ROSTER OF UNCLASSIFIED POSITIONS IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS Continued

INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AGENCY-Continued

Other off-island positions are identified in position title. All other positions located in St. Thomas. Note: This list includes only positions with the executive branch. It does not include positions in the judicial and legislative branches.

Mr. CAREY. The gentleman from Texas.

Mr. WHITE. Reserving the right to object, this gentleman had the opportunity to appear before the committee when we were in the Virgin Islands so we would have a chance to cross-examine him. I feel if he wants something presented for the record we should have the opportunity to question him so we can determine the full depth of the statement he has made and to have him merely to make an affidavit as to whether it is true or not does not afford us the chance to test him. Mr. CAREY. Does the gentleman from Texas object?

Mr. WHITE. I do.

Mr. CAREY. Objection is heard.

Mr. SAYLOR. Well, Mr. Chairman, I ask that the committee subpena Mr. Victor L. Ebberson.

Mr. CAREY. The Chair will advise that in order to get subpena power for this purpose, the subcommittee will have to go to the House and request it and move it, and at this point in the hearing the Chair is not prepared to so move.

Mr. BURTON of Utah. Mr. Chairman, may I be recognized?
Mr. CAREY. The gentleman from Utah.

Mr. BURTON of Utah. I move that Mr. Ebberson be subpenaed.
Mr. WHITE. I second.

Mr. CAREY. You heard the motion. All in favor of the motion will signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of "ayes.")

Mr. CAREY. Opposed? (No response.)

Mr. CAREY. The motion is carried.

Mr. SAYLOR. Governor, can you tell us why you have decided that you have to have about 150 to 175 more unclassified employees, 500 more classified employees, in 1968 than you need in 1967?

P. 0. Box 577

Charlotte Amalie

St. Thomas, V. I. 00801
August 16, 1967

Mr. Charles Leppert, Jr.

Assistant Counsel

Committee on Interior and

Insular Affairs

House of Representatives, U. S.
Washington, D. C. 20515

Dear Mr. Leppert:

This letter is in reply to yours of August 10 requesting my sworn statement verifying my letter of August 29, 1966, to the Publisher of the St. Thomas Daily News, a photo copy of which accompanied your request. My affidavit appears at the bottom of this letter.

Respectfully,

Vechen Rebbesen

Victor L. Ebbesen

To the best of my knowledge and belief, the information
shown in my letter of August 29, 1966, as Director of
Personnel, Government of the Virgin Islands of the
United States, represented a true listing of the
incumbent, department in which employed, position title,
and salary, of persons holding unclassified positions
in the Executive Branch of the Government Service,
as of August 18, 1966.

District of St. Thomas

Vichy Jebben

Victor L. Ebbesen

Virgin Islands of the U.S.A.

Sworn to and subscribed before me this to day

Governor PAIEWONSKY. Mr. Chairman, in response to this question, I will just tell the Honorable Congressman

Mr. CAREY. Will the gentleman suspend at that point? The Chair wishes to make it clear that the vote just agreed to is not now sufficient to cause a subpena to issue, that the Chair's understanding of the committee rules is that this would now have to be taken up by the full committee and the full committee then would have to agree that it wishes to subpena this individual.

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, I think that Mr. Kyl's suggestion is the best one yet and would save you all this time. If the Governor

checks this and he finds it valid and accurate, then that would be all there is to it.

Mr. CAREY. The Chair will state that any member of the committee is free to order staff to issue such communication as he wishes to any individual in order to get the responsive testimony and that can be done without any request being made here in the subcommittee. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. SAYLOR. Governor?

Governor PAIEWONSKY. In reply to that question, I may say that the Honorable Congressman from Pennsylvania gave us the tools in 1954 to work with. Maybe we have used them too well in expanding the economy of the Virgin Islands, developing the revenue so that we can render the service necessary. As a result of the tremendous improvement in revenues and economic conditions of the Virgin Islands, salaries had to be increased in order to carry forward the programs. We had to create new departments of government. We had to create the department of commerce. We had to create the department of labor, the department of housing, the department of law, and we had to take on many responsibilities from the Federal Government.

In order to do this and to pay the salaries necessary to carry these departments forward, our personnel law and salary system was totally inadequate. We could not recruit the people. We could not recruit the doctors. If you look at the-Mr. Congressman, if you look at the list of each department, you will see, for example, in the department of education, from 1960, from 543 employees to 1,147. If you look in the health department, from 490 to now that is provided at 1,345. And, every department of government is the same way, a way of rendering the services.

In the department of public works we have to provide the salaries for engineers and for all of the people to do the work. If we do not provide the salaries, it will not be done. Then, we will be criticized for not performing the functions that normally should be rendered to a growing community.

