to let them know the number that they have to budget toward"

Congresswoman Maria Whitehorn, Appropriations Committee, Sept. 2, 2025

The committee then heard an argument that filling them in was unnecessary, resting on the statute and on the calendar:

"So the function of the budget outlay is truly just a budgetary tool. At this point, I would say you could leave the outlay at $0. The requirement by law is that you not exceed annual projected revenue. The outlay is simply a budgetary tool."

Appropriations Committee, Sept. 2, 2025

"Budgets are done. It's in our hands now. The only requirement by law is that you not exceed projected revenue. The outlay any time after budgets are submitted is irrelevant throughout the year."

Appropriations Committee, Sept. 2, 2025

The budgets had already been submitted, so an outlay adopted then could not guide them. The schedule had produced that situation: unlike FY2025 and FY2027, whose outlays were established months before the fiscal year, FY2026’s was established only after branch budgets were due and revised on the first day of the year.

Eleven months later the Executive Branch read the same provision the other way, treating the FY2027 outlay as a constraint on what it could spend, and a Treasury press release described that outlay as the driver of the State of Emergency.

The two readings are both on the record: one treated the outlay as irrelevant after budgets were submitted; the other treated it as a constraint on the budget those submissions produced.

What changed between those two readings is not explained in these recordings.

After the zeros: the instrument drops out.

From September 3, 2025 through April 1, 2026, across every session I have transcribed in that window, the word “outlay” appears in two passages.

Both are from a single Appropriations meeting on September 10, 2025, eight days after the zeros, and one of them names the consequence directly: “we didn’t set the outlays and so you had the executive branch for the first time since the outlay budgetary limits were applied to law the first time that they didn’t have a number that they had to try to fit into”.

Budget work continued throughout the same window. In those sessions, “appropriation” and “budget” each appear in hundreds of passages, and “projected revenue” in dozens. The outlay itself had nearly disappeared from discussion.

Committee coverage inside that window is uneven, and research into it continues.

April 2026 onward: the outlay returns.

The word returns on April 2, 2026, and by late April the FY2027 outlay had been restored to $60,000,000.

In the April 23, 2026 committee discussion, one member urged that the figure be taken seriously: “I feel like we need to operate in outlays this year”. The member presenting the outlays then explained how the $60 million figure had been chosen:

"In the law there's nothing that tells us how you calculate an outlay. It just says that we'll have one. It's pretty basic… all I can say is that in the last five years, it's went from $48 million to $60 million as far as the executive branch goes."

Congresswoman Jodie Revard, Appropriations Committee, Apr. 23, 2026

The committee returned to the FY2025 figure because FY2026 stated the outlays as zero. It agreed 6–0, and the full Congress later adopted the resolution 11–0. On August 6, the same member described the outlays as “a place marker” and noted that Congress had not set them in FY2026.

The FY2027 figure that followed is the $60 million at the center of the emergency.

How projected revenue, outlays and appropriations fit together

The Nation also has annual appropriation acts. Congress makes those appropriations line by line and department by department through legislation.

The Code establishes the sequence:

"No approved budget or independent budget for any given fiscal year shall be introduced as general appropriation legislation until the annual projected revenue resolution or report for the same fiscal year is effective."

15 ONC § 1A-105(D)

Budgets from the branches are due by August 15 under § 1A-105(A).

ONCR 26-12 was adopted on April 27. The FY2027 outlay was therefore established approximately four months before the statutory due date for branch budgets.

That timing matters to the sequence without necessarily telling us what anyone should have done. The outlay existed before the departmental requests were due.

That sequence makes one missing document especially important:

What instructions accompanied the FY2027 budget process when departments prepared their requests?

The Chief’s account of those instructions, quoted earlier on this page, is the clearest description of them on the record so far.

The Constitution provides another part of the framework. Article VI § 24, quoted in full earlier on this page, requires that “the budgetary process encompassing those principles shall be set forth in Osage law” and that “the annual budget shall not exceed projected revenues”.

Projected revenue for FY2027 is $90,958,077. The Executive Branch outlay is $60,000,000. The difference between those figures is $30,958,077.

Those are separate figures in the enacted record. The Chief’s nearly $98 million figure refers instead to the accumulated departmental requests, which is why the reduction he described was approximately $38 million.

Nearly $98 million in departmental requests is also about $7 million above the enacted FY2027 projected revenue of $90,958,077. A request total is not an enacted budget. The appropriation process still has to reconcile the requests with projected revenue, available balances, funding restrictions and any reductions.

What the arithmetic does not settle is how much had to be cut, because I do not have the composition of the nearly $98 million in requests, or which portions drew on projected revenue, restricted funds, revolving funds, or other sources.

What authority governs funds Congress has already appropriated?

The preceding figures concern the budget still being assembled for FY2027. The program closures raise a related but distinct question about funds Congress had already appropriated for FY2026.

15 ONC § 2-317 provides:

"The Treasurer is obligated to expend appropriated funds upon receipt of duly authorized and legal requests for said funds."

15 ONC § 2-317

Executive Order 26-01 declared the emergency under the authority vested in the Principal Chief and the Constitution of the Osage Nation.

The Osage Nation Code separately defines a national emergency. Under 15 ONC § 1-104 the Chief or the Speaker may declare one, and the term is limited to six named conditions: a natural disaster, the death of the Principal Chief or Assistant Principal Chief, a national epidemic, a disruption in the valuation of United States currency, an act of war, or a disruption in services from the Burial Assistance Fund, the Osage Nation Higher Education Scholarship Fund, or the Health Benefit Plan Fund. A revenue shortfall is not among them, and the effect of a declaration under that section is narrow: it waives the notice requirement of 15 ONC § 1-103 for convening Congress. Executive Order 26-01 did not invoke that section. It declared a State of Emergency under the general authority of the office and the Constitution.

