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Senate confirms Ada, Celes, Inos
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Posted on Sep 19 2008
[B]ROTA[/B]—Senate lawmakers in a session here Thursday night voted unanimously to confirm three of Gov. Benigno Fitial’s appointees, including new chiefs at the Commerce and Community and Cultural Affairs departments and a new associate Superior Court judge.
Michael Ada—who took over as acting director of Commerce after the resignation of his recently indicted former boss, James Santos—gained the Senate’s confirmation to serve as Commerce secretary without any objections from lawmakers.
“I’m pretty excited,” Ada said in an interview. “I’m hoping to just keep doing what we’re doing and try to encourage the business community to grow. It’s good to have the ‘acting’ piece off the job title.”
Later, the confirmation of attorney Perry Inos to serve as an associate Superior Court judge, a vote that got a round of applause from the gallery, garnered one key question from Sen. Luis Crisostimo (D-Saipan) on how he would handle the clients he still has and the assets he stands to gain from his current work.
The clients at issue, Inos said, will be transferred to a new attorney and he will still receive the money they currently owe him. However, the task of finding a new attorney for his indigent clients appeared to give Inos pause.
“This is a bittersweet for me,” he said. “It is an honorable position to occupy as an associate judge with the Commonwealth but it is also a difficult time for me to part with some of my indigent clients.”
In an interview, Inos said accepting the governor’s appointment was an emotional decision in light of his desire to help his indigent clients. The process of finding all of his clients new attorneys will soon begin, he added.
In a third vote, the Senate confirmed Cecilia Celes to serve as secretary for the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs. Celes said afterwards that she hopes to improve the training and support staff with Rota and Tinian’s food stamp offices—which are under the purview of DCCA—in order to give them the power to serve clients and process their requests more quickly without the need for off-island assistance.
“I want to ask all of the staff of DCCA for their support in helping me realize the programs and projects that need to be done,” she said. “If we are good caretakers of our programs we can find solutions to improve things.”
