CNMI hopes to get add’l funds for Compact-Impact

The Commonwealth is eyeing the possibility of launching a series of discussion with the Office of the Insular Affairs to secure additional federal reimbursement for the expenses incurred by the CNMI in hosting citizens of the Freely Associated States.

Government officials are now preparing a plan of action that would entice the US government to allocate more funding to the CNMI, which has incurred over $100 million in total costs since the implementation of the Compacts of Free Association.

The Commonwealth government wants a bigger Compact-Impact appropriation for the next financial year, considering the meager $500,000 allotment set aside by the administration of President George W. Bush for the CNMI in his Fiscal Year 2002 budget proposal.

The United States owes the CNMI government about $120 million in total funds for the reimbursement of the Compacts of Free Association’s fiscal impacts to Commonwealth coffers from 1986 to 1999.

The commerce department, which was tasked to look into the financial impact of hosting residents of the Freely Associated States in the Northern Marianas, revealed the Compacts cost the CNMI government $12 million in Fiscal Year 1999 alone.

A fiscal impact study conducted by the Department of Commerce disclosed migration of residents of Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia to the CNMI restrained Commonwealth coffers by another $12 million in FY1999.

Government estimates indicated there are more than 3,000 FSM, Marshalls and Palau citizens residing in the Northern Marianas, who represent about four percent of the CNMI’s overall population count of 69,000 in 1999.

Of the estimated $80 million-$108 million Compact Impact between 1986 and 1998, the federal government has reimbursed the CNMI government with measly $3.8 million in the form of grants released in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 2000.

The CNMI had been billing the United States government for the Compact-Impact reimbursements since the 1980’s but nothing has been finalized so far, and that the figure has already grown bigger.

This, even as the US Congress openly recognized that the federal government should reimburse the money spent by the CNMI in accommodating migrants from the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau.

Under the Compact of the Free Association, residents from Pohnpei, Yap, Chuuk, Palau and Marshall Islands can migrate to US island-territories like Guam and the CNMI, as well as to the State of Hawaii without restrictions.

The agreement guarantees the provision of education, medical and other state benefits to the migrating Micronesians which will be shouldered by the local governments and will, in turn, reimbursed by the United States through Congressional appropriations.