The Legislature and the administration are set to meet head on again at Thursday's Senate Finance Committee meeting.
Committee chair Lorraine Berry has sent out questionnaires to 12 of the administration's top financial and legal officers and advisers, asking them to appear before the committee with answers to financial mysteries that have bewildered the Legislature, and sometimes the administration itself, ever since the Fiscal Year 2000 budget was announced late last year. The April 13 meeting is called a "financial status overview."
In a preamble to the questions, which were developed by Campbell R. Malone, legislative post auditor, he claims Government House has ignored his warnings about inflated revenue projections.
Malone asked how the administration, with projected fiscal year 2000 revenue estimates of $432 million, and the proceeds of the $300 million bond issue, can say there is a $22.5 million deficit, as announced by Budget Director Ira Mills at a March 16 Finance Committee meeting.
And this is only the first of the questions on the 11-page questionnaire.
Berry wants to know how the shortfall will be made up, and what will happen when the $300 million in bond revenues are exhausted. She also wants an explanation of "administratively created funds," a term employed by Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull at a meeting earlier this year.
Both mainland and local officials will be testifying. Invitations went to Rudolph Krigger Sr., special assistant to the governor on fiscal matters; Mills, director of Management and Budget; Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull; Bureau of Internal Revenue Director Claudette Farrington; Public Finance Authority Director Amadeo I.D. Francis; Margaret Guarinao, director of First Union Capital; Peter Heibert, attorney with the Washington law firm of Winston & Strawn; Shawn Griffin, attorney and bonds specialist with the law firm of Harris Beach & Wilcox; John deJongh, chairman of the governor's Five-Year Economic Task Force; Steven G. Van Beverhoudt, V.I. inspector general, and Arnold Van Beverhoudt, Interior Department regional audit manager.