Article VII, Section 1 vests the supreme executive power of the Nation in the Principal Chief, and the same section states a duty alongside it:

"The Principal Chief shall dutifully support the Constitution and laws of the Osage Nation and shall see that the laws are faithfully executed, administered and enforced."

Osage Nation Constitution, Article VII, Section 1

The same provision therefore places executive management authority and a duty to carry out enacted law in the same office. The Executive also has a fiscal power of its own: under 15 ONC § 2-311(H) the Treasurer “shall exercise emergency fiscal authority necessary to protect life, property, and the integrity of the Osage Nation.” The quoted text does not state how far that authority reaches or how long it may restrain spending on an appropriated program.

The Supreme Court has listed what the Constitution obligates. Writing about the appropriation power in March 2016, it said:

"Congress must take a finite amount of funds and distribute them throughout the Nation without compromising anyone's constitutional obligations, which include preserving Osage language and culture, developing services to improve health in children and elders, establishing an early learning program for Osage children, and preserving natural resources."

Standing Bear v. Whitehorn, SCO-2015-01, Mar. 8, 2016

That sentence was addressed to Congress and its appropriation duty. The obligations it lists are the Constitution’s own: Article XVI, Section 1 commands that “The Osage Nation shall protect and promote the language, culture and traditional ways of the Osage People”, and Article XVII covers Osage health, education and welfare. Daposka Ahnkodapi was the Nation’s language immersion school.

Congress holds the appropriation power under Article VI, Section 24, and the Treasurer is obligated to expend appropriated funds on a duly authorized request. What I have not located, in Article VII of the Constitution or in any of the twenty-nine titles of the Osage Nation Code, is a provision granting the Executive authority to suspend or discontinue a program for which Congress has already appropriated funds, and so to keep those requests from arising. A search of the Code across all twenty-nine titles for provisions on suspending, discontinuing, rescinding or impounding appropriated funds returns none that grants the Executive that authority. Whether executive management or emergency fiscal authority reaches that far is a question the provisions I have reviewed do not resolve.

The 2017 holding answers a question about the boundary between the branches, not the question this section asks. It holds that Congress may not revoke or reduce the Chief’s power to execute the law, or the Chief’s authority to control how subordinate officials execute it. The same opinion upheld the Code’s requirement that a projected revenue report precede appropriation legislation, and it restates the rule that appropriations are enacted only by law and that changing them requires another act of Congress. Those statements place a limit on Congress relative to the Executive and leave the appropriation power with Congress. None of them addresses whether the Chief’s execution authority reaches discontinuing spending on a program Congress has already appropriated, which is the question the paragraphs above leave open.

There is a forum in which that question could be decided. Under 3 ONC § 1-108 the courts review “administrative decisions or actions of officials of the Osage Nation government acting within an executive capacity,” and under 3 ONC § 5-108 the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over a declaratory judgment between the Legislative and Executive Branches on the meaning of the Constitution. Those provisions identify possible forms of review. They do not tell us how the question would be decided.

The same process was drafted three times by the same member

The question of what governs money Congress has already appropriated was put to Congress three times as a bill, first in 2020 and twice more in 2023.

ONCA 20-09, “An Act To create a budget impoundment process; and to establish an alternate effective date”, was received on January 24, 2020 and carries the Clerk’s stamp of February 18, 2020. Its sponsor was Eli Potts, who voted against ONCA 20-40 that April.

Potts read it in on March 30, 2020. The Appropriations Committee took it up on April 3. He chaired that committee, so the sponsor of the bill and the chair of the meeting were the same member. He put the reason for not proceeding on the record:

"I see the need for it within the nation, but during this session, I don't see the need to pursue this."

Chairman Eli Potts, Appropriations Committee, Apr. 3, 2020

The committee tabled the bill to the call of the chair, and it was never called back. That is why the legislation archive holds an ORIGINAL version and nothing else: a tabled bill produces no further stage document. ONCA 20-40 passed twenty-four days later.

ONCA 23-39, “An Act to create a budget impoundment process; and to establish an alternate effective date”, was read in on March 31, 2023 and assigned to the Appropriations Committee on April 3. It set out a procedure for the situation that arose in August 2026. Under Section 3, whenever the Principal Chief determined that appropriated budget authority “should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons, including the termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided”, the Chief “shall transmit to the Osage Nation Congress a special message” stating the amount, the department, the reasons, and the estimated effect “upon the objects, purposes, and programs for which the budget authority is provided”. Until Congress acted on that message, the money stayed spendable:

"Any amount of budget authority proposed to be rescinded or that is to be reserved as set forth in such special message shall be made available for obligation unless, the Osage Nation Congress has completed action on a rescission bill rescinding all or part of the amount proposed to be rescinded or that is to be reserved."

ONCA 23-39, Section 3(B)

The bill also covered the lesser act of holding money back rather than cancelling it. It defined a “deferral of budget authority” to include “withholding or delaying the obligation or expenditure of budget authority, whether by establishing reserves or otherwise”, and “any other type of Executive action or inaction which effectively precludes the obligation or expenditure of budget authority”. Deferrals were allowed only to provide for contingencies, to achieve savings through changed requirements or greater efficiency, or as specifically provided by law. The section then closed the list:

"No official, officer or employee of the Osage Nation may defer any budget authority for any other purpose."

ONCA 23-39, Section 4(D)

The Appropriations Committee took the bill up on April 6, 2023. The member holding the floor, whom the chair had introduced as the sponsor, gave an example of what it was for, prefacing it as a hypothetical rather than an accusation:

"If the Congress appropriates money for elder nutrition, if during the course of the fiscal year, the chief decides, I'm not going to utilize those funds for elder nutrition."

