| AG Says GOB Is Within Legal Bounds With Supplementaries |
| Mon, April 29, 2019 |
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| We also got a chance to speak with Attorney General Michael Peyrefitte about the PUP's lawsuit against the Government for these appropriations bills. He told us that from his perspective as a the Government's lead attorney, the Government is constitutionally permitted to do as it has been doing with these unforeseen expenses:
Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General
"The court will determine whether or not the government was correct in doing that. That is a matter for the court and I don't want to delve into what my considerations would be. However, one of their challenges is about the retrospective effect of the legislation and I know that that is totally allowed under the law. The constitution under section 81.4 specifically gives the right of the house to make laws with retrospective effect. The purpose of that is you may not know what you need to do until you do it and so after you have done it, the law allows you then to pass a law to correct or to normalize what you have done. The only exception is in criminal matters and I think the court is very weary or downright hostile to government making a piece of legislation to say that what you did yesterday was legal, but now we will pass a law to make it illegal and so you go to jail for that what you did not know was illegal at the time. So, other than that the government is allowed to do what it did in my view and for the purposes that it did it for."
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