Gubernatorial candidates squared off Thursday, taking aim at the man whose job they want to take.
If everyone were satisfied with the way things are going, there wouldn’t be so many people running this year for governor, former Sen. Adlah “Foncie” Donastorg said.
So began a night of back and forth between gubernatorial candidates about issues many said have gone from “bad to worse” under the current administration, including an overall trust in the government, efforts to fix the Government Employees Retirement System and reforms to an educational system that has recently seen more delays in the opening of school.
The candidates, gathered for a forum hosted by the Educational Administrators Association, also contended that focusing on storm recovery is not the main issue this year. Residents should focus instead on finding the team with the right plan to not only rebuild, but to return the territory to its former glory days as a leader in health care, tourism and economic development.
Gov. Kenneth Mapp
Stepping up to the podium, Mapp first congratulated the EAA for recently ratifying an agreement that gives pay raises – for the first time in eight years – to the union’s membership, including principals and assistant principals. The announcement was met by thunderous applause from the audience, and gave Mapp an opening to talk about the condition of the government when he first took office in 2015, when he said the territory was “teetering on the brink of financial collapse.”
The administration’s response to fixing years of unpaid collective bargaining agreements and tax refunds, along with a broken infrastructure, was to bring “financial stability, grow the economy, improve the overall quality of life, create jobs, and work toward implementing living wages” for the people, Mapp said.
In the wake of last year’s hurricanes, the territory has seen one “of the most robust recoveries” of any of six other disaster zones, and Mapp said re-electing him will ensure those efforts continue to move forward.
“We are running for re-election to continue the work we have begun with our federal partners, who have provided more than $8.5 billion for the rebirth and rebuilding of the territory,” he said. “The Mapp-Potter administration has a great story to tell, and a great story to share.”
Adlah “Foncie” Donastorg
While Mapp said knowledge, leadership and experience is what makes his team most qualified for the job, Donastorg argued that the combined experience of himself and his running mate, Sen. Alicia “Chucky” Hansen, has made them more equipped to address the issues of local residents.
“When we talk about good governance, we talk about good judgement and applying a level of sensibility and sensitivity along the way,” he said. “We are looking for hope, because hope is what gives people that confidence that there is going to be things like economic growth and changes in the educational system.”
Donastorg spoke about creating a “paradigm shift” that focuses on young business owners and entrepreneurs and leading by example so that young people understand they can live and work in the Virgin Islands, and be rewarded by giving back.
Soraya Diase Coffelt
Hope was a sentiment also stressed by candidate Soraya Diase Coffelt, who said she wanted to create a Virgin Islands that her children would want to come back to. That includes building a thriving health care system, nursing homes that are well staffed to take care of the elderly, making sure students are reading at grade level, and, ensuring that young people who don’t want to move on to college have access to technical education programs that prepare them for a career.
“For adults, it means installing hope for a brighter tomorrow, where we don’t have to drive over potholes and we’re actually solving many of the problems our residents are facing instead of making them worse,” she said.
Having the ability to problem solve, look at all sides of an issue, and come to a decision after doing the proper research is key to making that all happen, along with “responsibly” managing money and investing it in the right places, Diase Coffelt added.
“I know what it means to have a government that doesn’t support you,” she said.
Janette Millin Young
When residents are upset at the government, it means that its leaders aren’t doing their jobs, Millin Young, a four-term senator, said Thursday.
Making sure residents are informed about what’s going on is the first step to fixing the problem, but that also means a commitment to transparency, which Millin Young said has been absent from the current administration. Recovering from two hurricanes is one thing, but the system was broken before that, and Millin Young said that getting through the post recovery period is contingent upon the election of a governor “who is diligent with the money.”
Completing one project before another one is started is also part of the process, she said, speaking about the ongoing revitalization of Main Street on St. Thomas, which continues while other projects – including the longstanding Veteran’s Drive project – have already started. Another part of the process is making sure that all islands are taken care of, all businesses are incentivized and all residents are informed about what their government is up to.
Albert Bryan, Jr.
Candidate Albert Bryan, Jr. also spoke about the division of the territory into factions: St. Thomas against St. Croix, private versus public sectors and east against west. The time has come to talk instead about “unification” and how the government can serve all of its people.
Restoring trust is key, he said.
The second part, he added, is restoring the world’s trust in the Virgin Islands and getting investment into the territory going again. Along with that, putting that investment back into the education system, building career and technical education programs and tapping younger people for new ideas to stimulate economic development will also help the up and coming generations get jobs and earn money for their families.
“How can you trust someone who has deceived you over and over again, making promises of what was to come, yet you have seen nothing? Four years have passed and we’re still promising what we are going to do in the next four years. The time for reckoning has come,” he said.
Moleto Smith
An inability to keep promises has been a systemic problem for many governors, Candidate Moleto Smith said.
“We know that from administrations past to administrations present, the human suffering is intense and wide,” he said. Smith talked about a collapsed health care system, a physical infrastructure that “was bad long before” last year’s storms and an education system that has been long been challenged.
“This is our reality,” he said. “This is how we’ve been living.”
Fixing the problems means waiting until the smoke clears and using personal experiences to make things better. Sharing his own story of being a caretaker to his father, Smith said he understands the need for senior living facilities that offer the elderly a good quality of life. And, with a mother who worked as a teacher, specialist and nurse, Smith said the solutions to fixing the education system are multi-tiered.
“We have to smoke out all that ‘kumbyah stuff’ and deal in reality,” he said. “We need to talk about the issues as they are and how people are being impacted by them.”
Warren Mosler
For Mosler, the biggest issue in the territory is the ailing government pension system. A financier with almost half a century of economic and management experience, Mosler said Thursday that the solutions are not as far away as people think, and lay in the fact that the territory, unlike the states, gets to keep what’s paid out in income taxes.
When GERS makes a payment to a retiree, for example, a portion of that money comes right back to the government in the form of income taxes. Instead of crediting those taxes back to GERS, the government spends it on other things and Mosler said that’s the problem.
“The government is living off the money that goes to GERS,” he said. Over the past couple of decades, that has cost the territory $1 billion, and Mosler said putting in office someone who understands how to manage the funds is the key to economic success.
So is putting in qualified people to run the government, Mosler added.
“Unlike most of the candidates up here, I’m at a disadvantage in that I don’t have any family here. So, it’s going to be very difficult for me to find anyone to hire,” he said. “But I’ll do my best to overcome that disadvantage and put the right, qualified people in the right places.”
