Tag: federal funding

Delegate Stacey Plaskett has spent much of the past year in the District of Columbia – our nation’s capital – a year that has seen good news for the U.S. Virgin Islands come out of Congress, mostly in the form of money.

Medicaid funding for the USVI appears safe now that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the fiscal year 2020 federal government funding bill including the money. The Senate is expected to pass it and President Donald Trump has indicated he will sign it.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated more than $2.3 billion Tuesday to support the long-term disaster recovery process in hard hit areas in 15 states and four territories. According to HUD, the U.S. Virgin Islands is getting $53.59 million of that, bringing HUD’s total USVI allocated funds to $1.92 billion.

On Thursday, Congress extended vital Medicaid funding for the U.S. Virgin Islands by one month, briefly holding off damaging cuts to critical health services to the territory's most vulnerable, but also to hospital funds and, ultimately, tax revenues and economic activity.

The U.S.Department of Housing and Urban Development has published its guidelines for the dispersal of $774.1 million in Community Development Block Grant funding for mitigation activities in the Virgin Islands.

Juli Campbell, a Puerto Rico-based developer, faces a December sentencing in federal court after admitting she submitted false payment records to a federal disaster relief program.

Federal aid is pouring into the territory in billions, but the challenge is tapping into all of it before time runs out and the feds snatch the money back, Gov. Albert Bryan said Friday. Time is almost up on about $260 million awarded to the Virgin Islands through the Affordable Care Act.