Congressman Eli Potts, Appropriations Committee, Apr. 6, 2023

Another member said this in the same meeting:

"I honestly see this as something, listen, I'm surprised that since 2006 it actually hasn't been introduced because I do agree that this is a preventative."

Speaker Alice Goodfox, Appropriations Committee, Apr. 6, 2023

2006 is the year the Osage Nation ratified its present Constitution.

The committee postponed the bill on April 13 and again on April 20, the second time indefinitely. The sponsor was recorded absent on both dates. He read a new bill with the same title, ONCA 23-64, into the record the following day, April 21, and it was assigned to the same committee on April 24. The signed bill names him: “SPONSOR: Eli Potts”.

ONCA 23-64 was still on the Appropriations Committee agenda eleven months later, on March 25, 2024. The recording of that meeting, searched in full, carries no objection to the bill on its merits. What it carries instead is this:

"I've not received any feedback from colleagues, but would still like to see this become law someday."

Congressman Eli Potts, Appropriations Committee, Mar. 25, 2024

The committee postponed it again the same day. The Nation’s own legislative tracker for that session records the result in one word, “Postponed”.

None of the three appears in the Osage Nation Code. Searching the full text of all twenty-nine titles for “impound” returns matters of business licensing, livestock and animal control, criminal procedure and tax contraband, and no budget provision. Of the three bills, the 9,007 document legislation archive holds an ORIGINAL version of each and no enacted version. All three were introduced and none became law.

The bills bear on the 2026 emergency only indirectly. That emergency came later, and it falls to be judged under the law that exists rather than the law that was proposed. What the bills establish is narrower and dated: the gap described above was identified inside Congress in January 2020. The same member filed a drafted remedy three times across four years; twice it reached the Appropriations Committee, and none of the three bills became law.

Potts raised it a fourth time on September 8, 2026, in an Appropriations Committee discussion of a different, unrelated appropriation. Describing what an impoundment act would require of the Executive, he said “the impoundment act is something that I do intend to dust off toward the end of session, but it’s not something that I have filed right now.” As of this writing no fourth bill has been filed.

What prior appropriations show about the outlay

Prior appropriations have exceeded the stated outlay.

In FY2025 the Executive Branch outlay was $60 million, while Congress appropriated $64,667,765.

In FY2026 the stated outlay was $0, while Congress appropriated $75,913,722, followed by a $1,619,939 supplemental appropriation.

During a September 24, 2024 Appropriations Committee discussion, the distinction was described this way:

"Right now they're over their outlay by $2.1 million, but we are not over projected revenue."

Appropriations Committee, September 24, 2024

Together with the FY2025 and FY2026 appropriation acts, that exchange shows Congress appropriating more than the stated outlay, and the committee treating that as distinct from exceeding projected revenue.

The prior practice supplies context for the present dispute, but it does not by itself resolve what legal effect the FY2027 outlay must have.

Retained revenue and the shortfall the order asserts

What changed after the State of Emergency

On August 7, the Osage Nation Treasury Department reported a clean FY2025 audit that “produced $7,223,992 in retained revenue“, which it described as “funds that remained unspent at the close of fiscal year 2025 and will now be available for future appropriations”.

The same announcement records the Chief seeking congressional cooperation to amend ONCR 26-12 and raise the FY2027 outlay, which the projected revenue process allows Congress to do by subsequent resolution.

What the record shows about the projected-revenue shortfall

Executive Order 26-01 cited both “shortfalls with projected revenue” and “constraints in the budgetary outlay.”

The enacted FY2027 projected revenue figure is $90,958,077. Among the enacted resolutions, Executive Branch releases and public statements collected for this record, I have not located a later enacted projection reducing that amount or a calculation stating the size of the projected-revenue shortfall referenced in the order.

No open-records request to the Osage Nation is documented on this page. The Constituent Services link in the Sources section points to the office that handles such requests, not to any request made or answered.

That leaves a separate question from the $60 million outlay: what revenue information was available to the Executive Branch when the emergency was declared, and how did actual or expected collections compare with the enacted projection?

The money this record concerns

Everything discussed above concerns money appropriated by the Osage Nation government for governmental operations, including gaming revenue, taxes, and program funds.

It does not concern the Mineral Estate, headrights, or quarterly Mineral Estate distributions.

Those are separately governed.

What the record establishes about the August 6 session

The special session was already scheduled when the emergency was declared

A special session of Congress had been called before the State of Emergency was declared, and some of the appropriation bills for that session were already filed at the time the emergency was declared.

15 ONC § 1-103 sets two deadlines for a special session. The Principal Chief’s proclamation convening it must be “filed with the Clerk of Congress at least ten (10) business days before the first day of the Special Session”, and any legislation proposed under that proclamation “must be filed in proper form with the Clerk of the Congress three business days prior to the first day of the proposed Special Session”.

The session convened Thursday, August 6, 2026. Three business days before that Thursday is Monday, August 3. Ten business days before it is Thursday, July 23. Reporting the day after the session described it as one “Tillman requested two weeks ago”, which is consistent with the ten day figure.

Two bills carry the Clerk’s August 3 stamp, ONCA 26-36 and ONCA 26-37. Ten more, ONCA 26-38 through ONCA 26-47, are stamped August 4. Executive Order 26-01 is “Signed this fourth day of August, 2026”.

One of the two filed on August 3 is ONCA 26-37, “An Act to amend ONCA 25-101 to authorize the IDC - Office of the Principal Chief to expend additional monies appropriated through the FY2026 appropriation bills”, which authorizes $394,965 to that office. It is an FY2026 indirect cost authorization. The emergency was declared over the FY2027 outlay. The Chief described the request when he addressed the session on August 6, in a list of items that also included the health benefit fund, food assistance, a Natural Resources grant and legal services:

"The office of the principal chief is requesting appropriations for salary and wage adjustments and operational supplies."

