Saying it would be “difficult to find a more historically mismanaged federal program,” a federal judge this week used all the adjectives at his disposal to try to describe the federal government’s gross violation toward 300,000 Indians that are owed far more than the promises of reform that have come from the Interior and Treasury Departments.

The mismanagement of the Individual Indian Money trust funds has been well known for some time. At question was how much the two departments had repaired them during the last several years. The answer clearly, according to U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, was not nearly enough. Going back 150 years, the accounts are supposed to compensate Indians for the use of their land with royalties from the sale of petroleum, timber and other natural resources. But the federal government admits that it cannot figure out how much money individuals are owed, how much is in the accounts or whether the people who are supposed to be receiving checks actually are.

“The court,” said Judge Lamberth in one of the more damning passages in his opinion, “knows of no other program in American government in which federal officials are allowed to write checks — some of which are known to be written in erroneous amounts — from unreconciled accounts — some of which are known to have incorrect balances. … It is fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form.”

Seven years after Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said he could have the problem solved in 60 days, his department still cannot account for the trust-fund money. What makes this a particularly egregious case, Judge Lamberth observed, is the fact that the Indians did not willingly enter into the agreement to form a trust; the federal government imposed it on them. The result of decades of mismanagement, however, means that tens of thousands of beneficiaries are not receiving the proper amount of their own money. On the other hand, some of them might be — no one can say for sure.

Further hearings will determine what damages the Indians will receive, but in the meantime Judge Lamberth properly has placed the program under court order, effective for the next five years, to ensure that it is reformed and operated for effectively. He could have gone further and taken the trust fund from the federal government and placed it in receivership.

Given the sloppiness of the trust program and the slow pace of repairing it, that is an option the judge and Congress should keep in mind.