During an audit of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Public Finance Authority (PFA), we uncovered poor procurement practices and major deficiencies in the management of projects paid for with PFA-issued bond proceeds. Because of the magnitude of these deficiencies, which involved several Government of the Virgin Islands (GVI) agencies, we reported our findings in a management advisory letter to Virgin Islands Governor Kenneth Mapp and Senate President Myron Jackson.
We reviewed 12 GVI capital improvement projects, valued at more than $25 million, and found serious procurement deficiencies and inconsistencies in how GVI’s Department of Property and Procurement (DPP) managed the projects. We found that DPP did not follow procurement rules for competitively bidding construction contracts, did not guarantee that the evaluation and awarding process for contracts was fair, did not administer contracts in accordance with the Virgin Islands Code, and did not plan projects carefully. Furthermore, we found that a GVI agency, the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority, wasted valuable bond proceeds by purchasing potentially unusable land.
We made 10 recommendations in this management advisory to improve procurement practices at DPP and other GVI agencies. After the agencies responded to a draft version of this advisory, we reviewed the actions they had taken or planned to implement our recommendations. We consider seven of our recommendations resolved and implemented, two resolved but not implemented, and one unresolved.