departments to try and keep their department figures at a minimum for the operation of the departments. You see, we operate governments practically at three levels. We operate it at the Federal level, the State level, and the municipal level. There is only one government in the Virgin Islands, and I presume it is the same thing in Guam. We handle all the streetcleaning, garbage collection, sewer disposals, the building of the roads, and all the public programs, public works programs, we do all of the housekeeping work, we run the hospital-there are no private hospitals. We run all the hospitals. We run the schools. By the way, education takes the greatest portion of our budget. We also pay for the operation expenses of the College of the Virgin Islands. So there has been a tremendous increase in demand on the Government for all of these functions. Mrs. REID. Do you find the people themselves, that they desire to assume this responsibility of electing the Governor, that this is what they want? Governor PAIEWONSKY. An elected Governor? Mrs. REID. Yes. Governor PAIEWONSKY. Yes. We had a constitutional convention. The members to that convention were elected at the regular election in 1964. They held hearings, extensive hearings in all islands and every important aspect of the report went into a revision of what they thought would be necessary for the organic act so they could make recommendations to the Congress, and they did prepare a report. And hearings were held, public hearings were held and everybody given an opportunity to express their views. This was discussed on radio programs, on television programs, and it was almost-I think Dr. Anduze, who is the President of the constitutional convention, is here today to testify. It is my understanding that it was the unanimous consent of the people that there be an elected Governor. Some suggested that it be held in 1966, others said it should be in 1968. This was the only difference. But the principle of an elected Governor, I think is, universally held. Mrs. REID. How long has the Governor been federally appointed? Governor PAIEWONSKY. How long? Mrs. REID. How long. Governor PAIEWONSKY. When Denmark sold the islands to the United States, naval officers were assigned to the government of the Virgin Islands and they served from 1917 until, I think, 1931. Then responsibility for the islands was transferred to the Department of the Interior and civil government was initiated. And I think from that period on the Governors were all federally appointed. Then the organic act, of course, formalized this in 1936. Mrs. REID. Thank you very much, Governor. Mr. O'BRIEN. Governor, yesterday in our hearing on the Guam bill, there was submitted for the record a brief history of Guam and its political development. And I wonder I am sure that you would have it available and would not have to prepare a new statement, but I do think a similar statement should be placed in the record concerning the Virgin Islands, a brief history, perhaps, from the acquisition without too much detail in the earlier days, but with a more complete statement of the development which has occurred since 1954, when the Organic Act of 1936 was substantially revised. I think that that i important to this record, because if we are to say that in 1966, we are going to take this additional step, the record should show what has been accomplished since we took the last major step. And I know that those figures and facts are at the tip of your tongue, but if you could provide for us for the record, to include in this record such a summary, I think it would be very helpful. Governor PAIEWONSKY. I will be very happy to. Mr. O'BRIEN. Education, hospitals, and so forth, things with which you are very familiar, but with which some of our colleagues might not be. Governor PAIEWONSKY. I will be very happy to prepare such a statement. Mr. O'BRIEN. Thank you very much. (The information follows:) Hon. LEO O'BRIEN, THE VIRGIN ISLANDS OF THE UNITED STATES, OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, March 11, 1966. Chairman, Subcommittee of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Pursuant to your request, I am pleased to submit for the record of the current hearings the following background facts on the U.S. Virgin Islands, which I am privileged to serve as Governor. The Virgin Islands constitute the easternmost part of the United States, lying some 1,434 nautical miles southeast of New York City; 991 miles from Miami, Fla., and 40 miles to the east of Puerto Rico in the confluence of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. These islands became a Territory of the United States in 1917 by purchase from Denmark. The motivation for their acquisition in that year of World War I was strategic defense. Our Government paid Denmark a cash purchase price of $25 million. From the day in 1917 when the American flag was raised over the Virgin Islands until 1931, the territory was administered by the U.S. Navy. From that year henceforward its chief executive officers have been appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. Even under civilian authority, and until 1936, the inherited Danish code was substantially the law of the islands, administered by separate colonial councils based in the two most populous islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix. In 1936, upon recommendation of the Department of the Interior, which then and now is the supervisory Federal arm for all territories, an Organic Act was passed by the Congress creating two separate municipal councils-one for the municipality of St. Croix and the other for the municipality of St. Thomas and St. John. Virgin