Principal Chief Joe Tillman, 2nd Special Session of the 10th Congress, Aug. 6, 2026

The session was called, and this money was requested, before the emergency was declared and before the closures were announced. The notice requirements those dates satisfy are the ones a declaration under 15 ONC § 1-104 would have waived, and that section was not invoked.

Four senior posts were vacant or unconfirmed at that session

Immediately after the Chief’s remarks on August 6, the Speaker gave the legislative message and described the conditions Congress was working under. The proclamation set the session’s items, and the vacant posts she lists are the offices those items came from:

"There are a lot of firsts for us. We do not have a treasurer. We do not have a grants director. We do not have a confirmed AG. And we do not have the HR director, the AG, the treasurer, the grants director. Every single thing on our proclamation."

Speaker Pam Shaw, 2nd Special Session of the 10th Congress, Aug. 6, 2026

She added that Congress was “also working with one clerk”, and that despite this the members “took care of every single request that executive asked for”.

Of the four posts named, one is confirmed by outside reporting. The Attorney General appointment was announced on July 29, 2026, and the appointee was “scheduled to begin his duties Sept. 1, 2026”, with the report adding that “His appointment is subject to confirmation by the Osage Nation Congress”. The Nation therefore had no confirmed Attorney General in post on August 6.

The other three posts rest on the Speaker’s statement alone. Searches of the Osage News, KOSU, KGOU, Public Radio Tulsa, News On 6 and KTUL reporting collected for this record return no account of the Treasurer, Grants Director or HR Director vacancies, and none of the clerk staffing. What is recorded here is what the Speaker said on the floor, not an independent confirmation that each post was empty.

The Appropriations Committee heard reconciled Treasury figures that same day

At the Congressional Appropriations Committee meeting held Aug. 6, Congressional Budget Manager David Browers reported that “$7.8 million remained in the Nation’s general treasury for the current fiscal year and $3.4 million was available in retained revenue”, figures Osage News reports “had been reconciled with the Osage Nation Treasury”. Even if every funding request pending during the special session were approved, Browers said “approximately $4.9 million would remain in the general treasury”.

Those figures precede, and are narrower in scope than, the $7,223,992 retained-revenue figure the Treasury Department’s clean FY2025 audit reported the next day, August 7.

Congressman Billy Keene disputed the emergency’s premise the next day, in press coverage

KGOU reported Congressman Billy Keene disputing the executive branch’s account of the emergency outright: “It’s Orwellian, man. It literally is... It’s not true.”

The administration’s own attendance at the Aug. 10 hearing

At the Osage Nation Education Committee’s Aug. 10 hearing on the school closure, “Assistant Principal Chief John Shaw was the only Executive Branch representative to attend and was unable to answer several questions from lawmakers concerning how the decision to close the school was made”, Osage News reports. The Congressional Government Operations Committee separately questioned the closure of the Visitors Center and Harvest Land at meetings held the same day.

Committee Chair Eli Potts said he had invited the administration to the hearing twice by email, one addressed directly to Chief of Staff Andrea Kemble, and received no reply:

"As Chair of the Education Committee, I've received no response, not even acknowledging the request... Zero communication."

Congressman Eli Potts, Education Committee, Aug. 10, 2026

News On 6 also quoted Keene at the same hearing, on what happens next: “This is going to come down to what Congress wants to do... We have a lot of tools at our disposal.”

Lawmakers also asked how the administration had calculated the school’s per-student cost. Osage News reports Shaw attributed the administration’s approximately $32,000 figure to dividing Daposka Ahnkodapi’s roughly $3 million annual budget by its total enrollment, and did not say whether salaries, benefits, space cost, food, transportation, indirect cost or other costs were included in either number.

Several of the seventeen people who addressed the committee over the more than six-hour hearing cited a statement Tillman made at his own March 2026 campaign announcement dinner, responding to speculation that he would close the school:

"The last piece of fake news that's going around is I'm going to close down all the schools, all the WELAs, all the Daposkas, and we're going to send everybody back to public schools... That's so far from the truth. We have invested millions and millions of dollars into Daposka and into WELAs. Why would you want to shut that down? We want to make it better and we want to move forward."

Joe Tillman, Grayhorse Village Community Building campaign dinner, Mar. 8, 2026

Among those who addressed the committee was Pehan RedCorn, one of the school’s first graduates, speaking to Congress in Osage:

"If it weren't for this school, I wouldn't be standing here before you, speaking in our language. I understand what a privilege this is. From this school, I've been taught to be proud of who I am and where I come from. Proud to be Wahzhazh."

Pehan RedCorn, Daposka Ahnkodapi alum, Education Committee, Aug. 10, 2026

Former Congressman Eddy Red Eagle Jr. addressed the Constitution’s own structure:

"The element of culture is not elevated high enough in our government. Every decision, every movement, every action exercised by this government should be washed through the element of our culture. Does this meet Osage? Is this Osage?"

Eddy Red Eagle Jr., Osage elder, former Congressman, Education Committee, Aug. 10, 2026

Former Congresswoman Debra Atterberry, a past principal of Daposka Ahnkodapi, addressed the distinction between language immersion and exposure:

"I don't have all the answers, but as we think about the future of Osage education, I believe there is a question worth asking: Do we want to protect and promote our language, or do we want to take the next step and give another generation the opportunity to speak it?"

