Officials in the executive and legislative branches have been ignoring a public records request for receipts showing the amount of taxpayer money spent on a 2021 trip to Colorado, during which Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., senators, and their staff members toured the state’s legal cannabis industry.
Despite touting “transparency,” officials have not produced any records related to expenses for the trip, after repeated email requests from The Daily News, as well as verbal requests made during weekly Government House press conferences.
Senate President Donna Frett-Gregory also has not acknowledged or responded to the most recent request, sent on Nov. 3. Legislative Legal Counsel Amos Carty Jr. did not respond to the request after it was forwarded to him Wednesday.
The V.I. Code requires custodians of government records to make those documents available to the public for examination, except in limited cases, such as medical records and other confidential documents.
There does not appear to be any exemption that would prohibit the government from disclosing receipts showing how much money was spent on the trip, and government officials have not claimed the information can not be disclosed publicly.
V.I. Attorney General Denise George did not respond Wednesday to questions from The Daily News about the government not following the open records law.
The Legislature previously responded to a similar Open Records Act request by The Daily News after former Sen. Positive Nelson, two of his staff members, and former Sen. Tregenza Roach traveled to Washington and Colorado in 2015, to tour legal cannabis businesses. Nelson is now Agriculture commissioner and a member of the Cannabis Advisory Board, and Roach serves as lieutenant governor.
Documentation provided in response to the request showed that $13,794 in taxpayer money was spent on the 2015 trip for four people.
The 2021 trip included Bryan, 12 senators, and their staff members.
Government House Communications Director Richard Motta Jr. has said at recent weekly press briefings that the government would respond to the open records request from The Daily News, but did not.
There was no weekly press briefing held Monday, and Motta said the briefings will resume on Dec. 12.
When pressed for a response to the records request on Wednesday, Motta referred the request to the Legislature, and said the trip was organized by the V.I. Legislature and National Conference of State Legislators.
When asked if that meant the executive branch did not spend any money on the trip, Motta said he doesn’t know.
“I am not sure the executive branch did not incur any expenses for that trip,” Motta wrote in a text message Wednesday, and asked for the record request to be forwarded to him again, and said he would forward it to Government House’s business office and legal counsel.
Motta also pointed out the work involved in gathering documents showing those expenditures.
“Amassing all of those documents will take considerably longer to achieve what I think the same journalistic aim [sic],” Motta said in a text message.
When asked if that meant the public isn’t entitled by law to view the receipts, Motta responded to the reporter” “That is absolutely NOT what I am saying... . I am simply saying if you want receipts and invoices. That will take time to put together [sic].”
When asked how long it will take the government to gather receipts from the trip, Motta did not respond.
Motta also referred The Daily News to the website, transparency.vi.gov, and said it “would include all of those costs.”
But the website doesn’t have any of the requested documents, and only provides a bare minimum of information that makes it impossible to determine which of the government’s expenditures may have been related to the 2021 Colorado trip.
The website is not searchable, which is required by a section of the V.I. Code specific to the transparency website, and includes check numbers but not dates on which funds were disbursed to vendors.
Some of the website’s line items list expenditures made by the Office of the Governor, to the Office of the Governor, for “Other Services.”
Motta did not respond to questions about what those line items represent.
By comparison, receipts provided in response to previous records requests have provided important details about who paid vendors, when, and why.
For example, credit card receipts for former Gov. Kenneth Mapp showed he charged $95,197 on a government credit card in five months, including purchases of alcohol and expensive meals written off as business meetings. Receipts provided by Government House — under Mapp — at the time also showed various travel expenses, including $18,183 for Mapp and one security guard to fly round trip from St. Croix to Guam.
The publicly stated purpose of both the 2015 and 2021 trips by Bryan and others was to help local lawmakers develop legislation and regulations to create a legal cannabis industry in the Virgin Islands.
But four years after Bryan signed the medical cannabis bill into law in January 2019 — his first act after taking office, there’s no indication the government intends to actually implement the legislation.
The Cannabis Advisory Board has not met since Sept. 7, and has not approved draft regulations that would allow growers to start cultivating marijuana.
The 33rd Legislature appropriated $250,000 for the purchase of “cannabis-related software,” which has never been purchased, and the government gave the Office of Cannabis Regulation a $500,000 loan from the General Fund.
Only $68,201.45 has been spent as of September, the majority of which has gone to pay Office of Cannabis Regulation Director Hannah Carty, who was hired in January at a salary of $100,000 a year.
Neither Carty nor Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Richard Evangelista have responded to requests for an updated accounting of the OCR’s expenditures to date, or said when the Cannabis Advisory Board might meet again.