We are greatly disheartened that the government is sidestepping important provisions in theProtocols for Effective Financial Management as it moves forward with an airport expansion that will be the largest capital project in Virgin Islands history.
When the VI and the United Kingdom signed the agreement in April 2012, leaders promised that it would help ensure accountability and transparency in government.
In theory, they were right: As we argued at the time, the Protocols include laudable requirements designed to help avoid the pitfalls the almost always plague major capital projects in the VI.
Unfortunately, leaders are now sidestepping some of those requirements even as they move ahead with an airport expansion that is expected to cost at least $150 million. Meanwhile, the UK seems content to look the other way.
The Protocols require that in-depth evaluations, including a “robust” cost-benefit analysis, be completed before the procurement stage of any major capital project. They also require these evaluations to be made public “to ensure that the lessons learned are fed back into the decision-making process.”
With the airport expansion, these requirements were not met in a timely manner. Though officials say that at least one study was completed before tendering started in July 2012, it apparently was not adequate: At the time, officials were estimating the project’s cost at $38 million — about one-fourth of the current estimate, which presumably does include additional measures for minimising environmental impact.
Further studies undertaken since then have not all been completed, even though a bidder is to be selected by July.
Worse, none of the studies carried out so far have been made public as required by the Protocols. On the contrary, the government has systematically withheld information about the airport expansion since its inception.
Although Premier Dr. Orlando Smith has said all of the analysis will be released eventually, he did not say when this might happen, and we see no justification whatever for withholding it now.
Unfortunately, government’s reticence is in keeping with how the airport expansion has been handled from the start. Indeed, leaders have presented the project as a done deal from the time it was announced in the first and only public meetings on the topic in early 2012.
The UK doesn’t seem to mind. Governor John Duncan — who in other contexts has repeatedly called for governmental transparency — recently downplayed the breaches of the Protocols, explaining that the agreement’s primary function is to ensure that the VI government follows its fiscal plan.
But because of the withheld information, this thinking effectively sidelines the public, which was promised a new level of transparency and accountability when the Protocols were signed in 2012.
To be sure, the National Democratic Party came to power in 2011 on a campaign platform that included a new airport. But this doesn’t mean that the largest capital project in VI history should be carried out in the absence of basic transparency standards that the government has promised to uphold.
One need only consider the serious issues that have plagued other projects — the cruise pier, the new hospital and the greenhouses, to name a few — to understand why change is urgently needed.
The Protocols were an important step toward that change. Government’s failure to follow them now is disturbing, as is the UK’s passivity.
We call on government to release all the studies about the airport project immediately, and to ensure full transparency from now on. Too much is at stake to continue with business as usual.
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