House committee offers $165M budget

The House Committee on Ways and Means has introduced a budget that appropriates $165.37 million in resources for fiscal year 2009, which began yesterday.

The proposed budget includes $156.7 million of projected government revenue, augmented with $5.17 million in Compact Impact funds and $3.5 million of “unencumbered” money taken from numerous accounts outside of the general fund.

A separate $3 million is proposed for the Department of Public Lands, whose revenue is constitutionally reserved for the agency’s administrative costs and for investment by the Marianas Public Land Trust, and cannot be used for central government operations.

Excluding DPL, the proposed budget provides for 4,085 full-time employees. The personnel cap represents a payroll of $111.8 million, a little over two-thirds of the total budget. The remainder, $52.57 million, will go to operations.

As expected, the proposed budget provides a lump-sum appropriation of $79.26 million for the Executive Branch. Except for the $3.63 million for the CNMI Scholarship Office, Gov. Benigno R. Fitial will have full authority to distribute these funds to the departments and agencies under the Executive Branch.

The bill sets the employer pension contribution rate at 11 percent of the payroll, much lower than the 37.4 percent recommended by the NMI Retirement Fund’s actuarial consultant. It also earmarks $1 million to the Retirement Fund to pay for the previous year’s deficient employer contributions for eligible employees who have been unable to retire because of the freeze on all new retirements.

The proposed legislation appropriates $100,000 for judgments ordered by the courts against the CNMI government. The Secretary of Finance, in consultation with the Attorney General, will decide as to how payments will be made.

Under the budget bill, CNMI government agencies will be prohibited from using their appropriations to sue another local agency. However, it does not contain any provision stopping the governor from using any part of the $75.63 million at his disposal for his immigration lawsuit against the U.S. government.

In anticipation of the pending federal takeover of local immigration, the appropriation bill calls for the lateral transfer of current employees at the Division of Immigration to other government offices.

Further, the budget bill revives a vetoed bill lifting the salary caps for medical professionals, as well as unspecified professionals working at the Legislature and the Judiciary. The provision addresses, among other things, the government’s inability to attract pharmacists to work at the Commonwealth Health Center, the main reason for the governor’s recent emergency declaration for the hospital’s in-house pharmacy.

The House of Representatives is expected to begin debating on the budget bill during a session this afternoon.