‘40 pct. may be exempted from shutdown’

Lt. Gov. Eloy S. Inos said yesterday that if the House and Senate fail to pass a budget that could be signed into law before Oct. 1, only an estimated 40 percent or 700 government employees will be able to report for work including nurses, doctors, police officers, firefighters, and corrections officers, along with other so-called critical government employees and many federal-funded positions.

Over 1,000 others will be out of jobs until after a fiscal year 2012 budget bill is enacted into law.

Many Northern Marianas College and Public School System employees will also be exempted to ensure that schools will be open, along with personnel needed to ensure there’s running water and power.

Of the estimated 1,800 government employees excluding those at NMC and PSS, some 40 percent could be exempted from a shutdown, said Inos.

Inos also said the Fitial administration expects to finalize an executive order by next week, but is hoping it won’t need such order if the House and Senate are able to pass a budget.

“But we hope that an appropriation bill is enacted by next week so there won’t be a need for issuance of an executive order,” said Inos, who oversees government finances.

He hopes that the budget bill is a balanced and reasonable one.

“We hope the conference committee meets as soon as possible. It is urgent that they meet as soon as possible,” he said.

There are only 13 days left before the start of FY 2012 on Oct. 1.

If no budget is signed into law before that date, the shutdown provision of the NMI Constitution kicks in.

The remaining period also does not give the governor at least 20 days to review the budget bill as allowed, but Inos said the administration has been keeping an eye on the Legislature’s actions on the budget so that they don’t need to take days before acting on a bill once it clears the House and Senate.

Rep. Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, started meeting with his fellow House conferees yesterday.

“We’re starting to work as conferees. We were told that the Senate conferees will be ready to meet with us on Monday. I would have wanted to start the meeting today with the senators but three of the Senate conferees are on Rota for a Friday public hearing on Article 12 which is also an important issue,” Basa told Saipan Tribune.

The House conferees will meet again today, hoping to draw a list of main areas of concerns regarding the budget.

But there’s no telling yet whether the conferees will go over the Senate or House version of the budget, and list their major concerns based on that budget version.

Basa and Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee chair Sen. Jovita Taimanao (Ind-Rota) said the first meeting of all the conferees will be on Monday at 10am, or five days after the House rejected the Senate-substituted budget bill.

House members said the senators’ proposal to “zero out” the operational budget of all the lawmakers, as well as the leadership accounts of the House and Senate, is “absurd” and “unrealistic,” and sends a message that senators “might as well shut down the Legislature.”

Senators zeroed out these accounts to give more to the Public School System, Northern Marianas College, Rota, and Tinian.

Senate President Paul Manglona (Ind-Rota) said it will now be up to the conferees to work out a bill agreeable to both houses.

The lieutenant governor said many government employees already have difficulty living with a 16-hour pay cut every two weeks, and the situation would be worse when they are forced to temporarily not report for work if there’s a shutdown.

“If a 16-hour reduction in wages is bad, or is not conducive to the livelihood of the employees… then imagine what a total shutdown would be (like)… instead of 16 hours, 80 hours are not getting paid,” he said, depending on the “duration” of the shutdown.

Last year, the government partially shut down for 10 days as a result of a budget deadlock between the House and Senate.

Inos said the Fitial administration is “concerned” that lessons may not have been learned from last year’s shutdown, causing “anxiety” among government employees and the public at large which depends on government services.