It was a day of a schedule revised and a deadline missed at Government House Tuesday.
A press release announced that Gov. Charles Turnbull's press conference that had been scheduled for Wednesday morning was being delayed until Friday at 2 p.m.
The governor postponed the meeting with news media "in order to accommodate urgent matters requiring his immediate attention," the release stated.
Efforts to reach Government House spokesman James O'Bryan for details about the urgent matters were unsuccessful.
The initial announcement of the press conference said the governor would "discuss the outcome of his meetings off island as well as other important issues."
In the course of two trips to the mainland this month, Turnbull met with federal officials in Washington, D.C., with President Clinton at the National Conference of Governors in St. Louis, Mo., and with financial advisers in New York.
In another development, Government House did not meet Tuesday's deadline to submit the executive branch's revised Fiscal Year 2000 budget to the Legislature for review one week prior to the scheduled start of Finance Committee hearings on Aug. 24.
James Francis, chief of staff to Finance Committee chair Lorraine Berry, said Tuesday evening that the senator had been informed the revised budget would be sent down next Monday instead. He said he did not think this would impact on the start of hearings.
"I do imagine that whatever information is required for that first week, we would have to get it beforehand," he said.
On Aug. 4, in the face of findings by the legislative post auditor that the proposed executive budget contained some $200 million in unsubstantiated revenue projections, Office of Management and Budget director Ira Mills requested and was granted an extension to revise the budget. The Finance Committee rescheduled the start of hearings for Aug. 24.
Mills was in New York with Turnbull, as were the governor's fiscal policy advisor, Rudolph Krigger Sr., and Public Finance Authority director Amadeo Francis.
Berry has already said publicly there is no way that the territorial budget will be in place by Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year. With the three-week delay, she said, final approval by the full Senate should come in late October. Then the budget bill goes to the governor.
