Victoria Williams has published a lengthy defense of our senators with respect to the amendments to the GERS system. She indicates that she doesn’t “believe that the senators themselves cooked up, in some back room, the provisions that changed the pension plans and contributions set out in Act 6905.”
In support of this defense, she discusses at length the provisions in Act 6905 dealing with floating bonds to finance the GERS System. She emphasizes that these were provisions that were not created by the Senators but rather by the GERS System itself. What she remains silent about are the provisions in Act 6905, which increased GERS benefits for Senators and increased salaries for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Senators (“Contested Provisions”).
I, for one, have not conducted any research with respect to floating bonds to fund the GERS system. In fact, I do not contest Williams’ assertions about the unfunded liability of the GERS system that was evident prior to the passage of Act 6905. I am certainly willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the strategy of floating bonds to cover that unfunded liability.
I am also willing to believe that the GERS System itself may well have requested or drafted provisions for floating such bonds to finance the GERS System. Those provisions dealing with floating bonds to finance the GERS appear in SECTIONS 1 through 4 of Act 6905 (none of which involve amendments to the V.I. Code), while the provisions that amended the V.I. Code to increase GERS benefits for Senators and increase the salaries for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Senators appear in SECTIONS 6 and 8, respectively.
Assuming that Williams is correct about the source and purpose of the provisions for floating bonds to fund the GERS System, it is clear that a different source sought the increased GERS benefits for Senators. SECTION 6 of Act 6905 dramatically increases GERS benefits for Senators, while SECTION 8 dramatically and retroactively increases salaries for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Senators. As a result, the GERS benefits for a Senator retiring on December 31, 2006 would be based upon that dramatically increased salary though that Senator NEVER paid contributions to the GERS System based on that higher salary. Furthermore, Act 6905 provides NO other financing to cover this increased liability for the GERS system (the bond provisions explicitly state that they are to decrease the unfunded liability and do not mention funding increased benefits for Senators).
In other words, while the GERS Administrator and Board may well have asked the Legislature to pass provisions for floating bonds to cover the unfunded liability of the GERS system, they CLEARLY would never SIMULTANEOUSLY ask the Legislature to pass provisions INCREASING the unfunded liability of the GERS system by increasing GERS benefits for Senators without requiring the Senators to pay for those increased benefits.
In short, any effort to pretend that the provisions of concern to the public in Act 6905 were those dealing with floating bonds to finance the unfunded liability of the GERS RATHER than the increased GERS benefits for Senators and increased salaries for the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Senators is an intentional effort to confuse the issue and mislead the public. Only the Senators had a reason to increase their GERS benefits. The GERS System had NO reason to increase its unfunded liability. Period.

Mark Hodge