Debra Atterberry, former Osage Congresswoman and Daposka Ahnkodapi principal, Education Committee, Aug. 10, 2026

Chief Tillman's first interview: claims and cross-checks

One figure in Chief Joe Tillman’s first interview defined the scale of the fiscal warning more sharply than the emergency orders had:

"$44 million is what the balance is of our permanent fund, and our burn rate on that is six months."

Was a six-month runway consistent with the outlay figures he cited?

$44 million divided by a six-month runway annualizes to approximately $88 million a year, about 7 percent above the administration’s proposed $82 million outlay. That arithmetic does not establish that the Nation spends $88 million annually from the Permanent Fund. It establishes the implied consumption rate only if Tillman’s “six months” means six months of total governmental operations. The August 24 interview does not define the denominator or scenario, including which branches, services and revenue-loss assumptions the calculation covers. The statement therefore cannot be reproduced or directly compared with the $60 million outlay, the proposed $82 million outlay or the nearly $98 million in requests.

Tillman gave the interview on August 24, six weeks after taking office; Osage News published it on August 25. Before becoming Chief, he served ten years in the Osage Nation Congress: elected in 2016, Second Speaker 2018-2019, and Speaker 2019-2020.

On the emergency’s origin:

"They were $98 million dollars, and we had a $60 million dollar budget outlay... I'm new at this, and when I sat down and I saw that, I was, wow, you know, we've got to slam on the brakes. Don't tap them, slam it."

Principal Chief Joe Tillman, Osage News interview, Aug. 24, 2026

Tillman had been Chief for six weeks when he said “I’m new at this.” He made the statement after the ten-year congressional career described above, including a vote for the $60 million outlay four months earlier.

Tillman says he saw for the first time the nearly $98 million in requests against the $60 million outlay, not the outlay by itself. Congress had enacted the $60 million FY2027 outlay four months earlier in ONCR 26-12, with Congressman Tillman among the eleven members voting for it. The Treasury Department’s August 7 release, not Executive Order 26-01 itself, first named the FY2027 outlay as the emergency’s driver. The Nation’s August 5 release announced the closures of Daposka Ahnkodapi, the Osage Nation Visitors Center, and Harvest Land together, citing approximately $5 million in FY2027 budget relief.

The $60 million figure Tillman describes as forcing “the brakes” is itself new to FY2027: the prior year’s enacted Executive Branch outlay, set by ONCR 25-21, was $0.

On August 14, the Chief formally asked Congress to raise the outlay to $82 million. The remaining questions include whether Congress formally responded; no response appears in the enacted resolutions and public releases collected through this writing. Ten days later, he still called it “the proposed $82 million executive branch outlay.” He said the proposal “reflects a budget that continues our governmental functions and enhances essential services,” but the interview does not identify an enacted amendment making that proposal the Nation’s outlay.

The three figures describe three different stages:

Moving from nearly $98 million in requests to an $82 million proposal requires approximately $16 million in reductions. The closures were credited with approximately $5 million in relief; the interview does not identify the remaining approximately $11 million. Moving from the enacted $60 million outlay to the proposal requires $22 million in additional authority. The August 14 release identified $7,223,992 in retained revenue. That figure alone is $14,776,008 short of the requested increase. A request total, an outlay, retained revenue, and the Permanent Fund are different budget categories. The interview places them together but does not provide the department-by-department, funding-source reconciliation connecting them.

For two of the closures, he supplied his own return figures:

"when it had a $1.2 million dollar appropriation, it only gives us back $65,000 a year. That's just not fiscally responsible"

Principal Chief Joe Tillman, on Harvest Land, Osage News interview, Aug. 24, 2026

"their appropriation of $825,000, and at the end of the year they give us back $30,000 in coffee sales and whatever"

Principal Chief Joe Tillman, on the Pawhuska Visitors Center, Osage News interview, Aug. 24, 2026

Those two figures total $2.025 million. If they were components of the approximately $5 million in FY2027 relief credited to the three closures, $2.975 million remains to be reconciled. The August 5 release and August 24 interview do not provide a program-by-program savings calculation showing whether Daposka, those two programs or other reductions account for that difference.

$65,000 against $1.2 million is a 5.4 percent revenue-to-appropriation ratio. $30,000 against $825,000 is 3.6 percent. Neither is a calculation of net cost, investment return, or total public value. Such calculations would require ongoing post-closure expenses, food and services supplied without a sale, activity performed for other Nation programs, grants, visitor counts, and other program outputs.

The Visitors Center’s $30,000 figure is also narrower than the operation Tillman was evaluating. The Nation created the Center to promote Osage culture, programs, artists, and Osage-owned businesses. Coffee sales alone do not capture artist sales, consignment payments, business referrals, visitor counts, or cultural programming. The Pawhuska Visitors Center record documents its mission, appropriation history, and committee testimony about the people whose work was sold there.

Tillman’s $1.2 million figure also conflicts with the Nation’s August 5 account of Harvest Land’s funding. That release states that Harvest Land “is not a line item” in the FY2026 appropriation act, had operated on federal CARES Act and American Rescue Plan Act grants, and that “once federal funding expires, continued operation would require approximately $1 million annually in tribal funds.” The interview identifies neither a fiscal year nor a funding source for the $1.2 million. The fuller Harvest Land record documents what it produced, what continues after December 31, and what remains under the federal Go Healthy research award.

Tillman also proposed that Congress appropriate 50 percent of audited retained revenue to the Permanent Fund after each fiscal year. When asked whether building the fund would affect programs and services, he said it would not. The interview provides no calculation supporting that categorical answer. Retained revenue otherwise remains available for future appropriation; its amount and the competing needs for it are not known until the books are closed and audited. Moving half to the Permanent Fund would shrink the retained-revenue pool available for later appropriation while the administration was citing a projected-revenue shortfall. The interview does not show what amount would remain available, which needs would be funded from it, or how that transfer fits the stated shortfall.

