As expected Thursday, senators moved quickly to override the governor’s line-item vetoes on certain sections of an austerity package that cleared the full Senate last month — including a provision to enact a full-force hiring freeze across government.
Gov. John deJongh Jr. announced Wednesday that he was signing into law portions of the bill, which, among other things, contains: the Legislature’s proposal for an 8-percent reduction in the salaries of all government workers paid over $26,000 per year; a program to incentivize government workers with 30 or more years in service to retire; a program of voluntary leave without pay for government workers; and a cell phone surcharge extending the charge for emergency services now paid by land lines to all phone service in the territory.
Along with the hiring freeze, senators also overrode the governor’s vetoes on sections that:
–set up an automatically recurring $7-million annual appropriation from the Internal Revenue Matching Fund to the Government Employees’ Retirement System to offset a small part of the system’s billion-dollar-plus unfunded shortfall;
— prevents anyone who retires under the bill from reenter government service for two years;
— set a deadline of 30 days to pay all accumulated sick leave to retirees under the act; and
— allow those who choose to retire to receive credit toward their retirement annuity for any pay raises negotiated but not implemented before their retirement, without regard for whether they paid into GERS.
