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• The two-tiered task force is anchored by a federal working group that includes U.S. attorneys and officials from federal Interior and Justice departments, and an advisory committee of experts on American Indian studies, child health and trauma and child welfare and law. The committee will make policy recommendations to Attorney General Eric Holder.
• West is the second top-tier DOJ official to come to the Dakotas in the last year. Deputy Attorney General James Cole visited the Standing Rock Reservation -- which straddles North and South Dakota -- in the spring of 2012.
• West said he has made half a dozen tours of tribal lands and all have been productive.
• "What I have learned in the course of those trips is that are many things that we can be doing in collaboration with tribes around the country to improve public safety in Indian Country and to improve the lives of kids," West said. "Because at the end of the day, what we are talking about here is the next generation of Indian and Native Alaskan peoples. We fail to invest in our youth at our peril."
• Dorgan said he recently visited with a 12-year-old girl living in a shelter on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Her mother was dead and she didn't know her father, Dorgan said. She was sexually abused in two foster homes.
• "She was in a safe place for the first time and then the funding was cut by sequestration," Dorgan said. "Those are the things that give me passion to keep working on this."
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SD lawmakers will be urged to expand Medicaid
CHET BROKAW, Associated Press
• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Some lawmakers and health care groups plan to ask the South Dakota Legislature next month to expand the state's Medicaid program to cover the medical costs of 48,000 more poor people, despite resistance from Gov. Dennis Daugaard.
• Daugaard last week told state lawmakers that he is not recommending the Medicaid expansion, available to states as an option under the federal health care overhaul, as part of next year's state budget. He said the federal government is having trouble putting the entire overhaul into effect. He also wonders whether the federal government can meet its pledge to pay most of the cost of the expansion.
• "I have continuing doubts about the federal government's ability to deliver on its promises," the Republican governor said.
• But supporters said an expansion is needed to improve health care for poor people who now wait until they are seriously ill before seeking medical care. They said (Continued on page 15)
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