Feb 4, 2023

Oversight hearing called with GVB

Sen. Jesse Lujan, currently acting as chair of the legislative committee on tourism, has called for an oversight hearing of the Guam Visitors Bureau next week, set for Feb. 10.

There are several discussion points for the oversight, including the status of harmonizing or amending the agency’s enabling laws and bylaws, to follow up on a letter sent by Lujan and Sen. William Parkinson to GVB board Chair Milton Morinaga, and the status of elected directors, which was a point of contention during the recent attempted meeting of the GVB board of directors. 

The board hasn’t met since May 2022, when it decided to postpone all meetings until the bureau “harmonized” its bylaws, passed in 2013 and deemed illegal by legal counsel, with the agency’s enabling legislation. 

“Bylaws do not supersede law. … The statute, based on the board’s duties, were basically more advisory and action could be done based on a resolution by the members. What the bylaws had done was turn (the board) into a governing body,” Lujan told the Guam Daily Post Friday. 

The amended bylaws can now be found on the GVB website, and are said to be compliant with statute. However, GVB members were unable to vote on the bylaws in January, during a membership election meeting, due to a lack of quorum. The bureau’s membership will have to reattempt the vote, or approval will be delegated to the board.

The GVB board was set to meet this week for a special meeting, with part of the agenda to officially elect Akihiro Tani and George Chiu to fill the positions vacated by Charles Bell and Stephen Gatewood. According to GVB board attorney Joseph McDonald, prior selections of Tani and Chiu as board members are void because the actions were never noticed on a published agenda. 

But the board lacked quorum at that meeting, as well, and despite some argument on whether to proceed anyway, the board chair ultimately decided that the meeting could not continue. Prior to the meeting, Lujan and Sen. William Parkinson sent a letter to Morinaga, asking him how the meeting came about and why it needed to take place when it was scheduled to happen.

Lujan and Parkinson wrote that Tani and Chiu were not elected by GVB membership and asked Morinaga to explain what “officially elected” means when there was no membership election.

“Please also explain why the membership does not get a say in their election when their terms are up. Finally, please explain how these gentlemen were chosen instead of others and whether others were asked if they were chosen instead of others and whether others were asked if they were interested,” the senators stated.

The letter asked several other questions, including why elections for officer positions – also part of that meeting’s agenda – were necessary given that terms for 2021 directors would be expiring soon. 

Morinaga hasn’t responded to the letter, according to Lujan. 

“We all campaigned on accountability and transparency, … and we just want to make sure that moving forward that everything is transparent,” Lujan said. 

Lujan is vice chair of the legislative committee on tourism, but is serving as acting chair in the absence of Chair Sen. Amanda Shelton, who will be off island until Feb. 13.

By: John O’Connor

Source: The Guam Daily Post