A big day in the nation’s capital for Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata and Governor Lemanu Peleti Mauga both addressing top local issues before key policymaking bodies.
KHJ News Washington DC correspondent Matt Kaye reports…
Governor Lemanu was testifying remotely with the other island governors before Interior’s annual IGIA meeting and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the state of the territories.
The Senate panel was not releasing written testimony until just before the mid-afternoon hearing, though it was expected Governor Lemanu would address local health, hospital, economic and other needs during the pandemic.
Meantime, Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata told the IGIA meeting, she’s grateful for the Treasury Department’s new rule that allows the islands to use American Rescue Plan funds for hospital construction.
She said this will help “renovate LBJ hospital,” which the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department have already agreed in their report to Congress needs replacing.
“I am also hopeful,” Uifaatali added, that the additional $1 billion in hospital funding passed by the House will be included in any revised Build Back Better plan, still stalled in the Senate.
On the unintended consequences of pandemic quarantine, she said “Many residents and family members who were stranded on the mainland and overstayed their visas, putting their future ability to travel at risk.”
And even if they applied for extensions and left on the earliest available flight, she said, they “may still be treated as criminal overstayers,” asking IGIA to work with her on the problem.
Uifa’atali told administration officials, she also wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the problem and was awaiting a reply…and hopes to work with DOD to get Army recruits processed for deployment.
Finally, the Congresswoman said she’d written Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in November about the Census undercount with some 2-thousand American Samoans stranded outside the territory by the pandemic.
A Census population drop of 10.5% to just over 49,700, she implied would impact a district “heavily reliant on population-based funding programs.”
