Premium Pay Stimulus, Previously Set to Go Out in February and March, Now Scheduled For Release in the Summer
Governor Albert Bryan has announced that the Premium Pay program for private and public sector employees which was scheduled to be paid out in February and March, is now scheduled to be issued during the summer.
2022-03-01 13:32:37 - VI News Staff
Each U.S. state, territory, and tribal government will receive their portion of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which includes an amount for Premium Pay stimulus checks. The U.S. Virgin Islands is allocated $547.1 million from ARPA, and as of January, the territory was in receipt of $531 million. For the Premium Pay program, $40 million was set aside for the Virgin Islands.
Premium Pay is a one-time payment that is based on guidelines established by the U.S. Treasury and is for employees who worked throughout the pandemic. The 437-page rule book on how to spend the money was published on January 6.
“We're scheduling premium pay for the summer; in March we are trying to get out some tax returns,” Governor Bryan disclosed during his Monday Covid-19 press briefing. He said "cash is running slim" because revenue collection expected for January was not fully aligned with projections and there were added expenditures.
“We really did not expect Omicron to have the impact as it did on travel in January 2022 so cash is looking a little bit slim…so we're just watching to see what is going to happen," the governor said while explaining the position of the government's financial situation. "We have liquidity but when you look at our revenues coming in for the year, some of our stuff is down significantly."
Mr. Bryan said while corporate income tax collection was up, gross receipts and ordinary income tax collection trended downward. He also mentioned a number of financial commitments to include union contracts, a lump sum payment to the Gov't Employees' Retirement System of $40 million as part of a recent agreement to settle court matters, and "I also said we are going to give the $25 million back on the retro payments," he said.
The administration, Mr. Bryan added, is "watching our cash to make sure that we could manage the job so that we don’t put ourselves in a cash-strapped situation.”