A fifth try at writing a Virgin Islands Constitution?
That will be the subject of a hearing Monday in the Legislature's committee on Government Operations.
On the table is a bill to appropriate $200,000 to create a 55-member Constitutional Convention that will draft a Virgin Islands "organic act" including a bill of rights, a framework of government and a procedure for amendment.
The proposal already has the backing of seven senators. It is sponsored by Sen. David Jones and co-sponsored by Sens. Gregory Bennerson, Lorraine Berry, Donald Cole, Anne Golden, Norman Jn-Baptiste and Almando Liburd.
The bill was introduced in August, but there has been almost no publicity on it, and a move to postpone action on it is expected Monday.
As proposed, delegates to the convention would be chosen in the November 2000 election. The 15 senators elected then would all be members. Voters in each of the two districts also would choose an additional 14 members and they would elect 12 delegates at-large.
Any eligible voter could run for a seat at the Convention provided he filed a nominating petition with the Board of Elections. Delegates would be paid $50 a day while attending sessions.
The group would convene the first week of December and complete its work by Feb. 1, 2001.
The bill does not expressly provide for a general election on the draft. Rather it has the convention send it to the President of the United States and various key members of Congress as well as to the Virgin Islands governor and the president of the Legislature.
Jones was off-island this week and unavailable for comment on the proposal.
Co-sponsor Bennerson said the territory does not have a mandate from the U.S. as it did for prior attempts, but that the United Nations Committee on Decolonization would support the move.
"We have to develop a document that is best suited to the 21st century and the Virgin Islands," he said.
Bennerson chairs the Government Operations Committee which meets at 10 a.m. Monday on St. Thomas.
Among the people he has invited to discuss the bill are representatives of each political party in the territory – James Oliver, Republican, James O'Bryan, Democrats, and Raymond Richards, Independent Citizens Movement, as well as John Abramson, supervisor of Elections, Kwame Garcia, University of the Virgin Islands, and a representative from the League of Women Voters.
Bennerson said his committee would like to hear from anyone interested in the issue.
Another co-sponsor, Berry, and O'Bryan both said Saturday night that Democrats met earlier in the day and decided to ask that the committee postpone any action on the bill for 60 days.
Contacted for comment Friday, St. Croix Administrator Rupert Ross, who presided over the fourth Constitutional Convention in 1981, said he was unaware of the move to hold a fifth convention, but that he welcomed it.
"It is always time to move the process forward," he said. "The longer we wait. . . the more difficult it's going to become" to reach consensus.
A major sticking point the last time around was the question of rights and privileges for native Virgin Islanders. Debates at the convention were often bitter and consensus was hard won, but in the end, voters rejected the document at the polls.
Ross noted that the fourth convention was held shortly after the third, and delegates were able to build on the work of the prior convention. Now it has been nearly 20 years, and delegates will have their work cut out for them.
