Ensuring American Samoa continues to receive an increase in federal Capital Improvement Projects in the future, and American Samoa Government’s “high risk” status with the Interior Department’s Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) were two issues from Congresswoman Aumua Amata during a congressional subcommittee hearing last Thursday in Washington D.C.

Amata directed her remarks to Interior Department’s acting assistant secretary for insular Areas, Nikolao Pula, who was among the panel of witnesses during the “Improving and Expanding Infrastructure in Tribal and Insular Communities” hearing by the House Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs. The hearing was streamed online.

As part of her remarks, Aumua said she would love to see the CIP program continue and possibly expanded. “I’m also looking forward to a continuation of the well executed oversight practices regarding the program,” she said and asked Pula to comment on “what can be done to ensure American Samoa continues to receive increased CIP funding in the future.”

Pula first pointed out that allocation of CIP funding is made on the basis of a set of competitive criteria that measure the demonstrated ability of the island governments to exercise prudent financial management practices and to meet federal grant requirements.

“The best thing for American Samoa — it can maximize on the share, because it’s mandatory funding so we will continue the program — is to have clean audits, and submitted on time, as well as timely execution of the conditions of grants, or the terms of the grants,” Pula said.

Of the total $27.72 million for fiscal year 2017, American Samoa has the highest allocation of $9.78 million followed by Northern Marianas with $9.24 million, Guam with $5.91 million and US Virgin Islands getting $2.78 million.

Earlier in his opening statement at the start of the hearing, Pula cited positive results of the CIP for the four US territories. For example, in American Samoa, the $8 million for the 134-foot MV Manu’atele now goes between Manu’a islands and the main island of Tutuila, providing both cargo and passengers transport.

In her second query, Aumua asked that since being designated as “high risk” by OIA, as recommended by the US Government Accountability Office and the Office of Inspector General, how has the American Samoa government managed to improve accountability for federal funds? She also asked if ASG has completed any of the requirements necessary for compliance in order to remove the “high risk” designation by OIA.

Pula first pointed out that there are other areas of high risk for American Samoa — such as the US Education Department.

For OIA, Pula said, “I have to say, lot of the categories, or things to be done, have been done by the American Samoa government. So there has been improvement there.

“But there are still some final things that needed to be done and we have to kind of, circle back, and work with the government so we can lift the high risk. At this point, we haven’t completed everything,” he said.

Since taking office in January 2013, the Lolo administration has been working to remove the “high risk” status by federal grantors with the establishment of the Governor’s High Risk Task Force.  And since 2013, the Lolo Administration has been on time with filing audit reports.