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Fund: Our budget won’t be touched
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Posted on Feb 06 2006
Citing its independence, NMI Retirement Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes said that the agency’s annual budget cannot be touched by the Executive Branch or the Legislature.
“Except for two programs, our budget is not appropriated by the Legislature, so they can’t touch that,” said Reyes in an interview.
The Fitial administration had called on all government agencies to cut their respective budgets so they could comply with the reduced annual government budget of $198 million.
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial recently announced that the revenue projection for fiscal year 2006 had been reduced from the $213 million continuing resolution to a “more realistic” estimate of $198.5 million.
Only five agencies would be spared from the budget reduction: the Public School System, Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and the departments of Public Health, Public Safety, and Corrections.
Reyes said that two programs operating under the Retirement Fund get minimal appropriation from the government. These are the Workers Compensation Commission, which gets a $90,000 annual appropriation, and the Group Health and Life Insurance Program, which employs about seven employees.
He said the WCC’s budget has never been adequate from the beginning, noting that in the last year or so, the office’s obligation to two government personnel who were involved in accidents had already reached $1 million.
The Retirement Fund, which is mandated to raise its assets to $1 billion in 2020, currently has only $534 million in total assets.
It employs over 10 personnel, excluding those from GHLI and WCC.
The administration recently said that aside from the budget cuts resulting from the lowered revenue estimate, government agencies would also face a pro-rated decrease in funding to ensure that the CUC gets the $24.4 million needed for fuel purchases for the remainder of the fiscal year or until Sept. 30, 2006.
In view of these cost-cutting measures, the Fitial administration said that it would be unable to implement within-grade increases and merit increases for government employees.
