Alpine Damage Control? Too Little Too Late
It seems that both the Virgin Islands Public Services Commission (PSC) and the Water and Power Authority (WAPA) need a lesson in communication, transparency and the law.
Both agencies appear to be deliberately making it difficult, if not impossible, for the public to be prepared for the hastily publicized hearings on the agreements with the Alpine Energy Group (AEG) taking place October 5-6. Both agencies are dancing dangerously close to illegally conducting these hearings and in effect withholding critical information from the Virgin Islands community.
And attempts during the past 24 hours to try to rectify the situation have fallen disastrously short.
The first issue was the PSC’s violation of the notice period outlined in the Virgin Islands Code pertaining to notice of public hearings. The Code is clear that the notice should be given 15 days prior to the hearing. Crucians In Focus (CIF) has learned that no official notice was distributed until last Tuesday, September 29, four business days before the hearing on St. Croix.
The email attached below clearly shows that the official, undated press release from the PSC’s Communication Coordinator, Lorna Nichols, was sent to media and other outlets at 2:27 p.m. last Tuesday, making it nearly impossible for anyone to publicize the meetings before Wednesday, September 30. Not only is the notification late, but anyone who wants to review the voluminous documents has to do so during business hours in the PSC offices on St. Thomas or St. Croix.
On Friday, CIF sent a letter to the PSC asking them to postpone the hearings, pointing out the legal notice requirements and emphasizing that sufficient time had not been given for the public to review either the PSC or WAPA documents related to the AEG project. We pointed out that the Alpine agreement requires that the PSC make a decision on the project by November 8, which gives them ample time to reschedule the meeting and still meet the contract timeline.
We further questioned why documents related to Alpine had not been made readily accessible to the public on both agencies’ websites.
LATE Friday afternoon (4:08 p.m. to be exact), WAPA spokesperson Cassandra Dunn issued a press release (attached) stating that the public could review some of WAPA’s Alpine related documents from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday at scattered locations on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
But if you want to review the actual contract between WAPA and Alpine, you have to request it in writing from WAPA’s General Counsel. And you can rest assured that request won’t be fulfilled in time for next week’s meetings.
What’s going on here? Both the PSC and WAPA have known since the Alpine agreement was signed in August that these hearings were required. And while their behavior would indicate otherwise, we have to believe they know the legal requirements on notification of hearings to the public.
When the information was finally distributed, the Daily News published an inaccurate notice on October 1 concerning the St. Thomas meeting and The Source did nothing with the September 29 release until an article in today’s (Saturday’s) edition. Neither of them pointed out the late notice and while they are not responsible for the PSC’s actions, one would think that some level of journalistic accountability would have caused them to note the infraction.
Then there is the issue of the availability of the documents related to this project. The limited access to documents held by the PSC does not meet their responsibility to make this information readily accessible to the public. WAPA officials stated publicly that their documents, including the Requests for Proposal that were used in this process, would be made available on their website. That hasn’t happened either. Then the “Friday Night Special” release was issued, granting the public four whole hours on a Saturday morning to review documents. And to require a written request to the General Counsel for any of this information flies in the face of transparency and borders on intimidation.
We renew our call for postponement of these hearings. Too much is at stake and too many questions exist about this deal to rush a decision without sufficient public input. And if these hearings proceed as planned, both locations should be standing room only with Virgin Islands residents who will be directly affected by this plan.
The Virgin Islands Community now bears the responsibility to sound the alarm on these agencies’ apparent abuse of our right to fully participate in this process.
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My God!!! Unbelievable!!!
How are these criminals getting away with this blatant cover up and violations of the law!
These public officials has gotten caught with their pants down! Their nothing but a bunch of liars and conspirators.
The world and the Federal law enforcement agencies will be watching VI IG Seven Van Beverhoudt very closely to see if he does his job this time. VI AG Vincent Frazier should have been removed a long time ago especially now that the VI senate has announced that it will hold hearings this month on the MAFOLIEGAT scandal. This AG is in no position to take action in this matter.
These government officials are nothing less than criminals amongst us!
Now we no why the main steam medias haven’t been reporting on MAFOLIEGATE. They are all down with the program. From TV2, VI Source, VI Daily News, Avis, News 8, right down into the gutters with Roger Morgan and Jean Greaux. Talk about getting busted.
This has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. Here we are again, on the verge of yet another “deal” that came out of nowhere, was signed and sealed before anybody had a chance to really look into it, and now the PSC is trying to sneak these hearings through without giving the public a chance to really know what the deal entails.
Based on what I’ve seen here on CIF there are a lot more questions than answers. Does anyone know how much this is really going to cost? I’ll bet it’s a lot more than the $10 they said we’d save on our bills.
And really, that whole thing with the WAPA “Friday Night Special” news release – that’s insulting. They’d have done better just not to release anything at all. Giving that little bit of time to go through what I’m sure are tons of documents? Please.
I’ll bet they go on and have the meetings – clearly this entire Administration believes it is far above the law.
But I have to give credit to CIF for putting it out there – nobody else is watching these so called “officials.”
There should be more outrage.
My question is this: Why didn’t they post the contract on the internet? Will the contract be secret indefinitely? Give me a break.
Hugo Hodge was on the radio this morning talking foolishness about the contract preventing them from doing that. This is the same Hugo Hodge who said on the RWM show a month or so ago that he was going to release the contract to the public to counter the misinformation on the airwaves. Now he tells us, this morning, that he told the public, at the press conference and contract signing presentation, that we were free to view the contract. Mr. Hodge, please make up your mind!
Only Two and 1/2 hours before the big meeting! Who will represent?
You all need to investigate Relliance aka Lovenlund&Belleview village for trying to force tenants off of section 8 rent assistance because they know that without section 8 they will eventually get evicted then they get a new tenant to start paying from scratch since the tenants begin ownship after 17 years the more people they put out the more money they make they always harrasing the section 8 people and why they charging section 8 people more than everybody else and senators allowing them to do it while they collecting all kind of breaks
Do you have any info that you can send CIF? Written letters of evictions, letters of harassment, or letters from tenants that are section 8 and being harassed by management?