NMI’s fiscal calamity descends

The local economy isn’t just crumbling. It is disintegrating under the shifting sands of bankruptcy. It leaves budget experts on the hill waltzing with mental paralysis as they watch the coffers dry up. The fiscal year 2013 budget projection is a meager $102 million.

It isn’t hard discerning why we’re now dancing with bankruptcy. Just take a critical review of how much tax revenues have decreased (a whopping $154 million). We used to boast of $256 million annually a decade or so ago. This has severely dropped to some $102 million today.

Out of $102 million for 2013, take away 80 percent for payroll. This leaves some $20 million for all others. This is where vicious fiscal shortfall places PSS, CHC, and others scrambling to secure the most of what’s left. It doesn’t include any reserve fund of some $60 million to $90 million for the retirement program’s annual payout. This is a simple demonstration of the NMI’s financial posture where figures don’t lie.

It should seriously concern both leadership and retirees. The announcement to find workable options to defray the cost of mounting pension and healthcare bills for retirees would accumulate into unfunded promises. If nothing else works, it may mean imposing higher taxes that would crowd out spending in a very poor business climate. The NMI has an enormous retirement obligation it must pay at a time when revenues have concurrently gone south as a result of persistent business closures.

How do we resolve this issue so the Fund could eventually be self-sustaining? Obviously, the program needs the assistance of retirement and financial planning specialists. Politicians simply don’t have the wherewithal to do any justice to an issue they have ignored for 32 years. In fact, this dangerous group must be kept farthest from expert recommended institution of solid steps to ensuring the solvency of the Fund. The program requires reform and seed funding such that it doesn’t become a major burden to scarce NMI revenues.

The severity of the fiscal calamity may force such shortsighted proposals as bond flotation, the sale of public land, tax increases to pay down what’s owed the Fund. But would any of these options ensure that the Fund becomes self-sustaining in finding some $$60 million-$90 million annually to pay pension and health-care bills of retirees?

In short, let’s not encourage the mindset that the administration has found lasting solutions. Let’s discuss options and figure out whether in fact it could withstand the test or challenge of meeting Fund obligations over the long haul. After all, facts and figures within reach do not lie; only politicians employ honeyed-statements to buy time to cover their inactions and inadequacies.

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Repeating history

The last time a government agency loaned money, it started marching steadily toward Fiscal Cliff for its kamikaze internment. This was the brief history of the NMI Retirement Fund once overflowing with millions of dollars.

It loaned millions to other agencies, confident it will never go bankrupt. Isn’t it true that the Fund is now exploring the various chapters of bankruptcy in federal court?

Aren’t we replicating the same dangerous footsteps with the Marianas Public Land Trust dishing out millions of dollars for agency loans, including application for millions more for various business proposals from the business sector? Isn’t this the role of banking and financing institutions, i.e., CDA and private banks?

We’re already eyeing an initiative for the sale of public land to cover debts owed the Fund. Would we have more land for this purpose if MPLT goes belly up? Would approving casino gaming for the third senatorial district (Saipan) be sufficient to support the increasing needs of the NMI?

For all the mess at home, the deafening silence of people on the hill saddled with mind-numbing disorientation amidst pressure for real answers presents another round of hopelessness. It’s the net result of snoozing on the job for over three decades. They find it hard trying to understand what it feels like doing real hard work.

The local treasury is dry while investments have slowly died, if not already. At the same time our needs increase by leaps and bounds daily. Isn’t it our responsibility as citizens to step forward so we could collectively take the reins of leadership from an elitist group who no longer listen nor hear our voice of dire discontentment?

Their coalition of silence and paralysis is a tale of their juvenile perception of issues that ordinary citizens find most troubling. There’s nothing to be fearful of if it means protecting our rights to recapturing and rebuilding paradise like we used to know it. Our children deserve our proactive participation today to protect the NMI from the scourge of leadership’s negligence. No one deserves any form of enslavement, especially those politically designed to retain power at our expense. Not this time around!

Leadership has simply lost its enthusiasm to lead and its agility to move decisively to resolve impending chaos. Now comes the eleventh hour, employing more ad hoc planning, hoping it could float the boat of dystopia and hopelessness into coughing up divine miracles of sort.

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Trashing Pagan

In 1974, I accompanied the Atomic Energy Commission’s annual medical exam of folks on Rongelap, Utirik, and Bikini in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. These are folks who were affected by the radiation fallout of the infamous Bravo Experiment.

It was learned that thyroid disorder is 20 percent higher than the national average. Perhaps the most egregious effect was the immediate displacement of a simple livelihood on all three islands. Now there’s the need for an annual medical check-up, not that it matters to Uncle Sam but there’s the obvious agenda to figure out the effects of radiation on human beings.

If anything, I sailed away from Rongelap and Utirik with a heavy heart after spending several nights sitting amidst the graves of those who died immediately and subsequently from the effects of radiation. Local flora and fauna were prohibited from human consumption for over 26 years. So you could imagine what we took down to review the radiation level that year from reef fish, chicken, coconut crabs, lobster from a nearby reef, root plants, among others.

That was 38 years ago and occasionally I would ponder how my friends have done on Rongelap and Utirik since we last met. Imagine having to endure the effects of radiation and the disorders it brings for a lifetime.

Unthinkable when viewed against the curiosity of the effects of radiation on human beings. Uncle Sam should have waited for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombardment to secure specimens for his laboratory. Do you want toxic and radioactive materials on Pagan? Tell our friends “sayonara” or “thanks but no thanks.”