Adopting the Constitution of the Virgin Islands

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, this week I was pleased to introduce legislation to adopt the Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands and its amendments as the constitution of the Virgin Islands of the United States.

My legislation provides for the adoption of the Revised Organic Act, as it has been approved by Congress, signed into law, and amended, as the constitution of our territory.

While the Revised Organic Act presently serves as the main governing document of the Virgin Islands, we have been unable to enact changes on a territorial level. If the Revised Organic Act and its amendments are adopted as the constitution by Federal law, it would then free the Virgin Islands to make further amendments without congressional engagement or approval.

As such, my legislation includes an amendment process to allow the Virgin Islands to revise the constitution once adopted.

In May of 2020, the Virgin Islands legislature passed bill 33-0292, which included a referendum on the general election ballot on calling a constitutional convention to adopt the Revised Organic Act. This proposal was approved by 72 percent of people voting on this measure.

There is a clear public preference for the adoption of a constitution for the Virgin Islands. My legislation enables a base constitution to be enacted and a local process for self-determination and a level of autonomy in our constitutional maturation.

I am asking all Virgin Islanders to speak with individuals you know who can help support this act, and I am asking Members of our diaspora living in the mainland to lobby their current congressional and Senate Representatives for support. Preventing Further Growth of the Virgin Islands National Park on St. John.

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, this week I introduced legislation to prohibit the net increase of federally owned land in the Virgin Islands National Park Service on St. John. The Virgin Islands National Park boundary encompasses nearly two-thirds of the island of St. John. Within the park boundary, there is both federally owned and privately owned land. There is a finite amount of land for the residents of St. John who are already confronting housing shortages. This legislation takes the necessary steps to prevent an increase in land owned by the park.

This legislation prevents any net increase of federally owned land in the park. Individuals and entities would still be able to donate or exchange land with the park, but if the Virgin Islands National Park acquires any land, an equal acreage of land must be conveyed out of Federal ownership.

The legislation includes stringent guidelines to ensure the park does not utilize bureaucratic processes to cause excessive delays. When the park elects to sell Federal land to avoid an increase in net acreage, it must offer the land for sale within a year at fair market value. Six months after the land is first offered for sale, if it is not under contract or sold, then the price is reduced by 10 percent each month.

This legislation addresses the concerns I hear consistently from Virgin Islanders about an ever-expanding presence of the park on St. John. The park has a responsibility as stewards and also as partners of the Virgin Islands. That has not always been the case.

Unfortunately, often the park seems to be solely engaged in protecting land, not the people who were the original inhabitants of that land or the people brought over as enslaved people who fought for freedom and through sweat and toil were able to obtain land on that island.

Albeit sometimes well-intentioned, what they have done is effectively crowded out Native people in furtherance of neocolonial bourgeois wildlife ideals acting under the assumption that the local people-- interestingly, people of color--cannot care for the land themselves.

As we look at the history and the future of the Virgin Islands National Park, our decisions must be intentional to support St. John and the entire Virgin Islands, which includes its land, its people, its history, its culture, and our future.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance this legislation.

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