Dear Source:
The most recent Legislature fiasco, Friday's marathon special session on the teachers' situation, finally confirmed the absolutely devastating clarity of a single picture.
The Legislature knows virtually nothing about a public entity, the Public Finance Authority (PFA) which it created; and less about what all that lack of knowledge means for the people of the Virgin Islands.
Forget about the usual posturing and political gamesmanship carried out in the Legislature; what is of genuine concern, and should be a cause for alarm among Virgin Islanders from every walk of life, is the realization that the Legislature, in its disingenuous efforts to be the savior of the AFT and garner votes, actually exposed its remarkably naive knowledge of the PFA.
In creating the PFA in 1988, the Senate mandated that the Authority shall be authorized to finance, to make loans for or otherwise to apply its funds only to those projects specifically approved and authorized by the Legislature of the United States Virgin Islands, according to the law. The PFA is also required to fully disclose its annual report to the Legislature at the close of each fiscal year.
How then, can a Legislature in good faith stand before the public in general, and the teachers in particular, and unashamedly announce that it has no idea what funds the PFA has, what it does with those funds, or who is responsible for accounting for those funds!
Why is the Legislature so willing to accept the cloak of secrecy that wraps the PFA?
Why is there no knowledge on the part of the Legislature as to what interest the PFA has generated on bonds and what, if anything, these >retained earnings' are used for?
What is the reason for the Legislature's oversight responsibility of the PFA? What is the reason for requiring specific legislative approval of projects? What is the reason for an annual report of the business of the PFA?
Aren't these requirements intended to give the Legislature, and thus the people of the Virgin Islands, a clear and accurate picture of the status of the PFA?
Is the Legislature asleep at the wheel? If so, God help us all, because if the legislative guard is asleep imagine what is being moved past his station!
Herbie Lockhart