What new spending did he describe alongside fiscal restraint?

Tillman displayed a written public-school language expansion plan, said Congress would have to fund it, and twice said implementation would begin immediately, subject to outside factors. He also discussed telemedicine, telehealth, possible telelegal services, a youth leadership program, an elder program, a funeral home, assisted-living facilities, a government motor pool, an in-house vehicle-maintenance shop, building improvements, Lost Creek Ranch, and possible large-scale drone manufacturing at Skyway36.

The interview gives no appropriation, operating estimate, funding source, responsible entity, or measurable timetable for those initiatives. It therefore describes both reductions and new spending without showing which new costs are included in the proposed $82 million.

He also described two categories of Nation-owned assets:

"we have 270 vehicles that we own. 270. Out of those 270, I can identify 30 to 40 that haven't moved in two or three years. Haven't moved. And guess what? We're paying insurance on those things."

"we have some buildings up here that appraised at $3.6 million and $2.8 million... I'm having a hard time finding a $3.6 million building over there or a $2.8 million building."

Do the underlying records exist, and what do they say?

A fleet count, a schedule of insurance premiums, a fixed-asset register, two appraisals: these are the kinds of records a government the size of the Osage Nation ordinarily holds. None is cited in the interview. Whether they exist, and what they show, is not yet part of this record. The fleet claim also led to a spending proposal: Tillman said the administration was studying a motor pool and an internal maintenance shop. The relevant comparison is the avoidable insurance and outside-maintenance costs against the capital, equipment, staffing, insurance, and operating costs of the proposed shop.

The building figures require a second distinction. A property can have different market, assessed, and replacement-cost values. Insurance coverage may be based on the cost to reconstruct a building rather than the price it would bring in a sale. The appraisals and insurance declarations would show whether the $3.6 million and $2.8 million figures represent higher coverage, replacement cost, or another valuation basis.

What specific first-year measures did he supply?

Asked what specific results he would use to judge his first year, Tillman named growth in the Permanent Fund, controlled spending, stronger financial footing, workforce development, and a culture of accountability and service. He supplied no starting value, numerical target, deadline, or reporting schedule for any of them. The answer identifies categories of success, not the measures by which the public could determine whether they had been achieved.

For an interpretation of the selections and timing described here, see What I think.

What is still unknown

The documents needed to answer the remaining questions are identifiable:

The FY2027 instructions and goals departments received when preparing their requests.

The nearly $98 million in requests, with each funding source identified.

The revenue information and shortfall calculation used when the emergency was declared.

The written closure directives, remaining FY2026 balances and legal authority relied on for each closure.

The resources, appropriation and expected cost of the language programming announced on August 13.

Any congressional response to the Chief’s August 7 request to amend ONCR 26-12.

The FY2025 outlay figure the $60 million was carried forward from, and the enactment that set it.

Three years of Permanent Fund draws against retained revenue, and the calculation behind a stated six-month burn rate, including the governmental functions and revenue-loss assumptions included.

The department-by-department reconciliation taking nearly $98 million in requests to the proposed $82 million Executive Branch budget, with every reduction and funding source identified.

The Harvest Land and Pawhuska Visitors Center ledgers since inception: appropriations by year, revenue by year, and the closure order for each, if one exists.

The Oklahoma State University-Osage Nation agreement for NIH award R01MD016191, the remaining work plan through April 30, 2027, and any notice to or approval from OSU or NIMHD concerning the restructuring of Harvest Land.

The Nation’s fleet inventory and insurance schedule, including acquisition year and last-movement date per vehicle.

The cost study for a government motor pool and maintenance shop, including current outside-maintenance spending and the proposed facility’s capital, staffing, equipment, insurance, and operating costs.

Both building appraisals referenced in the Chief’s August 24 interview, by parcel, appraisal date, appraiser, and valuation basis, together with the insurance declarations and annual premiums tied to them.

The FY2027 Public School Expansion Plan displayed during that interview, including its requested appropriation, staffing, participating districts, and implementation schedule.

The appropriations, operating estimates, funding sources, responsible entities, and implementation schedules for the funeral home, assisted-living facilities, youth and elder programs, motor pool, maintenance shop, Lost Creek Ranch, and any proposed drone-manufacturing investment at Skyway36.

The starting values, numerical targets, deadlines, and reporting schedule behind the first-year measures the Chief named in that interview: Permanent Fund growth, controlled spending, financial footing, and workforce development.

The Chief renewed that request on August 14, asking Congress to raise the outlay to $82 million. As of August 14, no resolution amending ONCR 26-12 and no statement from Congress responding to either request appears in the enacted resolutions and public releases collected here.

Timeline of events

October 1, 2025: On the last day of the Tzi-Sho Session, the 9th Osage Nation Congress passes ONCR 25-19, sponsored by Congresswoman Maria Whitehorn, calling for the resignation of Attorney General Clint Patterson. The vote is 9 to 2, with Congresswomen Jodie Revard and Brandy Lemon voting no and Congressman Joe Tillman absent. Patterson declines to resign, telling Osage News the resolution has “nothing of substance” in it.

October 17, 2025: The Congressional Membership Committee, made up of Congressmen Eli Potts as chair, Joe Tillman as vice chair and John Maker, votes to circulate an authorization to retain Special Counsel to investigate seven allegations against Patterson under Rule 12 of the Congressional rules. Osage News reports that the authorization “requires and received seven signatures to move forward” and lists “a budget of $50,000 for the hiring of Special Counsel.” The reported signers are Alice Goodfox, Otto Hamilton, Billy Keene, Maker, Potts, Tillman and Maria Whitehorn. This is the only use of that rule the record has located in the sources collected here.

