In defense of Marianas-Hawaii Liaison Office

Although I certainly agree that the size of the Commonwealth government has to be reduced significantly due to our limited revenues and ever-increasing debts, I wish to take issue with those who are of the notion that the Marianas-Hawaii Liaison Office (MHLO) is a virtually useless and needless office.

As many of you know, I was the Liaison Officer under the previous administration from February 2005 through January this year. During such time, I was kept busy with critical issues that plagued the office almost on a daily basis. And if critical issues were not enough, I personally had to run to the Honolulu airport to settle trivial matters with airport officials concerning Referral passengers’ dilemmas, parking restrictions, etc., due in large part to the poor communication skills of most of its drivers. And this I fault the “pick or pan” hiring practices of our government, with “pan” meaning “dump him there and let him sink or swim” regardless of qualifications.

Reports of past incidents of abuse of government time, incompetence, rudeness, and outright laziness have also been made; I believe those employees have been weeded out. Previously, the office was used as a dumping ground for burnt-out or floundering students whose parents were politically connected or political pay-offs with “rewards of paradise,” whether they qualify or not. During my administration, I made certain that such employees would either undergo a drastic transformation for the better, becoming assets to the office, or be dismissed. The former governor and lieutenant governor were very receptive to the conditions I laid before accepting the job, one of which was that I was not going to be running a daycare center or catering to paycheck collectors.

As I had previously made known in my earlier letters to the editor, MHLO is an office which, I am confident to say, is paralleled by no other within the CNMI government in terms of its scope of responsibilities, demands on time, responsiveness, and skills in diplomacy. Neither I nor any of the staffers under my supervision sat idly without a cause or care for every moment we were physically in or away from the office. Many times, the employees had to work beyond their defined duties and responsibilities. I must say that the MHLO staff is the most dedicated, diligent, and compassionate civil servants I have seen from our islands.

Presently, the medical referral section in the MHLO is comprised of five employees hired under the Department of Health, all of whom are overwhelmed with medical referral matters, and cannot be stretched to deal with issues handled by the Liaison staffers. Under the MHLO account, there is one Administrative Officer in addition to three Medical Referral Assistants who are regularly dispatched to transport patients and their escorts. The annual budget for Medical Referral is over $1 million dollars, while the MHLO is allocated $200,000. In addition, the MHLO is responsible for ALL fiscal matters not only in the state of Hawaii but in the mainland West Coast. The Liaison Officer is THE sole custodian of these monies, which requires one to exercise frugality and discipline as drawdowns can easily be made for any request.

The Office of the Public Auditor has identified abuses prior to my appointment and I personally believe that most of them were done out of pressure to appease “constituents” in the form of political subsistence of patients and escorts upon arrival, at every Wednesday, and at departure. By eliminating such “hand to mouth” virtual spoon-feeding, it would do away with the need to have a fiscal section within the office. Perhaps a voucher/coupon system could be implemented on Saipan prior to departure for better control.

I must firmly state that the MHLO is absolutely vital to our people in terms of the types of crucial service many in our islands are not aware it provides. The state of Hawaii is “home away from home” for many of our college-bound students and just may be the first urbanized area many of them have seen, which can be extremely intimidating and overwhelming at the same time. I wanted to raise the profile of the office for the students to come and seek the assistance they need to situate themselves which, in turn, may alleviate the initial homesick blues many of them experience upon arriving in Honolulu.

I am also very aware of the number of students who return to the Commonwealth without completing their education and I know the MHLO, if fully utilized, can act as an arm of the Department of Education as well to reduce such discouraging statistics. And that in itself is my point, in that the office was underutilized and can be diversified in its functions. Furthermore, Hawaii is also the “gateway” into the U.S. mainland and the MHLO has been there to assist those seeking logistical help concerning their itinerary and passports. This service, however, has been abused and I did what I could to stop such abuses.

On the other side of the coin, many of our people have an ingrained sense of “entitlement” when demands are put on the MHLO staff to jump at their whim such as to be taken out shopping, demands for increase in their daily stipend, and abrasive treatment of hotel staffers who have nothing to do with the Medical Referral Program. This was an almost daily occurrence. These abuses came not only from patients, but their escorts as well, CNMI government officials, politicians and their spouses. The staffers were often threatened with the loss of their jobs, never knowing who they were subordinate to as everyone was always connected to SOMEone.

I write this only to inform those unaware of the actual operations of the MHLO and its mandated purpose. It has existed for more than 20 years. It can only run as good as it is administered, with the full support of the Executive Branch under which it exists. Any identifiable inadequacies and dysfunction of the office can only be corrected by a willing administrator who is committed to helping the CNMI taxpayer get his/her dollar’s worth and putting our best face forward as it also is an office whose functions are no different from that of an embassy.

I have sat back long enough to hear all that I can take from people who are absolutely clueless about the day-to-day fires that have to be put out, many of which are unnecessary due to the meddling of various agencies and government officials/politicians and their relatives. As the Commonwealth is unable to provide world-class healthcare to its citizens, those in government and its leadership owe them an office such as the MHLO to assist in alleviating their worries and anxieties associated with having to leave their home, their family, all that is familiar, atop a separate set of worries concerning their health. If these decision makers are able to reduce the size of government and focus our limited resources on health and education, we will not have the need to send our people off island for such services. So in the absence of such facilities for our patients and students, MHLO must be reorganized but not eliminated.

Be further mindful that eight hours was not enough to manage the office, negotiate with federal, state, and county administrators, liaise with insurance, hotel, hospital heads, and formulate policies to better improve and augment our services. I was fortunate to have been invited to attend a week’s seminar by the City of Honolulu who graciously paid for the $650 participation fee to better inform entities such as the MHLO of local issues affecting our operations in Hawaii, more specifically, the healthcare area. It is this type of relationship that affords us better knowledge of what is availed to our citizens and how to be more cost-effective, meanwhile fostering a community spirit which we should immerse ourselves in out of respect to our host state. There are just so many facets of this office that not many are aware of or understand. So I ask, before any decision is made in haste and before another statement is uttered out of ignorance, kindly refrain from doing so until you all have given this matter your due diligence to be better informed.

Jeannette Sablan
via e-mail