Poker license fees for FY2011 short of $200K

The pie just keeps getting smaller.

The poker license fee collections for fiscal year 2011 is out and, in another blow to the cash-strapped CNMI government, revenues from registered poker machines is short by some $200,000, according to Saipan and Northern Islands Local Delegation House Ways and Means chair Ray Yumul (R-Saipan).

Yumul said the SNILD expected $3,454,000 in poker license fees for last fiscal year but collections by the Department of Finance wound up with only $3,228,050—a shortfall of $225,9500.

And since $3.1 million will be allocated to the Saipan Higher Education Fund Administration ($3 million for actual scholarships and $100,000 for operations), only $128,050 would be left to be divvied up among 17 programs.

Under local law, the programs would have a pro-rated share of the remaining funds. However, Yumul questioned the process that Finance used to divide the monies because some programs got a greater percentage than others.

For instance, the Saipan Little League Baseball Association was supposed to get $25,000 but only got $14,972.

The 30th Annual Flame Tree Arts Festival was originally budgeted at $20,000 but got $17,062 in the end.

Worse, some programs like Saipan Zoning and the Public School System for its equipment maintenance were earmarked $75,000 and $39,000 but Finance failed to remit such monies to the programs.

Yumul said the problems with the original appropriation vis-à-vis the actual remitted funds after pro-rated cuts is hindering the delegation’s attempts to earmark monies for fiscal year 2012.

Yesterday morning alone during its session, representatives from the Saipan Mayor’s Office and the Saipan Southern High School Manta Ray Band went before SNILD to ask funding for court judgments and a trip to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, respectively.

Saipan Mayor Donald Flores’ special assistant Henry Hofschneider said the municipality needs SNILD’s expenditure authority so it could appropriate money raised from its “batu,” cockfighting, and bingo activities to pay $44,000 in judgments relating to the Liberation Day fireworks accident in 2007 and another case involving money it owes Guangdong Hardware.

SSHS principal Jesse Tudela, Manta Ray Band director James Dewitt, and two band members, meanwhile, asked SNILD for any funding to help defray the costs to send the 50-person musical group to the Summer Olympics from July to August next year.