Sept. 22, 2006 — After years of waiting and making numerous requests to the Legislature, Inspector General Steven van Beverhoudt is now one step closer to being able to hire and fire his own employees.
According to a bill that cleared the Committee on Government Operations and Consumer Protection on Friday, van Beverhoudt would also have the ability to regulate the salaries paid to his staff.
Local law currently stipulates that department heads, in trying to fill a vacancy, must submit a request to the Division of Personnel, which then supplies a list of eligible candidates for the position.
Van Beverhoudt has stated on several occasions that this process hampers his ability "to hire qualified individuals" and "questions the independence" of the Office of the Inspector General.
"All aspects of independence and the appearance of independence are critical to the operations of any auditing agency," he said during Friday's meeting. "And the V.I. Inspector General's Office is not the ordinary executive agency — it is the watchdog of the V.I. government."
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Terrence "Positive" Nelson, also gives the inspector general the ability to adjust employees' salaries. According to van Beverhoudt, this provision in the bill would make it easier for the office to attract and retain qualified workers.
"Simply put, senators, the current hiring process takes too long, and our salaries are simply not competitive," he said.
Senators agreed and voted to send the bill onto the Rules and Judiciary Committee for further consideration.
After the meeting, van Beverhoudt said he is "cautiously optimistic" that the bill will be approved by the full Senate body.
"If it does go through, and is signed into law by the governor, this would be a major, major, accomplishment," he said.
In other news, senators spent several hours discussing bills which propose to: reform the current Elections System; give felons who have completed their prison time the right to vote; and remove the Division of Banking and Insurance from under the auspices of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.
The Banking and Insurance bill, sponsored by Sen. Lorraine L. Berry, proposes to eliminate the division and replace it with a separate Financial Services Bureau that would be located under the Office of the Governor for "budgetary purposes only."
According to the bill, the bureau would be regulated by a seven-member board, which would be responsible for selecting a director to oversee the operations of the agency.
Deverita Sturdivant, the current director of the Division of Banking and Insurance — who, at the meeting, was representing Lt. Gov. Vargrave Richards — objected to this aspect of the bill.
"The lieutenant governor does not support moving Banking and Insurance from under his office," Sturdivant said, adding that another bureau would simply "add to the bureaucracy of government."
Sturdivant suggested that if senators were in favor of removing the division, they should look at other jurisdictions that have instead created separate financial services departments, regulated by a commissioner instead of a board.
Cassan Pancham, regional manager of FirstBank V.I., agreed with Sturdivant and said that working with a governing board would be "unwieldy" and "cumbersome."
"Conceptually, I think you're right — the division should be moved out of the Lieutenant Governor's Office, but I don't think it needs a board," Pancham said. "It needs to be upgraded to a department with different divisions for banking, lending, insurance, and securities transactions."
Despite the extensive debate and testimony, all three bills were held in committee for further review.
Present during the first half of Friday's meeting were Berry, and Sens. Craig W. Barshinger, Roosevelt C. David, Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg, Louis P. Hill, Nelson, Shawn-Michael Malone and Ronald E. Russell, along with noncommittee member Sen. Liston Davis.
