Plaskett Pushes Congress for USVI Constitution

Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett has introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would adopt the amended Revised Organic Act of 1954 as the constitution of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Plaskett’s office said Wednesday.

Plaskett’s bill argues the federal Organic Act is already the territory’s governing document but because it’s never been formally adopted locally, USVI officials are unable to amend it. Taking that power out of Washington and placing it in the hands of Virgin Islands voters, the local Legislature, and future territorial constitutional conventions, enables “a local process for self-determination, and a level of autonomy in our constitutional maturation,” Plaskett wrote in a media statement.

“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,” she said of her bill introduced Friday.

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said he supported the measure as well as a new constitutional convention.

“The ability for Virgin Islanders to establish and amend our own governing document without petitioning the Congress is long overdue and paramount to our right to self-determination,” Bryan told the Source late Wednesday.