Senate passes House’s anti-public corruption bill

Vicente Camacho

The Senate passed Friday a bill that seeks to address public corruption by expanding and clarifying the offense of official misconduct and establishing felony and misdemeanor punishments.

With all six senators present voting “yes,” House Bill 23-15, House Substitute 1, now goes to the governor’s desk for action.

Rep. Vicente C. Camacho (D-Saipan), who is the author of the legislation, stated in the bill that public officials must be held to a standard commensurate to the high esteem in which they are held.

Camacho said this legislation provides an expanded and clarified definition of official misconduct and assigns specific felony and misdemeanor punishments, depending on the type of underlying misconduct.

As the CNMI Supreme Court has noted, the Penal Code does not expressly define who is a “public official” for the offense of official misconduct, making it subject to some interpretation, he said.

The lawmaker said this bill also enhances the punishments associated with the crime of misconduct in public office by applying felony punished ranges to the most serious acts of misconduct and the loss of substantial amounts of public funds.

Camacho also pushed for the passage of the bill during the session’s public comments portion.

Office of the Attorney General chief solicitor Robert Glass Jr. said at the session the OAG supports this bill in its fight against corruption. “As you probably all very aware, we are in a battle against corruption and our office is trying to lead the charge,” Glass said.

He said that is one of the reasons why they established this new task force to fight corruption.

Chief public defender Douglas W. Hartig wrote a comment to the House of Representatives Judiciary and Governmental Operations Committee, opposing the bill in its original form, H. B. 23-15. Hartig said the bill should not be passed as it has several errors due to a cut-and-paste that went wrong. He noted that there are also substantive problems.

The House JGO Committee, chaired by Rep. Marissa R. Flores (Ind-Saipan), then proposed to amend H. B. 23-15 to better focus on Anti-Public Corruption laws. House Substitute 1 amended the offense of misconduct in public office and expanded the range of punishments to better reflect the types of misconduct.

The full House adopted the JGO Committee report and passed H. B. 23-15, in the form of House Substitute 1.