Mapp Denies Commissioner Collens’s Words, Says He Won’t Layoff Or Furlough Employees

ST. CROIX — Governor Kenneth Mapp said on Thursday afternoon that an article posted on The Consortium that quotes Public Finance Authority Executive Director, and Dept. of Finance Commissioner, Valdamier Collens, as stating that the governor would soon take action in its attempts to offset the $110 million budget deficit by furloughing some employees while laying off others altogether, and initiating deep cuts (Mr. Collens mentioned up to 20 percent) at government departments and agencies, was false.

Mr. Mapp denied the story while speaking to listeners on Mario Moorhead’s radio talk show on 1620 A.M. WDHP this afternoon, when posed with the question.

In an interview with The Consortium on Wednesday night, Mr. Collens said bluntly that the governor was preparing an executive order that would authorize deep cuts throughout the  government to offset the government’s $110 million budget deficit following refusal of the bond market to buy the territory’s securities. Mr. Collens said the cuts would include the furloughing and letting go of some employees, trimming of budgets at department and agencies, and combing through every area of government in an effort to eliminate excess.

Full audio of interview is here.

But Mr. Mapp bluntly denied the article, stating on the show that he had read it, but did not know where it came from as he never had any conversations with Mr. Collens. His communications director, Cherie Munchez, said she needed more time to review Mr. Collens’s comments before responding. She said the administration did not want to induce fear into the community, and stressed that the governor had spoken about a job freeze during his State of the Territory Address — a claim that this publication agrees with, but which in no way justifies Mr. Mapp’s denial of the article; Mr. Collens did not mince words.

“It’s not even an assumption anymore, we have to act in a way in which we don’t have access until we demonstrate to ourselves — not to the bond market — that we want to fix our structural deficit. So for starters we know $110 million is out of the budget, and so we have to act accordingly to adjust and revise our budget,” Mr. Collens said.

Asked when the announcement of the executive order would come, Mr. Collens said, “I don’t know the amount of days, but what I will say to you is the governor informed the entire public that he is putting together an executive order that will encompass all of the things that are necessary to get us through. It is going to be a combination of all the things that you and I discussed, to get us through because of the liquidity.”

He later said that the executive order would come “in short order.”

The things that this reporter and Mr. Collens discussed in the long-ranging interview included the laying off of 500-1,000 government employees, shortened work weeks, cutback in government services, deep cuts in the budgets of government department and agencies, and going through government to find and eliminate excess such as duplicate and unnecessary positions.

“We have to adjust our budget, we have to adjust our expenditure levels, we have to employ certain measures like furloughs and other reductions across the budget to get us passed… Right now our toughest months are February and March; we get to April, because there’s usually an influx there, things may taper off. But it’s no longer an assumption,” Mr. Collens said.

The governor’s denial adds more confusion to the community, and shows a level of miscommunication in his administration at a sensitive time for Virgin Islanders. But Mr. Collens came off as passionate and sincere in his thorough explanation of the matter, going through the trouble of giving analogies of the territory’s current financial status, and the steps needed to eliminate the structural deficit.

Mr. Collens likened the government’s situation to people who lost their homes during the 2008 housing crisis and could not pay their mortgages. A wide swath of them had to foreclose on their homes.

“What that person does, they go through the foreclosure process, deleverage, fix their credit, and that takes a little bit of time. And then once all of that is corrected — which could take three months, six months, a year — that’s when you can say, ‘Okay, now I’m going to apply for a loan because I know the probability of a denial letter is low,” Mr. Collens said. He said the government shouldn’t be doing anything that is going to generate new revenue based on the market’s decision to stop lending to the territory. “We should be doing it to correct the problems that we have and once that’s done, and we feel like we have addressed a material amount of issues, it is at that point that we could then go back and approach the market for, say, capital projects, just to give you an example,” Mr. Collens said.

The Consortium is awaiting on a response from Government House, and will update this story, or prepare a new one altogether, once we’re in receipt of the communication.