March 31, 2026: Congress votes unanimously to proceed to a removal trial for Patterson on two allegations. Congressman Joe Tillman moved for removal the previous day, the first day of the Hun-Kah Session, on seven allegations, and Congress reduced them to the two it considered most substantial. Membership Committee chair Eli Potts tells the chamber, “He should have resigned a long time ago.” Congresswoman Brandy Lemon states that the Membership Committee spent over $60,000 on its investigation and hearing the previous October.

April 20, 2026: Osage News reports Patterson’s resignation, in an April 15 letter to Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear: he “has resigned, effective May 29, following months of Congressional investigation and a pending removal process.” No removal trial is held. Standing Bear states he will not appoint a successor, leaving the appointment to the administration elected in June.

April 8, 2026: The Appropriations Committee takes up the FY2027 projected revenue resolution (ONCR 26-12) and a proposed FY2027 budget template.

April 23, 2026: The committee again takes up ONCR 26-12 and the budget template. The member presenting them describes returning to the FY2025 figure, a $60 million Executive Branch outlay.

April 27, 2026: ONCR 26-12 is adopted, setting the FY2027 Executive Branch budgetary outlay at $60 million.

July 11, 2026: Joe Tillman takes office as Principal Chief.

July 24, 2026: In a written statement, the Chief describes an approximately $60 million budget authorization against nearly $98 million in submitted Executive Branch requests, requiring approximately $38 million in reductions.

July 29, 2026: The appointment of an Attorney General is announced, to begin September 1 and subject to confirmation by Congress.

July 31, 2026: The Chief releases a statement on the criminal charges filed July 15 by Acting Attorney General RhyLee Wynn against former Treasurer Clark Batson, over peyote found in the Osage Nation Law Building. NonDoc reports him saying: “The Osage Nation Attorney General Law establishes the Attorney General’s Office as an independent agency, separate from the authority of the principal chief”, and that he has “confidence that the legal process will proceed fairly, impartially, and in accordance with Osage Nation law.” Osage law exempts registered Native American Church members’ peyote use “in connection with recognized bona fide practices” from the possession offense under 6 ONC § 5-140, and 15 ONC § 3-112 bars any employee, “including Executive Branch personnel or members of the Osage Nation Congress”, from interfering “in the legal functions of the Office of the Attorney General.” The charges were dismissed in Osage Nation Trial Court on August 5, 2026.

August 3, 2026: ONCA 26-36 and ONCA 26-37 are filed with the Clerk, three business days before the special session, as 15 ONC § 1-103 requires. ONCA 26-37 authorizes $394,965 to the IDC - Office of the Principal Chief for FY2026.

August 4, 2026: The Chief issues Executive Order 26-01, declaring a State of Emergency and citing shortfalls in projected revenue and constraints in the budgetary outlay. ONCA 26-38 through ONCA 26-47 are filed the same day.

August 5, 2026: A press release announces the closures of Daposka Ahnkodapi, the Osage Nation Visitors Center, and Harvest Land, describing approximately $5 million in FY2027 budget relief.

August 6, 2026: The Treasury Department provides the FY2025 audit to the Principal Chief. In an Appropriations discussion, the same member describes the outlays as a place marker. At the same meeting, Congressional Budget Manager David Browers reports $7.8 million in the general treasury and $3.4 million in retained revenue, reconciled with the Treasury. Congress convenes the 2nd Special Session. The Chief presents the appropriation requests, and the Speaker, listing the posts Congress is without, says “We do not have a treasurer.”

August 7, 2026: The Treasury Department reports $7,223,992 in retained revenue and says the Chief “is seeking immediate cooperation from the Legislative Branch to amend” ONCR 26-12 and “increase the budgetary outlay to the Executive Branch for fiscal year 2027, which was the driver for declaring a State of Emergency”.

August 8, 2026: The Osage Nation Visitors Center closes.

August 10, 2026: Osage citizens address a congressional hearing on the closure of Daposka Ahnkodapi. Assistant Principal Chief John Shaw is the only Executive Branch representative present and cannot answer several lawmakers’ questions about how the closure decision was made. The Government Operations Committee separately questions the Visitors Center and Harvest Land closures.

August 11, 2026: The Osage Nation Education Committee meets and sends a letter to the Chief asking that Daposka Ahnkodapi be reopened. All members of the Osage Nation Congress sign it, together with more than 1,000 community members. The letter states that the school “represents the cornerstone of Osage language revitalization” and that “The Osage people deserve a truthful explanation as to the reason for closing the school.”

August 12, 2026: Congress issues a counterstatement, reported by Public Radio Tulsa, saying “the Osage government is not financially stressed.”

August 13, 2026: The Chief announces plans to redirect resources serving about 90 immersion-school students toward language and cultural opportunities beginning with more than 600 Osage public-school students. The same statement proposes expanding direct food assistance and asking Congress to dedicate 50 percent of retained revenue to the Permanent Fund beginning in FY2027.

August 14, 2026: In Executive Order 26-02, the Chief lifts the State of Emergency and formally requests that Congress amend ONCR 26-12 to raise the FY2027 Executive Branch outlay from $60 million to $82 million. The closures announced on August 5 remain.

August 17, 2026: Osage News reports the terms of the August 14 order and the accountability details from the August 6 and 10 committee meetings above.

August 24, 2026: Principal Chief Joe Tillman gives his first interview since taking office. Osage News publishes it on August 25. He describes nearly $98 million in departmental requests, the enacted $60 million outlay, a proposed $82 million outlay, and a $44 million Permanent Fund balance with a stated six-month burn rate.

