Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. touted the territory’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, its multi-billion-dollar recovery from hurricanes Irma and Maria, its navigation of fiscal challenges and other accomplishments during his final State of the Territory Address Monday.
“It was really, in many ways, a recap for a large part of the seven years thus far that he’s been governor of the Virgin Islands,” Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett told the Source afterward. “And so I want to commend him for many of the things that he discussed — the progress that he’s had — and I was grateful that the work in Washington and the federal resources that we were able to bring down played such an instrumental role in a lot of the things that he was discussing, even if some of those are not clear to everyday people.”
Those included the administration’s issuance of 8% payroll repayment checks and what he described as half a billion dollars in tax refunds. Plaskett said she was grateful to have been able to get the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit permanently reimbursed, “and that the governor, along with the Legislature, decided to earmark those funds — which average between $20 and $40 million every year — to be utilized for that.”
Those reimbursements were tucked into the American Rescue Plan Act, which Plaskett worked on as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“So I think there’s a lot of support that has been given to the governor through federal partnerships and through the work that I’ve been doing in Congress, as well as the Legislature really advancing many of the works that he’s talking about,” she said. “GERS — that was a collaborative effort that he did with the Legislature, and I think that this shows all of government working together.”
While Bryan’s address covered many of his administration’s greatest hits, Plaskett said she was disappointed by several subjects he didn’t address.
“I know that I’ve spent a lot of my earmarked funding toward mental health and homelessness, and we know that that’s a real issue here in the Virgin Islands,” she said, “and I would have liked to have heard about that. And while our office was really instrumental in a lot of this rebuilding that we’re going to be engaged in — specifically dealing with our schools as well as our hospitals — we all know that it’s the programs within those things that people are really concerned about.”
Plaskett said those programs can drive engagement for students and pointed to the need to look beyond graduation rates, noting that many Virgin Islands students are falling behind in reading and math. In health care, she said, it won’t be enough to have new hospitals.
“We’ve still got to figure out revenues and resources to ensure that we can pay the doctors the kind of money that we can, that we’re paying our vendors, and that we have the kind of health care programs that Virgin Islanders need to feel safe — and that will ensure that our elders are here and that families feel comfortable being at home,” she said.
In a departure from last year’s address, Bryan said little about the St. Croix refinery Monday. Plaskett said she’s had discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency and the refinery’s owners.
“And we know that with what’s happening in Venezuela, of course, that’s an opportunity, but there are a lot of Gulf refineries that have been operating that also refine Venezuelan crude,” she said. “So while we are looking at every opportunity, we’ve got to continue diversification and ensuring that that space, while it may have refining or topping … that it’s also looking at other utilization of the space that’s there, and … pushing us forward, so that we’re looking at other forms of energy as well.”
