At Friday's Senate Finance Committee hearing, the Fiscal Year 2001 Budget submitted by Gov. Charles W. Turnbull added to its growing reputation as the documentary equivalent of the least popular kid on the block, without even a Government House functionary to defend it from the slings and arrows of outraged testifiers.
Beginning with presentations by business, labor and community leaders and wrapping up in the afternoon with American Federation of Teachers members administering the coup de grace, the proposed $430 million budget was pummeled all day long. Committee Chairwoman Lorraine Berry closed the morning session at the St. Thomas Legislature by saying the Senate "will have to go back to the drawing board" and essentially start from scratch on a new budget.
Berry got the morning testifiers—St. Thomas-St. John Chamber of Commerce President John deJongh Jr, League of Women Voters President Erva Denham, economist Richard Moore, Hotel and Tourism Association President Richard Doumeng, and Central Labor Council President Luis "Tito" Morales—to pledge to assist legislators in drafting alternatives.
Office of Management and Budget Director Ira Mills and the governor's chief economic adviser Rudolph Krigger had been invited to attend the hearings, but no one from the Turnbull administration showed up.
Denham was left to offer the few encouraging words, commending the executive branch "for its efforts to decrease the cost of government operations" in the budget and for its proposal of what she called "a more equitable highway users tax." But like others testifying Friday and earlier in the week, she criticized the budget for largely ignoring the recommendations in the Five-Year Operating and Strategic Financial Plan.
DeJongh worked for nearly a year on the plan as a member of the Economic Recovery Task Force and said Friday, "What we appear to have done, however, is hit the rewind button on our approach to long-term planning… You cannot be for job creation, business attraction and overall economic growth if you are anti-business."
Backed up by Moore's analysis of how it is private sector growth that drives public revenues, deJongh said, "What you have before you is a proposed general fund budget that, from the standpoint of private sector survivability and development, is deficient."
DeJongh and others singled out the gross receipts tax hike, from 4 to 5 percent, as the main offender, saying it makes no sense to force those already paying taxes to pay more, when there is anywhere from $90 million to $146 million—depending on who is doing the counting—in delinquent accounts receivable.
But it was left to local AFT members, who with the St. Croix AFT have vowed to strike next month, to take the gloves off and offer a blistering critique of not just the FY 2001 budget but of what they described as government inaction and broken promises that have left the territory's school system, and its educators, reeling.
"This budget is garbage. Garbage!" said Janet deFreitas of Lockhart Elementary School. "Even the Bovoni dump wouldn't take this." DeFreitas implored legislators attending the afternoon session—Berry and Sens. Donald "Ducks" Cole and George Goodwin—to visit Lockhart and see for themselves that "it is not ready to open" even after weeks of delay. "There is no electricity. There are no desks."
The 2001 budget proposes a 50/50 split between teachers and government to share the costs of retirement and health insurance, a measure that, coupled with the administration's contract proposal in which teachers would forego half of the retroactive pay owed them since 1993, drew the most scorn.
Teacher Betty Mann-Lee said, "I know of no school system on the mainland, under the U.S. flag, where teachers would work without a raise for seven years as we have. You are telling us to suck salt."
"Teachers," she said, "did not take a vow of poverty when they entered this profession."
Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School art teacher Richard Newby was just as blunt. "Teachers have left the territory, and more are walking out every day," he said, echoing the point that dozens of posts remain to be filled in the system. They won't be, Newby said.
"Others are leaving after Christmas," he said. "And there are no replacements this time."
Finance committee hearings on the budget will continue at 10 a.m. Monday in Senate chambers on St. Thomas.
