Jean-Pierre Oriol, Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, had to defend the inability of his department to fill vacant positions when discussing his department’s proposed increased budget from $7 Million in fiscal year 2021 to $10 million in fiscal year 2022 during a budget hearing on Friday.
Chairmen of the Committee on Finance, Senator Kurt Vialet asked D.P.N.R about how many new positions there were in their proposed budget and Celia Jackson-Williams, Personnel Relations Coordinator responded that there were 25.
This caused Mr. Vialet to ask the commissioner, “You had a number of vacant positions last budget cycle, numerous vacant positions and once again see numerous vacant positions… how do you propose hiring new positions when you can’t fill the new positions that exist?
Mr. Oriol said that part of the reason positions were still vacant was financial and explained when the FY 2019 Budget passed he believes that the budget “was around $9 million was allocated for D.P.N.R. The F.Y. 20 and the FY 21 budget we were down in the $7 million dollar range.” He stated that the $10 million proposed budget for FY 2020 gets the department “back to where we were in 2019 when those vacant positions were there.”
Mr. Oriol said that this year that the department has hired 17 employees this year ranging from “fisheries, biologist, chief of fisheries, field superintendents” and later mentioned more positions that were filled.
Some of the vacant positions that were discussed were librarians, legal counsel and record planners.
Senator Samuel Carrion followed up with questioning around vacancies wanted to know if the new positions requested are “a realistic projection of what your needs will be in FY 2022.”
Mr. Oriol said that the positions “reflect our need, I differentiate between what’s necessary and what’s ideal. You can get up into the ideal situation but we also keep in mind the budget that we have to work with.”
Mr. Carrion did acknowledge that most of the D.P.N.R’s position request “are critical in your department to provide the services that you do” after Mr. Oriol’s response.
In the second round of questioning Mr. Carrion asked “vacancy has been an issue, what the plan to ramp that up and increase your recruitment process.”
Mr. Oriol proposed that “we can sacrifice one or two bodies to bring salaries up and be able to move existing people up and then free up some lower salaries…it will result in a little more workload on individuals... We still need a way to get more bodies.”
He said the department works with well with the University of the Virgin islands, has intergovernmental personnel agreements with other federal agencies, and has internships and fellowships. “We find a way to get it done but that doesn’t negate the need to have more bodies in the department.”
When Mr. Vialet found out that D.P.N.R. will spend “way below your proposed budget” for fiscal year 2020. He brought up a “serious issue” that he has with all departments in the government “when you looking at the actual colleagues, they are not even meeting what was allocated for this fiscal year and then we are seeing increases.” He estimated that in D.P.N.R.’s case that they will spend 5.7 million of the $7 million that was allocated for them in F.Y. 2020.
Mr. Vialet explained his concern “That’s where I have serious issues with every single department coming before us because none of them are meeting the actuals for this fiscal year as proposed and then you see a tremendous jump… we need to be careful.”
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