Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. met with U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and said the territory will formally request an end to nearly two decades of federal financial oversight of the V.I. Education Department.
“It’s costing us $5 million a year. We actually lost more money over the years using these fiduciaries than we’ve actually gained,” he said in a video message shared at the start of a Government House briefing Monday. Speaking from the lobby of the Hart Senate Building in Washington, D.C., Bryan said the Virgin Islands government is also appealing the rescission of approximately $20 million earmarked for maintenance.
“We were extended, given the time, we got the contractors, we got the purchase order — the work has begun, but they took the money back,” he said. “So, we got a lot of good information and we’re going to be working with her to make sure that we get that money back, get it returned to the Virgin Islands, so we can get our summer maintenance done.”
The federal government designated the territory a “high-risk grantee” decades ago, and since 2006, the V.I. Education Department has been locked into a compliance agreement under which a third-party fiduciary manages the department’s federal grants and awards. The territory currently has a contract with Houston-based accounting firm McConnell and Jones to manage approximately $288 million in federal grants, which was executed in December 2020.
Members of the 35th Legislature vehemently denounced the arrangement in October, after Sharon Murphy, a partner at McConnell and Jones, testified that the department had gone from 24 areas of concern to eight since 2020. Remaining issues included the territory’s use and monitoring of federal funds, payroll procedures and handling of vendor invoices.
Former Sen. Donna Frett-Gregory, then chair of the Senate Budget, Appropriations, and Finance Committee, offered a different tally of the costs associated with the third-party fiduciary during that hearing, stating that the territory spends around $2.5 million per year, or more than $42 million in total.
The push to lift the compliance agreement comes amid repeated attempts by the Trump administration to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. McMahon announced plans in March to cut the department’s staff in half, and on March 20, Trump attempted to shutter the department outright via executive order.
“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” according to the order. “Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows. This year’s National Assessment of Education Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working.”
A U.S. District Judge ordered the laid-off employees reinstated in May, and the case is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, Bryan also touted efforts to re-extend the rum cover overrate from $10.50 to $13.25 per proof gallon. In February, Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett introduced bipartisan legislation to retroactively apply the increase and keep it in place until 2032, but the extension was absent from the federal budget bill currently before the U.S. Senate.
Bryan said he’d been meeting with Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho and Rick Scott of Florida to discuss the matter.
“So this trip is mostly about getting and making sure that we are not forgotten when the opportunity comes to put us on for the rum cover over,” he said.
