The Home Journal

Organic Act Report

The recommendations of the subcommittee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the House of Representatives which were released last week surprised no one. Even the most optimistic among us, were convinced following the public hearings held here on our organic act that the Congressmen would be opposed to an elective governor. The majority of the committee expressed the view that the people are not now ready for this tremendous step, and several of the persons who testified, including the Governor, agreed with them. The committee is willing to consider the question of an elective governor after the people have been given an opportunity to live with this new extension of political power.

Our request for a resident commissioner to represent the islands in Congress was a dead duck even before the hearings were commenced. The promise to consider our request along with that of other territories which are seeking the same consideration was just another way of telling us to jump into the lake.

The committee's conclusions on a new legislature for the islands lived up to expectations. There would be a single legislature composed of eleven members, two each from St. Thomas and St. Croix, and one from St. John, and six at large, but no district would be able to elect more than four of the six at-large members. What powers the new legislature would be given are not now known.

The committee's action on our demand for the return of the internal revenue taxes needs careful examination and analysis. It is not known whether with the return of some of these funds to the islands, which the committee has recommended, that the islands will be required to finance the public works program already under way, or to foot the bills of the Virgin Islands Corporation. In such an event, the limitation of $3,500,000 on expenditures in the islands would work a severe hardship.

At the present time the islands raise about $1,300,000 in local revenue. If the formula of two Federal dollars for every local dollar were applied, we would be entitled to $2,600,000 of Federal funds. But because of the $3,500,000 limitation, we would get $2,200,000. Twenty per cent of that total, or $400,000, would go into a special fund to be spent only upon the prior approval of the President, to pay the Federal contributions in years when our rum shipments to the mainland decline, and to finance certain public works projects.

Until we receive the draft of organic act as amended by the committee it will not be possible to take an intelligent position on the bill as a whole. Many questions on various phases of the bill are not answered by the report.