Funding for pet projects uncertain • Local coffers show “zero balance” to accommodate requests

Hopes by lawmakers to finance various pet projects ahead of the midterm elections this November continue to dim as a meeting yesterday with administration officials on the status of previous CIP funds failed to yield clear picture of the amount still available for allocation.

House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Karl T. Reyes said they expect to receive a comprehensive financial report from all departments that were given money under the capital improvement projects nearly five years ago.

The report, however, must tally with the records being kept by the Department of Finance, which has spending authority on these funds, to make sure that it will not contradict those coming from other departments such as public works and Commonwealth Utilities Corporation.

“The reports from the departments and Finance should agree before they finalize it and give it to the legislature,” Reyes said in an interview after the meeting. They hope to receive it by the end of this month.

Yesterday’s meeting was an offshoot to a recent session of the House of Representatives in which members debated on the amount of balance remaining from a public law passed in 1994 appropriating more than $23 million in CIP funds for road, sewer and water projects.

The powerful Ways and Means Committee was instructed to check into availability of funds in an obvious attempt by legislators to push pet projects in their respective districts.

But the panel appears to be facing a tough task accommodating the requests as records from DPW, CUC and Finance have shown almost “zero balance,” according to a committee member.

There is still hope that they might squeeze in a few projects once the report is in, Reyes said. “We have to wait for all of these (records) before we can get (these projects) involved in the budget.”

Rep. Oscar M. Babauta, a member of the committee, added “there is some balance but we have to go back to… whatever public laws that appropriated these CIP’s.”

Barely six months before the November polls, legislators are scrambling for funds to pitch respective projects in precinct level which otherwise are not qualified to receive money under the new CIP master plan.

Although it has become a practice for elected officials to do so, political observers expect it to heat up this year due to the financial crisis besetting the CNMI government.

House members earlier have debated heatedly on a piece of legislation that seeks to re-appropriate more than $90,000 in unspent funds from the Oleai Waterline project into drainage and road paving plans in Precinct III.

Vice Speaker Jesus T. Attao, sponsor of the measure, claimed the money is still available based on the records obtained from CUC, which oversaw the completion of the project.

But others said there might be no balance left in the appropriation, citing reports from Finance officials, while there are some members who believe more than $1.3 million have yet been spent, based on the records from public works.