Previous Story
Attao welcomes more work on grant oversight
Rep. Blas Jonathan Attao (Ind-Saipan) says he is open on working on new legislation to address Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ Cabinet’s concerns about a new law to establish a grant clearinghouse of sorts in the CNMI to manage and oversee grants
Attao was speaking to the concerns with the additional “red tape” these departments or line item agencies managing their owns grants have with a new general grants office.
“The concerns are valid and therefore we have the law in place and we can work on fixing those discrepancies that might actually affect the agency,” Attao told Saipan Tribune.
“If not, we’ll go with it,” he added. “The grants office has been in existence and now we just gave them a little bit of teeth and we will work collaboratively with the Office of Grants Management and all the entities that are grant receivers.
“As soon as those concerns are put in writing, we will work on getting the legislation out there,” he said. “We want to work collaborative with the grant agencies and the line-item agencies on what there are concerns are, so we can fix the bill one time, fix the existing the bill properly in one legislation and go from there.”
Public Law 19-49 officially creates a CNMI Office of Grants Management under the governor’s office meant to “seize all federal grant funding opportunities” and “take advantage of all federal funds the CNMI is eligible for,” and was signed by Torres last month.
