Letter To The Editor Meet & Gas Taxes And Submerged Lands

 

The Honorable Liston A. Davis
Senator
27th Legislature of the Virgin Islands
Capitol Building, P.O. Box 1690
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands   00804

Dear Senator Davis:

I am in receipt of your letter requesting meetings in Washington on the issue of gasoline taxes and submerged lands.   The Congressional offices will want to know the composition of the delegation that you propose and because this is an extremely busy and hopefully short legislative year, who will be in attendance. This will determine whether Members or alternatively their staff will meet with you.  In addition, based on prior experience on matters of this magnitude, we are not likely to have Members seriously entertain our request, unless also requested by the Governor.

I feel I must also address the tone of your correspondence and your assessment of my tenure with regards to these issues. As it pertains to the gasoline taxes, I have broached the issue with both the legislative and Executive branches of the Federal Government with three Governors, union Presidents and members of the Virgin Islands Legislature.  There have been meetings over the past 12 years that we have arranged and attended at the request of various parties, including the Legislature on this issue.  Further it has always been my position, that the funding that the Virgin Islands would have had, if we had accepted the initial offer to settle our gasoline tax lawsuit (which would be in the hundreds of millions in today's dollars), should be used as leverage in requests for funding of current critical needs.

I feel compelled to point out here that the premise on which that money was offered is no longer relevant today. We no longer depend on direct funding from the federal Government for Government operations. It is clear that the intent was to provide a steady stream of revenue at some basic level at a time when we could not provide it for ourselves.

But more than that, all gasoline taxes, which are paid by residents of the 50 states, are now assigned by statute to specific funds, the largest of which is the Highway Trust Fund. Despite the fact that we do not contribute at all to these funds, we receive significant funding - more per capita and in some cases in absolute numbers than some other Congressional districts. You and your colleagues should consider the fact that we do not pay into the fund, may be something best left unpublicized.  I would refer you to the problems now faced with regard to the Universal Service Fund and that the major objections to our receiving full Medicaid and SSI funding is that we do not pay taxes into the Federal Government’s General Fund from which that money comes.

In fact, in the instances where we have pursued the gasoline tax issue, we have been advised that it was not likely that Members of Congress would agree to surrender taxes collected by their constituents at the pump to the Virgin Islands, when they are in need of those revenues to shore up their sagging revenues and infrastructure.  In this present economic climate, with an ongoing war and a trillion dollar deficit, and Members conserving every penny that they can for their own districts, I believe your timing is ill advised.  As I have pointed out before, the territory receives a portion of those taxes already, returned to us as transportation funding.

In regards to the submerged lands, I was the only elected official at the time that fought the creation of the monuments.  In fact, to the great consternation of then Secretary Bruce Babbitt and all of the administrative staff at Interior, I even introduced legislation to block their establishment even before they were proclaimed by President Clinton.  (See, H.R.5019, 110th Congress, introduced July, 27, 2000, to convey certain submerged lands to the Government of the Virgin Islands)  In fact due in part to my intervention, the area designated was smaller than originally intended.

Moreover, to further demonstrate my commitment to the issue as well as to our fishermen, I introduced legislation in this Congress, H.R. 59, to extend the islands’ territorial waters to nine miles out from the current three miles and to make the waters between St. Croix and St. Thomas territorial waters. 

I even held a hearing on this bill on St. Thomas last July at which, Senator Alvin Williams, Chair of the 27th Legislature’s Committee on Planning and Environmental Protection testified in support of my Bill. 

Also, I note with interest that no further support has come for that legislation from the 27th Legislature.  As a final caveat, let me inform you that we are in the process of moving the "wedge" outside of the monument to provide additional fishing in an area chosen by the St. Thomas – St. John fishing community.

Finally, let me point out two things on this issue:  (1) In spite all of the bellyaching by states which have had monument designations, none have been overturned since the authority was first established and used by President Theodore Roosevelt, and (2) Monuments can only be declared on lands that are federally owned. It was determined based on a definition that was not challenged in 1974, when it could have been, that the lands in question were federal lands.

I therefore agree with the position put forward by Senator Dowe, that the place for this issue to be reviewed and decided is the Courts.

As always I stand ready to work with the Legislature and to arrange any meetings you may request.

If after due consideration of all of the foregoing and the deliberations that took place in the Senate after your letter was sent, you still want to pursue those meetings, and to do so this year, I am prepared to proceed and schedule them at your and the relevant offices’ convenience.

 

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