Senate passes House bill on retirees’ bonuses, with edits

Senate president Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian) presides over the Senate’s special session yesterday in the Senate chamber of the Legislature on Capital Hill. (Kimberly B. Esmores)

The Senate unanimously passed yesterday House Bill 22-95 in the form of Senate substitute that essentially amends where the money to fund the retiree bonuses would come from.

During the Senate’s first special session yesterday, the full body adopted the floor amendments to H.B. 22-95, as presented by Senate floor leader Vinnie Sablan (R-Saipan). These amendments later became Senate Substitute 1, which was unanimously passed by all nine members of the Senate.

The Senate substitute will now make its way back to the House of Representatives for adoption before it is given to Gov. Ralph DLG Torres for his final signature.

Sablan hopes the House will agree with the Senate substitute so that CNMI retirees can finally get their bonuses, which Torres had promised them before December last year.

“I’m hoping that when the House receives the Senate substitute, we can once and for all agree and get the retirees their well-deserved bonuses so that we can move on with a lot of the other legislative businesses that we have,” he said.

According to Sablan, the most important amendment made was the re-appropriation of funding from general fund personnel lapses instead of reprogramming funds from select government units: the Marianas Visitors Authority, Department of Finance, and the Office of the Governor.

“The Legislature finds that re-appropriating identified general fund personnel lapses is the more responsible approach to funding the retirees bonus, instead of arbitrarily selecting business units within Public Law 22-95, without considering the adverse consequences to the departments affected by such arbitrary re-appropriation,” Sablan said.

Other amendments include the distribution of the retirement bonuses, and who holds the expenditure authority.

“The retirees’ bonuses shall be distributed equally to all Settlement Class members and CNMI fund members receiving an annuity,” Sablan said.

“For programs and activities not specifically mentioned, the expenditure authority shall be the secretary of Finance,” he added.

In an interview with Sablan following the session, he said the amendments made was a collaborative effort among his office, Finance Secretary David Atalig, and Senate finance specialist Dave Demapan.

He explained that the process of identifying an alternate source of funding was a tedious one and took several days to complete. However, now that it has been done, he hopes it’s something the House and the Senate can agree on.

“What we did was we had Dave Demapan work with the secretary of Finance to look at the budget and identify where we can find funds for the retirees’ bonus. It was then that the secretary of Finance did find some lapsed funding under personnel. It was a very tedious process for Dave and the secretary of Finance team to really go in and look at the schedule on the budget and see where those lapsed fundings were. But they did find enough to cover the $2.6 million for the retirees’ bonus,” he said.