Now, we have asked the legislature and we have asked the Department of the Interior to assist us in working out and reviewing the complete personnel system and salary structures because they are completely out of line. We are constantly losing employees from the government to private industry, which is good. We are very happy that this is a very healthy situation where we have total employment in the Virgin Islands. It is true that we have underemployment in some areas, but the need for increasing the number of unclassified employees has been due to many factors, due to the question of our developing these new departments of government, the new responsibilities taken over from the Virgin Islands Corporation, and all of the functions that must be rendered to the government, and we must pay these people a little higher salary to recruit competent people than what we were paying before. And, this is the reason, this is the reason whyand I will say this to you. If you are trying to imply as has been implied by some of the newspapers, that this was done for political reasons, I say to you as I answered Congressman-Chairman Aspinall's statement, we have full employment. Everybody is employed. There is no one looking for employment in the Virgin Islands. We have to bring aliens from the outside to fill the positions in the Virgin Islands, whether they are skilled, unskilled positions. And many of the un

classified personnel here, we have to hire for the local government under public works, for example, we have to hire aliens because local citizens are not available to carry forward the work of cleaning the streets, the garbage removal, the night soil removal and all of these other programs, and services must be rendered, and these persons, some of them are carried on a per diem basis, some of them are carried onwe cannot give them a full appointment. They are not citizens. So, we have to give them either a per diem or in the unclassified service. Mr. KYL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SAYLOR. Happy to.

Mr. KYL. I thank the gentleman for yielding, because this, I think, is an appropriate point to make an observation of basic philosophy and I assure you, sir, that this is completely without partisanship. It is most sincere.

I have tried to study the emergency of governments and in this committee we have to do this in case of Guam, Samoa, the Virgin Islands and so on, and I have gone beyond that point. It would be my desire, if I could automatically do something for the Virgin Islands— that I would immediately proceed to establish the traditional local kinds of government, the school board, the county, the city, whatever kind of a unit of local government is essential and this is important in this current discussion because it is obvious that you need a large number of so-called Federal employees or, although they are called local in your statement in most places, they refer to a kind of an overall government. If we had this local administration we may have ultimately the same number of employees. It is possible it would even be more but they would be local rather than under the total sponsorship.

Now, the question that I have to ask you is this. Is it your understanding that the present Organic Law of the Virgin Islands Legislature permits moving in that direction of establishing these local area governments or would this necessitate an act of the Congress?

Governor PAIEWONSKY. This, I would have to ask-I am not an attorney and I would prefer not to answer this question until I have had an opportunity to ask the Attorney General his interpretation to this. But, it was my understanding that Congress in 1954-we did have decentralized government before. We had a separate government in St. Croix and a separate government in St. Thomas and they were run by municipal councils, and Congress in 1954 provided for centralized type of government, so that we have departments of government in charge of the three islands. Each commissioner is in charge, his responsibilities, of three islands for his particular department. It is my belief that I am just talking off the top of my head-that there might be sufficient authority for the local government to do this but I cannot answer your question. We can explore this possibility. But, I will say to you that it will increase the number of employees in government rather than decrease them.

Mr. KYL. My concern at this point is not the matter of the number of employees and I say again, I speak with the greatest sincerity and without any partisanship whatsoever. I have watched so many of these self-government proposals emerge right here in the District of Columbia even, and most of the time what we get is something a great deal less than autonomy of the people, a real freedom of action for the individual, and I believe that this local government is so essential that I believe we could do it at the same time we do any other job relating to. the Governor.

Governor PAIEWONSKY. I think many of the boards can be elected like the board of education and some of the other advisory boards, but I doubt very much that if you make the office of the administrator, which would be equivalent to a mayor, say, for each island, like in St. Croix or St. John, that unless he has separate staff's and separate funds to carry out his function, and then you are going to run into the various problems. You are going to duplicate again each function of a department of government that is already established.

Mr. KYL. You see, this is where we get the philosophic difference, I think, if I can get back to that just a moment. Even though this may be duplicative, even though it may be cumbersome, it is as far as I am concerned, the real life of free government. The people in the localities do have some control over their affairs by participating in the actual election of officials who become not a part of the national or the total organization, but a separate part. And, it is a serious matter.

I yield back. Thank you.

Mr. KUPFERMAN. Will my colleague yield to one question?
Mr. SAYLOR. I will yield for one question here. All right.

Mr. KUPFERMAN. As one way to answer the charge of employment of people for political purposes, I would like you to give us a breakdown as to the number of aliens you employ. You wouldn't employ aliens for political purposes. So, could we possibly get the breakdown on the number of government employees who are aliens and those who do have the right to vote.

Governor PAIEWONSKY. Most of the aliens are in private employment. We do not employ aliens as such for appointed positions. I think there is a prohibition against this by our statute. I think you have to be local, bona fide resident to get an appointment but most of the aliens are doing the-in the service trades and hotels and the private homes and in construction, and in a number of other categories.

The only place where we employ them in government is where we absolutely cannot get a native to do that work and that is in the garbage removal, cleaning of the large gutters, the night soil removal and things of this nature. And, sometimes work on the roads.

Mr. SAYLOR. Governor, you said you were having your assessments reconsidered over the entire islands, is this correct?

Governor PAIEWONSKY. For the last 3 years it has been-one-third of the island has been reassessed at a time and now the entire island, the last or third assessment is in now, which covers the complete reassessment based on the new system of reassessment.

Mr. SAYLOR. Now, who does that reassessing?

Governor PAIEWONSKY. The reassessing is done by the property tax division that is under the Government secretary's office, his responsibility. There is the tax assessor with a staff of people. And they have consultants who have, I think-I do not know whether it is Collett and Clapp, from Puerto Rico, or some other consultant firm that has come in and worked with them on a very scientific basis to show them how to do the assessing.

Mr. SAYLOR. All right. Now, assume the chairman of the committee owns a piece of property down there and the assessor-the board or group that have charge of assessments-changes the assessment from $50 an acre as you used a little while ago to $2,000 an acre. The chair