Interior Assistant Secretary Kenneth L. Smith has announced the appointment of new area directors for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) at Sacramento, California and Anadarko, Oklahoma.
Maurice W. Babby, area director at Anadarko, has been transferred to the Sacramento office and William P. Ragsdale, assistant area director for economic development in the Phoenix, Arizona area, has been assigned to Anadarko. The BIA has a total of 12 area offices, or regional offices, throughout the United States.
Babby, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, was the area director in Sacramento before coming to Anadarko in 1982. In his 28 years with the BIA, he has served in a variety of top administrative and managerial positions. He was director of administration, acting director of legislation and a special project development manager in the BIA central office in Washington, D.C. He has also worked in the Aberdeen, South Dakota; Billings, Montana ·and Window Rock, Arizona (Navajo) area offices.
A business administration graduate of Sacramento State University, he subsequently earned a Master’s in public administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Ragsdale, a member of the Cherokee Tribe of Oklahoma, is a former Marine Corps Captain who has been the assistant area director at Phoenix since 1979. Ragsdale, 38, completed the government's Senior Executive Service (SES) candidate development program in 1983 and is moving into his first SES position.
A native of Muskogee, Oklahoma and graduate of Central State University, Edmond, Oklahoma, Ragsdale served for more than a year as the Deputy Director of the BIA's Office of Trust Responsibilities in Washington, D.C. He was superintendent of the Uintah and Ouray agency at Fort Duchesne, Utah from 1976 to 1979. Both appointments are effective February 19.
