A measure limiting retirement payments to future governors and lieutenant governors passed the Senate Budget, Appropriations and Finance Committee Friday despite pushback from testifiers.
Senate Majority Leader Kurt Vialet, who sponsored the bill, said the existing law entitles those who have held the territory’s highest offices in the executive branch to 40 percent of their annual salary if they served one term and 80 percent if they served two.
Vialet said the bill seeks to control that amount, because “monies that are utilized for the governor and lieutenant governor annuity comes from the General Fund. It’s a line item in the budget, and funds are appropriated not from GERS but from the General Fund to pay this particular obligation.”
“There was never any language that had a cap as to what you could use to be able to apply that 80 percent to,” he said. “So if the salary increased to $192,000 — like proposed in the Compensation Commission study — the retirement package of the governor would raise to $153,000 per year for the rest of their natural life.”
Responding to questions from Vialet during Friday’s committee meeting, V.I. Personnel Division Director Cindy Richardson said the raises proposed by the VIPOCC were processed last week and retroactively took effect beginning on Dec. 2. If enacted, Vialet’s bill would cap the salary used to calculate future governor and lieutenant governor’s retirement annuities at $150,000 per year or $125,000 per year, respectively. Vialet repeatedly stressed that current and living former officeholders would not be impacted by the change.
“We’re going through frugal times. We’re looking for austerity measures. The government is not now one of plenty, and while many might say ‘this is minuscule,’ every little bit adds up,” he said.
Richardson testified on behalf of the central government, which opposed the measure’s targeted scope.
“Good public policy should be rooted in evidence, designed to solve specific challenges and develop through structured processes,” she said. “In this case, it has not been clearly communicated what urgent or systemic issue this bill addresses. If the issue before us is retirement reform or long-term fiscal responsibility, then those are valid and important goals; however, such reform must be approached holistically and equitably, not through legislation targeting a single class of individuals.”
Later, Richardson noted that the legislation targeted two offices without proposing to similarly reform other high-cost pension positions like territory judges and senators.
“It is inequitable to address fiscal concerns by capping retirement for only two positions without a standard or plan to address a broader retirement reform and raises legal and ethical concerns with respect to fairness in governance. Moreover, the proposed caps fail to account for fundamental economic considerations,” she said, like inflation and cost-of-living adjustments.
The measure eventually passed 6-1.
Several lawmakers used Friday’s meeting to revisit long-simmering grievances, including failed previous attempts to payout funds appropriated for retroactive wages and the implementation of raises recommended by the Compensation Commission. Senate Vice President Kenneth Gittens called the raises “shameful and unjust” and questioned why millions appropriated last month to keep the territory’s struggling hospitals afloat hadn’t been received. Finance Commissioner Kevin McCurdy said that money would be going out “either today or … definitely before May 30.”
Gittens said it should have already happened and called on his colleagues to take the administration to court.
Sen. Hubert Fredericks said he was “set back” by Friday’s discussion before endorsing the bill, noting that if the Legislature couldn’t oversee executive compensation “as per statute,” at least it could control their annuities.
“Right now we seem like we’ve lost control as a body, the first branch of government, to limit or to control the compensation for the governor and lieutenant governor,” he said. “That was our task, and now I see this Compensation Commission — that’s now defunct — and that the former head of it, who’s Dr. [Haldane] Davies … he’s now part of the Cabinet.”
Fredericks said it’s no wonder that Virgin Islanders are so frequently upset with their government.
“Because everything we do makes people question the legitimacy of us professionals,” he said. “And this does not look good. I am very, very, very disappointed that it came out looking like this.”
Addressing the Compensation Commission, Richardson said that its members became “null and void” once the report was submitted, “so the hiring of Haldane Davies — that was definitely done within the Governor’s purview … I don’t see any relation in regards to the compensation study versus his qualifications for that position.”
St. Croix Source
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