The majority of excess tax revenues since 2022 have been applied by the governor of Guam to provide every power rate payer on the island a $100 per month discount on power bills since July 2022.
That means Governor Lou Leon Guerrero and those senators in the legislature who supported her efforts, have rebated to taxpayers $2,100 since the program began.
That means no governor has rebated more money to taxpayers than Lou Leon Guerrero has.
Thanks in part to an increase in taxes, then unprecedented inflows of federal cash into the government of Guam stemming from the pandemic, then from Michael San Nicolas’ congressional victories reimbursing Guam for more than $100 million annually in earned income credit and Medicaid cost share, Ms. Leon Guerrero has operated a government in surplus for nearly the entirety of her tenure. The credit ratings agencies also credit this rare era in surplus GovGuam financials to her management.
In fact, surplus budget years are rare in Guam’s government. Prior to Ms. Leon Guerrero, Eddie Calvo achieved a budget surplus in Fiscal Year 2014, but that did not last long due primarily to the Bush tax cuts that changed the federal tax code Guam mirrors for income taxes. Before Mr. Calvo’s achievement, the last budget surplus was in Fiscal Year 1990 during the administration of Joseph Ada.
According to Public Law 20-220, introduced by then-Senator Carl Gutierrez at the request of Mr. Ada, that year Guam posted a $100 million surplus, or greater than a quarter of General Fund revenues at the time. That public law is what authorized something that had never been done prior: a $1,000 tax rebate to every person who paid taxes for tax year 1989, and $2,000 to a household, where there was a joint filing.
With the last payment $100 on every Guam Power Authority residential customer’s account being made for last month’s bill (bringing the total rebate of public funds to households to $2,100), the rebates from taxes to households under Ms. Leon Guerrero has now exceeded the Ada tax rebates of 1990. And unlike the Ada rebates, the majority of the rebates under Ms. Leon Guerrero were done after reelection.
There was virtually no unemployment and 31,373 households in 1990, according to the census that year. Even if every household received a $2,000 tax rebate that year, the total would have been $62.7 million, though the payout actually was much lower than that.
Ms. Leon Guerrero’s GPA discount program that rebated tax dollars into customer account debits provided $100 discounts every month for the past 21 months to 45,471 households, according to 2022 data from Guam Power Authority. That means she has overseen the rebate of $95.5 million in excess government revenues directly to the households of Guam.
Audited financials of the government of Guam confirm both the conservative projections and accuracy of the Department of Administration and Bureau of Budget and Management Research’s quarterly tracking of revenues that have guided how senators have allowed the administration to use money. The latest tracking model shows that as of March this year, GovGuam is on track to collect $69 million more than originally budgeted.
And it is this new surplus senators have used to pledge the last two extensions to the GPA discount, and are on track to extend for a third time this fiscal year. If that happens, then Ms. Leon Guerrero’s record of rebating the people’s money will increase to $2,400 per household.
