Jan. 22, 2009 — The Virgin Islands might have an elected attorney general, auditor general and a separately elected lieutenant governor if draft constitutional language from the committee on the executive of the Fifth Virgin Islands Constitutional Convention is approved by the whole convention next week.
Or it might not. The convention committee tasked with fleshing out the form of a future executive branch made a few final modifications Thursday evening before approving the whole for debate before the entire convention on St. Thomas next week.
Delegate Michael Thurland, the committee chairman, read out each section and subsection to the delegates gathered via teleconference in the St. Thomas and St. Croix Board of Education offices. and the delegates offered mostly suggestions for minor changes.
As it stands now, the governor and lieutenant governor would have nearly exactly the same roles and duties as they have now under the federal Virgin Islands Organic Act of 1954 and Virgin Islands law. But the lieutenant governor would be elected independently, rather than on a single ticket with a gubernatorial candidate at the top.
The governor and lieutenant governor would have to be born in the Virgin Islands and have resided there at least 15 years total and for ten years preceding filing to run for office. Other elected officials would have less stringent residency requirements. The attorney general would be elected rather than appointed, but would have to be a licensed attorney and a member of the V.I. Bar. The existing Office of the Inspector General would be replaced by an elected Auditor General, who must have appropriate professional qualifications as well. All of this is subject to possible change next week in plenary session.
Sen. Louis Patrick Hill, who was in the audience on St. Thomas, voiced concern over having the constitution require the auditor general to audit every single agency, every single year.
"I'd be careful about putting a mandate like that into the constitution," Hill said. "Just a basic audit is an extremely time consuming and delicate process. I think it is simply impossible to do with every single agency every year unless you have something like 500 inspectors."
Thurland said past problems "like the Rodney Miller fiasco at Schneider Hospital," led the delegates to require annual audits, but conceded the possible impracticality.
"If we took out word 'annually' we could still require audits and continue to audit like we do now," Thurland said.
The committee voted to strike the annual audit requirement on a motion from Gerard Luz James II. Voting yes were Thurland, James, delegates Violet Anne Golden, Eugene "Doc" Petersen and Stedman Hodge Jr. Abstaining were delegates Richard Schrader and Lisa Williams. Absent were delegates Charles W. Turnbull and Alecia Wells.
Delegates Elsie Thomas-Trotman, Gerard Emanuel, Mary Moorhead and Claire Roker were also present but are not members of the committee and did not vote.
The whole convention meets Jan. 27 and 28 on St. Thomas in the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef Beach Resort Ball Room, starting at 9 a.m. The public is invited.
This convention has a deadline of May 31 to produce a draft document.
The U.S. Congress passed a law in 1976 to allow the people of the Virgin Islands and Guam to adopt territorial constitutions. Any constitution has to be consistent with federal law and with the U.S. constitution. The government must be republican in form, with executive, legislative and judicial branches, and it must have a bill of rights. But there are few other restrictions. A website, Itsourfuture.vi, has excerpts and links to the full text of the relevant laws and much more information.
There have been four previous constitutional conventions, but no territorial constitution yet. The most recent convention was in 1980. A detailed history of previous conventions and extensive background information on the subject is available online.
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