Decision on ‘zero accounts,’ education funding today

 A joint Senate and House committee trying to break the fiscal year 2012 budget deadlock is poised to decide today whether to increase funding for education, Rota, and Tinian, and whether to zero out the 29 lawmakers’ individual operational account and the leadership account, among other things.

If the conferees reach a middle ground on the main differences between the House and Senate budget bills, a draft conference budget bill could be drafted by the end of the day, said Sen. Jovita Taimanao (Ind-Rota).

If so, this will be ahead of the Sept. 21 target set in the seven-point ground rules to come up with a draft budget bill.

The conferees also set a Sept. 23 deadline for a budget bill to be passed.

“The word ‘shutdown’ is not in our vocabulary,” Taimanao told Saipan Tribune last night.

If the House and Senate fail to pass a budget that’s also acceptable to the administration before Oct. 1, then the government will again partially shut down. There are only 10 days left before the new fiscal year begins.

Over 1,000 government employees will be temporarily out of job and other government services will not be made available until a budget law is signed.

Taimanao and Rep. Ray Basa (Cov-Saipan) led the meeting of the eight-member conference committee shortly before 3pm yesterday, after it was reset twice yesterday.

Besides agreeing on the ground rules, Taimanao, chairperson of the Senate Fiscal Affairs Committee, said the conferees also identified the differences between the two budget bills.

“We looked at the two versions. Members asked questions-where did the funds go, when accounts were zeroed out where did they go? Do we still want zero account for the individual members and the leadership of the House and Senate? These were the questions put on the table [Monday]. We will answer them Tuesday,” Taimanao said.

The conferees listed seven ground rules, including having Basa and Taimanao as chairs of the respective chambers to be the sole spokespersons and not to discuss the budget with the media during deliberations.

The conferees’ series of meetings is closed to the media and the public.

With conferees meeting until late yesterday afternoon, government employees and the Fitial administration were hoping for the best-that the committee will break the budget deadlock to prevent a shutdown.

Press secretary Angel Demapan said this week “will pretty much set the tone” of the budget process, whether the deadlock could be resolved.

“Next week is pretty much the homestretch. Next week we know pretty much the degree of likelihood of a shutdown or unlikelihood of a shutdown,” he said.

The House passed a budget bill that it says will allow the Public School System and the Northern Marianas College to meet their maintenance-of-efforts requirements set by the federal government. But the Senate’s substitute budget bill version gave PSS and NMC some $3 million more than the House gave.

Of that added amount, some $2 million came from cuts in the Legislature and the Executive Branch’s budget, as proposed by the Senate. Other amount came from a new source of funding related to a federally mandated fee that employers have to pay for every foreign worker hired. Senators also gave additional funding to Rota and Tinian programs and agencies.