Helping to ensure St. Croix school buses do not stop running again this fiscal year, the Senate approved an Education Department request to transfer $2.4 million from budget line items for personnel costs, materials and supplies, with $1.4 million for busing and $1 million for maintenance.
Abramson Inc., the school bus company owned by former Public Works Commissioner Ann Abramson, stopped running school buses April 30 and May 1 because the department had fallen $628,000 behind on a nearly $4 million bus service contract.
This transfer, along with separate legislation coming soon that would reprogram $2 million currently allocated to setting up a longitudinal data system, will pay bus service through the rest of the fiscal year, according to Management and Budget Director Debra Gottlieb, who testified before the Legislature voted on the measure.
The bill also provides $50,000 to the Department of Health to hire a consultant to write a five-year strategic plan for the division of mental health and the two hospitals in the territory required by a 2009 court settlement.
The bill was also used as a vehicle for non-germane amendments from senators, allowing them to effectively propose new legislation while bypassing the usual committee hearing process.
One amendment from Sen. Usie Richards allows companies with Tax Increment Financing agreements with the V.I. government to pursue renewable energy, and if it can produce enough to sell, requiring it to sell to the V.I. Water and Power Authority rather than to private customers.
"We do not want someone with a TIF certificate to produce power and compete with WAPA,” Richards said. “This measure says they can only sell to WAPA, thereby assisting consumers by driving down the cost per kilowatt hour. That is the intent," he said before the Legislature voted to approve the amendment.
Another, from Sen. Neville James, defines when public school semesters begin and end. It effectively replaces a bill meant to require schools to end the first semester before Christmas holidays, which was vetoed by Gov. John deJongh Jr.
That act had incorrect language, accidentally requiring the second semester, rather than the first, to end before Christmas, James said, adding that "it was an honest error, and the language is offered as an amendment here, rather than move for an override, enacting known faulty legislation."
The amendment says the school year shall begin no later than the second Tuesday after the second Monday in August and end no later than the first Friday in June, so long as the calendar includes at least 1,080 hours of instruction and the first semester ends by Dec. 23.
If signed into law, the change must be implemented no later than the 2013-14 school year.
The Senate also approved amendments:
– from Sen. Carlton "Ital" Dowe, allowing the V.I. National Guard to use existing 2012 funds to pay William Nisbett $43,000 for renovations completed in 2011 to the Guard’s Gramboko Building Post Exchange and $21,000 to Caribbean Cooling Company for installing a five-ton air conditioning unit, wiring, transformers and other pars done in 2006 at the Guard’s Sprat Hall site on St. Croix;
– from Dowe, amending an act appropriating $70,000 for transmitting video of the Legislature’s hearings and sessions, to clarify that the money may be spent to purchase equipment;
– from Sen. Alvin Williams, amending an act he sponsored requiring the Education Department to establish prekindergarten programs by mandating the program begin in the 2013-14 school year;
– from Richards, changing several road construction project appropriations to reflect an additional $200,000 in available federal funding, freeing up local funding to speed up or expand several projects;
– and several technical amendments that clarify legislation without changing its substance.
Voting to approve the heavily amended bill were Dowe, Hansen, James, Richards, Williams, Sens. Shawn-Michael Malone, Terrence "Positive" Nelson, Ronald Russell, Patrick Sprauve and Janette Millin-Young. Sen. Craig Barshinger voted nay. Sen. Nereida "Nellie" Rivera-O’Reilly abstained. Sens. Louis Hill, Sammuel Sanes and Celestino White were absent at the time of the vote.
