The comments forthcoming Tuesday from our elected leaders and their appointed aides concerning Monday's meeting behind closed doors of the governor, his financial team and 12 senators would be amusing if they were not so deliberately obfuscatory, and at the same time — to borrow a term they all blithely bandy about — transparent.
Three minority members were hunkered down at the Legislature Building Monday morning after everybody else had headed off to Palms Court Harborview. "I have no idea why we weren't notified," Sen. Celestino White said. Minority leader Raymond "Usie" Richards said he had received no invitation to the meeting. Sen. Norman Jn Baptiste didn't want to be quoted but had nothing different to add.
James O'Bryan, spokesman for the governor, said on Tuesday that all 15 senators were "aware of the meeting" from early Monday morning, when it was announced.
Senate majority leader Douglas Canton said on Tuesday that all senators were invited by telephone.
And a release from the Legislature Tuesday afternoon said that Senate President David Jones wanted "to make it crystal clear that all senators were notified in a timely manner."
Notification, invitation or annunciation, it's clear that the people's elected officials are playing word games with the press and the public.
And then there is the matter of who called the meeting (not to be confused with giving notice of, extending invitations to or announcing same).
O'Bryan said on Tuesday that the meeting "was called by Senate President David Jones with the concurrence of the governor."
The Senate release issued later in the day cited "the meeting called by Gov. Charles W. Turnbull yesterday."
Who knows who's telling the truth? What does it matter, anyhow? Actually, it may matter quite a lot. Yvonne Tharpes, the Legislature's legal counsel, expressed the opinion that the meeting did not violate the territory's so-called "sunshine law" — which prohibits public officials from conducting the public's business in meetings not open to the public and the press — since it was called by the governor as a "private" meeting. However, if the meeting was called by the Senate president, any "concurrence" of the governor notwithstanding, the deliberations — whatever they were — may have violated the law.
All of the players, presumably including the minority holdouts, were scheduled to be back in secret session again Wednesday, this time at Government House on St. Croix. All of which makes it transparently clear that our elected officials in both branches of government have no compunction about conducting the people's business where the sun don't shine.
That, however, is only a part of the problem. Even if these meeting were open to the public, the public interest would not be well served. What our elected officials seem not to understand is that the majority of the public they represent is made up not of fellow government workers but of private-sector employees and employers. The governor included not one single business community representative on the "financial team" he created in April to come up with a strategy to address the territory's burgeoning fiscal shortfalls. Proposals the business community proffered all the same have been ignored.
The surreal result was a call by the administration to increase existing business taxes and create new ones at a time when the territory's tourism, oil refinery and financial management sectors are in a precarious state.
The Senate release about Monday's meeting stated that "Discussions were by no means an attempt to exclude the public. Rather, they were an opportunity to probe the mental processes of the executive branch. No decisions will be made until Tuesday, June 17, in plain view of the public."
More word games. Not "made," perhaps; but surely influenced, in deepest secrecy behind closed doors (whatever probing of the "mental processes of the executive branch" may produce).
Also in the Senate release, Jones said: "The issues demand that the petty politics of personality be put aside as we embrace the opportunity for the first time in a long time to cross the line of demarcation, albeit it artificial, and lead as one unit. The people of the Virgin Islands expect and deserve no less."
No less, indeed; but, ah, so much more.
