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Taotao Tano faults MPLT land deal
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Posted on Jul 28 2008
Activist group Taotao Tano is crying foul over a controversial plan by the Marianas Public Land Trust to purchase private land for its new office building.
Taotao Tano in a July 28 letter is urging MPLT to use public land for its new offices, citing the recent offer by the Office of the Public Auditor to have the Trust use one of its buildings for free.
“[T]here are sound and available vacant lots and buildings with our government such as the recent offer made by the Office of Public Auditor,” Taotao Tano president Gregorio Cruz Jr. writes in the letter. “We do not believe that all efforts were made to find the proper and suitable office space for MPLT, rather that concentration on the private land purchase was made a top priority.”
MPLT chair Alvaro Santos has said there are some questions about which agency would have the power to grant the Trust use of the land should MPLT accept OPA’s offer.
Cruz also asks why MPLT began work on the land deal in December 2007 but never announced it, noting that OPA was unaware of it until MPLT began finalizing the plan in May 2008.
Cruz also requests in the letter a host of documents related to the land deal, including a 2007 legal opinion and several memos that were left out of MPLT’s response to an Open Government Act request Taotao Tano filed in search of information on the deal.
MPLT has already moved out of its previous offices and into a temporary home in the Oleai area, according to a government staff member. Officials with the trust could not be reached for comment at press time. However, Santos has said previously that the trust weighed several possible locations for the new offices, including many public sites, and only chose the private land it selected because it was the best suited to the trust’s needs.
