Senate President Myron Jackson has scheduled the first budget hearing on the FY 2019 budget for June 5, but the budget has not yet been submitted and Government House has not responded to questions about when it will be submitted.
V.I. law requires the governor to submit the annual budget by the end of May. V.I. government budgets have frequently been submitted late. Gov. Kenneth Mapp submitted the 2018 budget roughly a month late. When Mapp submitted his first budget in 2015, he said it was the first time since 2006 that the fiscal year budget had been submitted on time. In fact, Gov. John deJongh Jr. submitted budgets on time in 2007 and 2008, according to news stories posted at the time. But deJongh submitted budgets late six times. And Gov. Charles W. Turnbull submitted budgets late in 2000, 2001, 2003.
Hearings on the current year’s budget were interrupted by the devastating hurricanes of last fall. In February, the Legislature voted to punt on that budget, allowing the previous year’s appropriation levels to continue.
Late in 2017, administration officials testified to the Legislature that the amount of revenue and expenses were in a state of flux due to the storm damage, loss of some tax revenues and growing flow of federal disaster relief funding.
Monthly revenue figures posted online by the V.I. Internal Revenue Bureau indicate levels that are much closer to last year than initially projected. While good news, that still suggests a budget shortfall exceeding $50 million.
In November, then-Budget Director Nellon Bowry told senators that initial projections show an estimated revenue loss of $423.6 million, combined with storm-related spending increases of $29.5 million, opening up a $453.6 million shortfall for FY 2018. That’s more than a third of all V.I. government revenues from all sources, including federal funding. It is more than half of local funds in the V.I. government’s General Fund, used to pay nearly all government employee salaries and most agency expenses.
Total revenues collected for October 2017 through January 2018 dropped a surprisingly small $3 million over the same period last year, given that most of the territory was in the dark for months and most businesses were shut for many weeks or months. February revenues were down nearly half a million below last year, while March revenues were up by more than half a million over last year.
While hotel taxes, gross receipts and personal income taxes are all down for March, IRB figures show monthly corporate income tax revenues nearly doubling over March 2017, from $3.59 million to $6.33 million.
Mapp recently extended the territory’s post-hurricane state of emergency for at least one more month. The principal legal impact of the state of emergency is to allow Mapp to bypass statutory procurement, contracting and accounting requirements. The V.I. Source has sent the governor and V.I. budget officials a V.I. Open Records Act request for a listing of contracts and expenditures entered outside of usual procedures due to the state of emergency. Government House has not responded to multiple followup emails and calls asking for the status of those requests.
Since all shelters are long-closed, schools are open, power is on and cruise ships are visiting, a continued state of emergency may indicate the governor feels a need for a great deal of fiscal flexibility. That may suggest the budget will not be ready by the end of the month. But with no response from Government House there is no definitive answer one way or another.
