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Gov’t: $32M saved from hiring freeze
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Posted on Mar 18 1999
The government has saved approximately $32 million in personnel expenses from over 900 full-time positions that have been left unfilled since last year.
The savings brought down government expenditures for salaries and benefits to less than 60 percent of the total budget earmarked for personnel expenses under the Fiscal 1999 spending limit of $210 million.
From 4,991 FTE positions to be funded by general funds, there are now approximately 4,000 employees under government payroll. The figures do not include workers in autonomous agencies.
Based on the appropriation level for the current fiscal year, the financially-troubled government spends $32,000 in salaries and benefits for every full-time employee.
According to Michael S. Sablan, Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio’s special advisor on budget and finance, overall the administration has reduced annual spending level 20.22 percent from $262 million in 1997 to $209 million.
“Because of our financial situation and austerity measures, we have left over 900 positions unfilled. A lot of our savings came from the transfer of employees and from consolidation of functions in order to avoid hiring,” Sablan said in an interview.
But Sablan explained most the vacant positions were non-essentials and that job cutbacks did not cover public safety, health and enforcement.
The reduction in personnel is also in line with Tenorio’s policy to streamline the bureaucracy, which has been left to balloon by past administrations and made the government the single biggest employer in the Northern Marianas.
In the past, some 75 percent of the yearly spending package was spent to cover salaries and benefits of government personnel alone.
And due to declining revenue collections as a result of economic slump, the island government has embarked on a wide-ranging cost-cutting steps that include freeze on hiring and reduction in overtime, among others.
