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The V.I. government has roughly $460 million remaining from the $540 million windfall it received from the federal government as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, signed into law by President Biden on March 11, 2021.
Speaking during an interview on the Consortium last week, Mr. Bryan reminded that the territory has several years to deplete the funds, and that his administration — weighing incoming inflation-induced economic headwinds, including a possible recession in the U.S. — has been careful to plan how the funds are spent.
"I think we're about $80 million or somewhere around there," Mr. Bryan revealed. "The Covid money, we have until 2026 [to spend it]."
The governor said his administration for the past two years has submitted two-year budgets "because we want to have that long look to see conservative spending."
He added, "We could also spend more, but when you get in trouble with the salaries and everything, you can't spend less, that means you got to send people home. So we're always looking to see how we space these payments, this money out so that we always have money in the coffers and we're okay. Because we don't want to get into that 8 percent situation or anything like that again."
As an aside, the governor said the belief that a lot of work is currently being done across the territory because it's an election year, is misplaced. "People think it's because of the election, we just have money," he said, referring to the Covid funding.
The government also has wide latitude on how it spends the money, with funding so far going toward government operations, the Premium Pay Program, a $50,000 grant for eligible, locally registered businesses with less than 100 employees, and — among other purposes — subsidizing WAPA. "If we weren't paying the WAPA bills your road would have been paved too," he said during the Thursday Consortium interview.
