Q&A: Bryan Talks Immigration, Health Care, and a Governor’s Responsibilities

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. delivered his seventh State of the Territory address Monday. On Thursday, he sat down with the Source to discuss immigration, health care, the whirlwind of developments in Washington D.C. and their potential impact on the territory and more.

Governor, thank you so much for making the time today. I’m glad that you were talking about the OMB memo that came out [prior to the interview] — the federal OMB memo — and the funding freeze that sent a lot of… raised a lot of alarms here in the territory and everywhere else, I think to some extent, a lot of what we talk about in terms of what’s happening in D.C. could just be old news by the time this publishes tomorrow. So I think I’d rather focus on our efforts in Washington. Obviously, we have a Delegate to Congress, and we also have a consultant firm that we contracted to advance our agenda. So let’s start there. How much have we paid [lobbyists] Squire Patton Boggs, and what is the territory’s return on investment?

I don’t know how much we’ve paid Squire Patton Boggs, but let’s say we’re paying $2 million a year, if that, right? We got a billion dollars for COVID. I mean, you could watch the PFA meetings — you know, we have a board member that always complains about how much we pay lobbyists — just the 10 percent to 2 percent that we had, the [adjustment to the cost-share] match, that’s like $2 billion.