With efforts already under way to put together an economic strategy for the territory, a bill that would have the Legislature do the same was held in a Senate committee Friday.
At the Senate’s Committee on Economic Development, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, members were told that two committees appointed by the executive branch, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy Committee and the Economic Recovery Task Force, are both working on five-year financial recovery plans.
Because of those efforts, Sen. Donald "Ducks" Cole requested that his proposal to have the Senate establish and implement its own financial recovery plan be held until the administration completes its efforts.
While a CEDS committee report for July 1, 1998, to June 30 of this year set the territory’s unemployment rate at 6.7 percent for the first quarter of 1999’s calendar year, Sen. David Jones, chair of the Committee on Economic Development, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, said it is 8 percent, if not higher.
