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Governor Albert Bryan will travel to Washington D.C., Friday to attend the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association and to meet with senior White House administration officials, Government House has made known.
The governor will join governors from across the nation, and hundreds of policy experts for discussions on initiatives to promote economic prosperity, the development and maintenance of critical infrastructure, and measures to plan for and respond to natural disasters.
Governor House said Mr. Bryan will also participate in a senior plenary session of the Interagency Group on Insular Areas while in Washington, where he, along with governors from the other U.S. territories, will outline their federal priorities with senior White House officials and the leadership of the U.S. Department of Interior.
Mr. Bryan is also scheduled to meet with Department of Treasury officials for further talks on his administration’s proposed revenue streams to avert the insolvency of the Government Employees Retirement System (GERS).
Last December, Mr. Bryan called the Thirty-third Legislature into special session to vote on legislation expanding the Virgin Islands Medical Cannabis Patient Care Act to allow for the generation of more substantial tax and fee revenues to be used to help stabilize the GERS. The Senate held the measure, contending that much more time was needed before allowing for the drug's recreational use in the territory, with some senators arguing that the original VI Medical Cannabis Act itself, which legalizes the use of marijuana for medical purposes, had yet to be implemented.
The governor said in his State of the Territory Address last month said that the goal of his legislation to expand the Virgin Islands Cannabis Patient Care Act was to create a funding stream reliable enough to support a revenue bond that can provide a needed cash infusion to the GERS along with pursuing other revenue sources from new rum and gasoline excise taxes and an adjustment to the Caribbean Basin Initiative.
The Winter Meeting is one of the two annual gatherings of the National Governors Association, which provides a forum for governors and other state leaders to discuss policy and best practices and to engage federal officeholders to reinforce relationships and focus state advocacy efforts.
