Resolution vs lawmakers’ switch from pension checks to salaries

Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) prefiled Wednesday a resolution objecting to lawmakers who now want to go back to receiving their salary as legislators after waiving it to receive their retirement benefits instead, but some lawmakers expressed opposition to such measure not because they are personally affected but because they said anyone is entitled to receive his salary and forego pension.

Manglona’s Senate Resolution 17-86 may be acted on during their next session on May 8.

“The Senate strongly disapproves that any legislator changing their position to receive their salary in lieu of their retirement fund benefits and diverting much needed funds from scholarship program,” the resolution reads.

Some lawmakers said yesterday that Senate floor leader Pete Reyes (R-Saipan) is among-if not the only-lawmaker/s to be affected by Manglona’s resolution. Reyes did not return calls as of press time.

Manglona said some members of the Legislature, pursuant to 1 CMC 8841, have waived their salaries so that they may continue to receive their retirement benefits and have their salary paid to the Scholarship Trust Account.

But after the NMI Retirement Fund filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, some members of the Legislature “desire to reverse their decision and now receive their salary in lieu of their retirement fund benefits.”

“The legislators who have elected to continue receiving their retirement benefits should endure the same threat of loss or reduction in benefits as other Retirement Fund beneficiaries,” Manglona said.

But Reps. Stanley Torres (Ind-Saipan) and Froilan Tenorio (Cov-Saipan) separately said yesterday that Reyes and others who may be in the same situation should be given the option to revert to receiving their salaries.

“That should be his discretion. He’s entitled to his payroll but he elected not to receive it, and now he wants to receive it.  What’s wrong with that?” Torres asked.

Manglona said that when some 2,000 retirees are “concerned about paying their mortgages and putting food on the table because of the bankruptcy some lawmakers are looking for parachutes to save their own lives.”

“For me, it’s disappointing,” he said, referring to individual bailing out during the Fund crisis instead of working as a lawmaker to cushion the impact for the majority if not for all-retirees or active Fund members.

He said in his resolution that the reversal of decision so that some lawmakers may now receive their salary will reduce anticipated funding to the Scholarship Trust Account.

Tenorio, who elected to stop receiving his pension as a former governor to receive his salary as a lawmaker, said that Reyes or any other lawmaker who now want to receive their salary as lawmakers after waiving them to receive pension should be allowed to do so.

“I don’t understand why the Senate president is against that. Why doesn’t he introduce a bill instead of a resolution? What good is a resolution? Senator Manglona knows that the law allows those like Reyes to go back to receiving their salary as lawmaker,” Tenorio added.