Islanders were also accorded universal suffrage as a significant first step in a succession of self-governing grants. In 1954 the Organic Act was revised by the Congress, creating the present unicameral territorial legislature with the power to legislate uniform laws of local import for all Virgin Islands. It is important to observe, Mr. Chairman, that these successive grants of selfgoverning responsibilities were never abused; that circumspect performance of the legislative and executive functions justified the continuing confidence of the Congress and the Department of the Interior. In short, Mr. Chairman, we of the Virgin Islands are petitioning the Congress on a platform of successful past performance in seeking the all-important right of a mature electorate to select its chief governing officers by recourse to the American system of free expression by ballot. And, we are asking at the same time for the right to reapportion the allocation of seats in our unicameral legislature so as to insure greater representation in free elections for all of the people of the Virgin Islands. No background discussion of the U.S. Virgin Islands can be completely informative without picturing the growth and economic stability that has been achieved. May I direct your attention to the attached table of Virgin Islands' governmental budgets, from 1952 until now. You will note that the first 3 years listed below reflect the necessity for deficit financing by the Federal Treasury. Since those earlier years, the Virgin Islands have been on a pay-as-we-go basis. This has held true, of course, over the last 4 years which have witnessed the largely increasing demands for public services that invariably accompany rapid growth in all communities, great or small. Still trimming our sails to steer a safe but ambitious economic course, our current budget recommendations, including operating and capital expenditures, total $42,350,000, plus a $6 million crash school construction program financed from the sale of general obligation bonds, as compared with the lesser figures reflected in these comparative tables for previous years appended hereto. These comparative statistics clearly show the remarkable progress made in the Virgin Islands from fiscal years 1954 to 1966. Mr. Chairman, I submit that the economic growth reflected by the tabular comparisons, could not occur, and could not be sustained, in a society that did not possess the maturity to order its own destinies in matters of government as well as in economics. In truth, the history of our past is a projection of our future. Yet, I wish you and the Members of the 89th Congress to have a preview, so to speak, of some of the salient progress indices that will be contained in a current report soon to be published by the Department of the Interior. Local government revenues for the 1965 fiscal year, including matching funds, totaled nearly $29 million, as compared with $24,800,000 in 1964. That trend of increase continued into the first half of the 1966 fiscal year. Virgin Islanders in 1965 enjoy a per capita average income in excess of $2,000, compared with $700 to $800 in 1960, the highest of any Caribbean community. Our total local bank assets in 1954 were approximately $6 million as compared with $90 million in 1965. Tourism and employment continue at record levels. In the all-important field of education, we have added 92 classrooms and 26 modern school facilities in the last 4 years; we project 113 additional classrooms by the autumn of 1966; and our College of the Virgin Islands graduated last year its first class. In 1954 the education budget was $716,553 compared to $7,882,037, as proposed for 1966 plus an additional $1 million for the College of the Virgin Islands. Thousands of Virgin Islanders have been relocated in the last 4 years in safe, sanitary housing through the application of both local and Federal Government funds; 500 additional low-rental units are in planning and construction stages; our housing program calls for additions of around 1,000 units per year until all substandard housing is eliminated in the islands. We perforce have keep pace with the jet air age; the island of St. Thomas is now so served, St. Croix having long enjoyed such facility. The year just closed saw the Virgin Islands sell advantageously its first general purpose bonds in the mainland money market; we have increased substantially our desalinized water and kilowatt potential, and new industry, with its supporting payrolls, have "discovered" the Virgin Islands. I would make the point, Mr. Chairman, that in all of this sometimes hectic growth experience, we Virgin Islanders have not neglected the sociological, health and safety needs of our people. Our legislature has been ever responsive to human needs, just as our local government has always been conscious and protective of the civil rights of its people. Thus it is that we point to a decade of prideful accomplishment and responsible performance since we were given our last grant of governmental autonomy-the freedom of our elected legislators to legislate freely-as we ask the Congress permission for our free peoples to elect by free and secret ballot their chief administrators. In supporting this plea, I voice the formal petitions of two democratic institutions speaking for all of the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands-the territorial legislature and the 1965 Constitutional Convention whose delegates were likewise the elected spokesmen of all of our people. Thank you for inviting the foregoing expression. I am most happy to contribute this bit of background for the record. Sincerely yours, RALPH M. PAIEWONSKY, Governor. |