A federal judge gave the Virgin Islands government one week to indicate whether it paid a court-appointed prison monitor for four months’ work — or explain why it hadn’t.
In a memorandum opinion and order filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, Judge Wilma Lewis directed the government to submit the payment status for invoices covering work in June, July, August and September 2024. Lewis wrote that the update should include the date each invoice was received, the date each invoice was due and the date each invoice was paid.
“If any of the aforementioned invoices were not paid within 30 days of receipt, the Territory shall provide an explanation for its failure to do so,” she wrote. The government’s deadline is next Tuesday.
The payment issue came up earlier this year when monitor Kenneth Ray notified parties on April 26 that he would cease work pending receipt of payment for January, February and March 2024. Ray later received payment for January on May 8, according to court documents. The filing noted that the V.I. Corrections Bureau had approved the payments and was waiting for issuance by the Finance Department.
Lewis issued an order to show cause on May 28, noting that the delayed payments were not the first time the Virgin Islands failed to pay a monitor in the history of the decades-old consent decree.
“Indeed, this problem began back in 2014,” she wrote. “On June 6, 2014 — after the Territory’s second failure to timely pay the Monitor and the Monitor’s resulting suspension of services — the Court entered an order requiring . . . that the Territory pay the Monitor’s monthly invoices within thirty days of receipt, in accordance with Defendants’ contract with the Monitor, or face sanctions,” she wrote.
Six months later, in December 2014, the court assessed a $1,000 sanction against the government for its failure to pay a September 2014 invoice. The court further ordered that any future noncompliance — without good cause or a legally sufficient reason — would lead to a $250 fine per day of late payment plus any fees or expenses the monitor incurred as a result.
“After a nine-year hiatus, the problem appears to have resurfaced again,” Lewis wrote in her order to show cause in May.
During a subsequent June 11 court hearing, the untimely payments were attributed to the territory’s “shortfalls between revenue and expenditures,” according to Tuesday’s memorandum opinion and order.
On July 12, the government notified the court that it will “utilize its best efforts to prioritize future payment of invoices submitted by the Court-appointed Monitor . . . during the pendency of the Territory’s current fiscal circumstances.”
According to that filing, submitted by then Attorney General-nominee Gordon Rhea, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. met with leadership from the V.I. Finance Department and Corrections Bureau on June 21 to address the court’s concerns. During that meeting, Bryan directed the Finance Department to prioritize paying invoices submitted by the court-appointed monitor.
Rhea also noted that the monitor’s May invoice had been paid, writing that the “Territory believes the foregoing resolves all issues pertaining to these payments and will notify the Court in the event of any future issues. The Territory consulted Plaintiff regarding this notice, who indicated it did not oppose.”
According to that filing, the V.I. Corrections Bureau submitted the monitor’s invoices on a weekly “Critical List” to the Finance Department, and vendor payments were then prioritized based on discussions between a “stateside third-party consulting firm” and the Virgin Islands Finance Commissioner.
Lewis seemed unimpressed.
“The Territory represented that its use of the Critical List together with follow-up communications to Finance by BOC and the Attorney General’s Office were unavailing, resulting in the Territory’s failure to make timely payments to the Monitor,” Lewis wrote in Tuesday’s order. “In fact, the Territory presented what appeared to be a very dim situation — that it did not know when the issue of Monitor compensation would be rectified due to the Territory’s ongoing financial constraints.”
Lewis also wrote that Bryan’s intervention was appreciated but insufficient.
“In the final analysis, whether Governor Bryan’s directive to Finance is resulting in timely payment of the Monitor’s invoices can best be assessed at this time by reviewing the Territory’s payments over the past several months,” she wrote.
Attempts to reach spokespersons at the Corrections Bureau and Finance Department on Wednesday were not successful. A Government House spokesperson did not respond to questions regarding whether payments to the court-appointed monitor had been made in recent months.
