(Washington, DC, March 1, 2006) — Although the fiscal situation is much improved since she first introduced legislation to create a chief financial officer for the territory, Delegate to Congress Donna M. Christensen told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources today that the U.S. Virgin Islands can still benefit from having a CFO.

“I believe as strongly as I did when I first introduced this bill almost three years ago – that a Chief Financial Officer can serve as an immeasurable resource tool for first rate financial management of our scarce territorial resources,” Delegate Christensen told the panel. “We – all of us in this body know all to well – how financial decisions made within a political context often do not yield the best results.”

The Delegate told the Senators that her legislation is in “no way an indictment” of the job that Governor Charles W. Turnbull and his financial management team has done. “I want to publicly applaud the Governor for the job he has done in his stewardship of the territory through very perilous fiscal times,” she said.  “The problems that we are facing are not unique to the USVI, but plague many states and other territories, and some of the causes of our fiscal challenges have been outside of our control, such as recurrent catastrophic hurricanes and the tax cuts and credits passed by the Congress.” Christensen said that while her bill is not a panacea, it will help chart a course for fiscal management that will keep the territory in good stead during good times and prepare for darker days.

Delegate Christensen also took the opportunity to ask the Committee to pass S. 1829, a bill to repeal the section of the 1936 law whereby Congress regulates property tax in the Virgin Islands and has the potential to significantly increase property taxes in the territory.  She also asked them to support efforts to reverse the changes that were made by the USA JOBS Act which have the potential of crippling the territory’s successful Economic Development Commission program.