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Many of the employees already have personal cars and several of the superintendents and other employees use them extensively for government business, although the government supplies only the gas and oil used on official business. The employees at present personally stand for the tire costs, the depreciation, and the interest. The survey staff had many illustrations of the increased efficiency that came from traveling in the personal car of the superintendent or some other employee. These cars were bought for the country where they were to be used and were in condition. Government cars unquestionably do not receive the care and attention which employees give their own cars. Lack of careful attention added to the use of certain makes in a country to which they are poorly adapted apparently results in relatively high operation and maintenance costs and low efficiency.
Form of Appropriations. The proposed committee on revision of the rules and regulations, containing representatives of the Bureau of the Budget and the General Accounting Office should likewise give attention to the form of appropriations[1] for the Indian Service and the other laws governing expenditures. Here again time has not permitted of a detailed study by the survey staff, but enough has been seen to suggest the possibility of material improvement through the use of more general and fewer specific appropriations in order to give opportunity for freer administrative action controlled by reports and accounts upon the Budget Bureau and the General Accounting Office.
In expenditures for boarding school maintenance, for example, the Indian Bureau and the Budget Bureau are now specifically controlled by an act of Congress which fixes $270 per pupil as the maximum for schools of 200 or over and $300 for schools under 200. The amount to be appropriated is determined more or less mechanically by multiplying the number of pupils in each school by the per capita agreed upon for the year and adding the products to get the total for the appropriation. The per capita must not exceed the legal limit. The results of such a mechanical method are at once evident to anyone who observes carefully a number of Indian boarding schools. An instance was recently cited of a boarding school with an irrigation system which had run down, a
- ↑ The appropriation act for the fiscal year 1928 is given in full in Schmeckebier, pp. 488-506.