The gubernatorial challengers took aim Saturday at incumbent Gov. Kenneth Mapp Saturday at the AARP candidate forum in University of the Virgin Islands Great Hall on St. Croix.
Soraya Diase Coffelt charged the Mapp administration with corruption. When Mapp asked her to be specific, she pointed to a recent report from the Inspector General saying a Department of Motor Vehicles manager was stamping registration documents without inspections.
She also referred to an audit last September of the Public Finance Authority by the U. S. Department of Interior’s Inspector General. She said the audit found financial reporting discrepancies resulting in the loss of $159 million. She said the report went back to 2002 when Mapp was the head of the PFA.
Candidate Albert Bryan, who was commissioner of Labor in the former administration, in his closing statement also went on the offensive against Mapp. He said Mapp “had failed” to keep the promises he made last election and he “is the same man he was back then.”
Candidate Warren Mosler took offense to a comment Mapp made when Mosler was speaking. Mosler was saying the administration always taxes the poor guy – “a guy who wants to sit down and have a beer.” (A reference to a sin tax passed during Mapp’s administration.) Mosler said nobody came after him to pay taxes.
At that point Mapp interjected, “You don’t pay taxes.”
Mosler called the comment a “serious infraction.” He said Mapp, who had access to people’s confidential information, should not be releasing it in a public forum. Although Mosler admitted to paying no income taxes in recent years because of losses, he added that he had recently gotten a property tax bill of $160,000.
Mapp also fell under the criticism for how he handled the recovery from the two hurricanes. Candidate Adlah “Foncie” Donastorg said, “We should have learned from Marilyn.” He questioned why there was no communication system available immediately after the hurricanes hit last year. He also questioned, “How could you evacuate medical evacuees without a tracking system?”
Donastorg added,”Under my administration, our recovery would have been at a faster pace.”
Candidate Janette Millin Young said her problem with the recovery was there was not enough “immediacy” during the initial aftermath.
Diase-Coffelt said people on St. John told her “they would have starved to death if it wasn’t for outsiders coming in.”
“When you hear people say that, it seems the government has failed them,” she said.
Mapp defended himself from most of the criticism by citing his administration’s record. He said schools were open 54 days after the hurricanes struck and power was restored to 95 per cent of the islands within 100 days. He also said he was out on the street assessing the situation immediately after the hurricanes and has developed a good working relationship with federal officials assuring the territory would get the necessary funds to effect recovery.
The question about recovery was the third of four questions put to the candidates by forum moderator Holland Redfield. The first question was how to stabilize the Government Employees Retirement System and keep it solvent.
Candidate Moleto Smith said the long term solution is to move from a defined benefits program to a 401 plan.
Mosler said the GERS unfunded liability is overstated and one way the GERS could help solve the problem would be to buy the property with delinquent taxes from the government.
Several of the candidates said a big problem was the government not being up to date on its payments to GERS. Donastorg said that was the first step. Millin Young said, “Our GERS board, trustees and attorneys are doing a good job. The problem is the plan sponsor does not pay its bills on time.”
Diase Coffelt said she had talked to actuaries and was told GERS should go to Interior Department and U.S. Treasury and borrow more than $2 billion to pay the unfunded liability. This was also the point where she said the government would help by “stopping the cancer of corruption.”
Bryan said there were possible funding source to stop the GERS from bleeding to death. They were the rum cover-over, sports gaming, and gas excise taxes.
Mapp said the unfunded liability is up to $2.5 billion and it takes $100 million to buy one year of life for the pension system. He offered as solutions raising the cap on taxation of salaries and increasing government contributions by three percent per year for the next three years. He has also submitted a plan to the Senate to use money from the recent refinery deal to prolong the life of GERS.
(GERS officials last week threatened to quit processing checks for new retirees unless the government became current on its regular payroll payments. A check was delivered to the GERS on Thursday afternoon bringing the government up to date on those payments.)
The second question concerned the governments dire financial situation.
Diase Coffelt said the government needs to “stop spending as if there’s no tomorrow.”
Mapp said the territory’s economic prosperity will depend on the rebuilding the infrastructure and reducing energy costs. He mentioned solar projects on which his administration was working.
Smith said the government needs to reduce levels of redundancy and needs to align tax revenues to the amount of services it provides. Medical tourism is an area to explore, he added, and the territory’s hospitals need to be moved from under the political boards to be under the University of the Virgin islands.
The other issue candidates were asked to address was the state of health care in the territory.
Although much of the discussion centered on the state of the territories two hospitals, some candidates emphasized personal health care.
The health care model needs to move to prevention, according to Smith. He added health care needs to incorporate all areas of person’s opportunities – walkability, access to exercise and proper nutrition. Mapp said, because his administration had focused on wellness for government employees, cost for insurance premiums had dropped.
Mapp said the territory was going to get new hospitals, but they would be smaller.
“They have always been too big,” he said, usually 50 percent empty, and that made them more expensive.
Millin Young said, “Hospitals do not need to become smaller. If we’re looking to rebuild the territory, we need to right-size the hospitals.”
Mosler and Bryan both cautioned Mapp to build a hospital “before you knock the old one down.”
The room where the forum was held was filled with supporters for the candidates and their running mates. The tickers are as follows: Mapp/Osbert Potter; Donastorg/Alicia “Chucky” Hansen; Diase Coffelt/Dwight Nicholson; Millin Young/Edgar Bengoa; Bryan/Tregenza Roach; Smith/Hubert Frederick; and Mosler/Ray Fonseca. Some 200 people watched live streaming of the forum, co-sponsored by VIYA TV2 , on Facebook and Vimeo.
