A bill to spend $50,000 on a convention for Guam's large veterans community would appear to be a political year slam dunk.

Speaker Therese Terlaje said, “As you know colleagues I very rarely introduce these kinds of bills to appropriate funding to non-profit organizations, but this was a convention that was very needed, they're trying to reach out to all of the veterans on Guam. This was supposed to be an islandwide convention.”

A public hearing on the bill was held on Feb. 5 but apparently nobody told the event organizers or the legislature that the administration had sent the money a week earlier using Federal American Rescue Plan funds.

“Both the Veterans Affairs Director and the Governors Liaison Officer for Veterans Affairs were not made aware of the transfer now, nor was Mr. Nick Francisco who was there to advocate for the bill. Nor were we who were trying to push this since may,” said Terlaje.

Jason Baza, a Budget Bureau Supervisor told Senator Chris Duenas the use of ARP funds is allowable under the “revenue loss category for operations."

Baza said, “I do know that funding was transferred in from arp for these conventions and that was the call of management.”

“I mean I'm just... listen I'm gonna vote for this bill, my point is are we going through an exercise right now that is unnecessary given the fact that these entities have been given the money in order to be able to fund what the bill's calling for,” said Senator Chris Duenas

And Senator Joanne Brown asked, is it a case of who does or doesn't get the credit?

She said, “I don't get it. You know Mr. Chair it kinda makes me wonder the agenda. I don't know if the Governor felt the need to usurp the issue and take credit for it, but I wish she would be as expeditious with finding ARP funds for other critical things like the hospital.”

The islandwide veterans convention is slated for April.