August 24, 2026: Congressman Billy Keene posts a public statement disputing HR’s continued citation of the State of Emergency in communications with laid-off Daposka Ahnkodapi employees.

September 2, 2026: An Authorization to Retain Special Counsel concerning the Principal Chief is filed with the Office of the Clerk at 4:35 PM and certified by Clerk of the Congress Jordan Davis. On Osage Nation Congress letterhead, it opens: “Pursuant to Rule 12.1 of the Rules of the Osage Nation Congress this authorization is presented by Second Speaker Red Corn to retain special counsel to investigate the following allegations, that if true, would constitute grounds for removal of the Principal Chief, Joe Tillman”. Three allegations follow: that Executive Order 26-01 declared “a State of Emergency that did not exist, and without any basis in law to issue the order”; that the Chief “utilized a false financial State of Emergency to close Daposka Ahnkodapi, the Visitor Center and Harvest Land”; and that Executive appointed staff “pressured the Office of the Attorney General, an independent office, to file and or dismiss criminal charges against Treasurer Clark Batson” over peyote. Each is characterised in the text as “constituting malfeasance”. The stated budget is “fifty thousand dollars ($50,000)”, the same figure as the October 2025 authorization above.

The signature page carries eleven of the Congress’s twelve members. Six signed by hand, Congresswoman Pratt, Speaker Goodfox, Second Speaker Red Corn, Congressman Hamilton, Congresswoman Revard and Congressman Potts; five lines read “electronic mail approval”, for Congressmen Bristow, Keene and Walker and Congresswomen Shaw and Whitehorn, the mode Rule 12.1(c) permits alongside a signature. The line for Congressman Maker is blank.

The same day, Congressman Billy Keene posts the document publicly and describes it as “just a first step, we will now wait for the investigative report before Congress decides how to proceed. It’s a fact-finding mission.” He gives the threshold that would follow one: “After we receive the report, if we still decide to move forward with Removal, this will require 8 votes to proceed to a removal trial.” What has been said publicly since, and what the removal procedure requires at each step, is tracked separately on this record’s page on the special counsel.

September 8, 2026: At the Congress’s regular Tzi-Sho session floor sitting, Chief Tillman says in his executive message that he continues “to look forward to receiving a response from the Osage Nation Congress on my request for an amended budgetary outlay.” Congress reads in ONCA 26-50, “an act to provide an appropriation to the Osage Nation Executive Branch for fiscal year 2027 in the amount of $83,487,228 and to establish an alternate effective date,” a figure close to but not the same as the $82 million the Chief requested on August 14.

At the same day’s Appropriations Committee meeting, Second Speaker Red Corn recalls a meeting she and Speaker Goodfox held with the executive branch at the end of July, where, she says, “they thought they could get to 75 million in that meeting that day, and then we get budgets that are roughly 84, almost 85 million,” an intermediate figure between the enacted $60 million and the $82 million August 14 request that the record had not previously carried.

Also that morning, external auditor Mike Deerlam of REDW presents the Nation’s FY2025 single audit to the full Congress. He reports the firm “issued unmodified, also referred to as clean opinions on the nation’s financial statements for that fiscal year end,” alongside “30 adjusting journal entries,” which he calls “a pretty high volume” and attributes to turnover in the Nation’s accounting and finance staff. As of the audit’s September 30, 2025 fiscal year end, ten months before the emergency, he reports governmental-activity cash balances “just a hair under $100 million” and, across the Nation’s component units including gaming and Osage Nation Health, “about $186 million.”

December 31, 2026: Harvest Land is scheduled to close.

Updates

Corrections

Where this record has been incorrect, the change is recorded here rather than made quietly. Updates above are new information; these are places the record itself was mistaken.

Sources

Links accessed through August 17, 2026. Where a document is quoted above, the local copy this record was checked against is the reference of record; these links show where each source was published.

Special Election is March 20, Osage News, February 8, 2017, for the ballot language approved by the Osage Nation Election Board.

Osage Nation votes “yes” for gay marriage, Osage News, March 20, 2017, reporting complete but unofficial results for both questions on that ballot.

Statement of Principal Chief Tillman on Addressing 2027 Budget Challenges, July 24, 2026

Executive Order 26-01, August 4, 2026

ONCR 26-12, enacted

Osage Nation press release announcing the closures, August 5, 2026

Osage Nation press release lifting the State of Emergency and requesting a modified FY2027 outlay. The page carries no visible date; its metadata gives a published time of August 14, 2026.

Osage Nation Treasury Department release on the FY2025 audit, August 7, 2026

Osage News, “Tillman lifts State of Emergency 10 days after declaring it,” August 17, 2026, for Executive Order 26-02, the $22 million figure, the Aug. 6 Appropriations Committee figures reported by Congressional Budget Manager David Browers, and the Aug. 10 committee attendance and questioning.

Osage News, “10th Osage Nation Congress formally requests Tillman to reopen Daposka Ahnkodapi,” August 11, 2026, for the Aug. 10 hearing testimony, Shaw’s per-student cost calculation, Tillman’s March 2026 campaign statement, and the formal Congress letter.

Statement posted by Principal Chief Joe Tillman on Facebook, August 13, 2026. Transcribed from the image supplied to this project on August 13, 2026.

Osage News, “Tillman declares State of Emergency over Executive Branch budget,” August 4, 2026

KGOU, “We’re not broke: Osage Nation Congress says state of emergency does not reflect reality,” August 7, 2026

Appropriations Committee meeting, April 8, 2026

Appropriations Committee meeting, April 23, 2026

Osage Nation Constituent Services, for open-records requests

This page is part of a record compiled by an Osage citizen, independent of the Osage Nation government. Every figure, date and quotation on it can be checked against the document it came from.