OIA must reinvent meddlesome approach

The Issue: The new spirit of cooperation being sought by both sides–OIA and CNMI–is a good beginning going beyond disagreements.

Our View: It’s a positive note that should have been diligently treaded by OIA since 1993 when it decided to trash partnership altogether.

It is refreshing to hear the new OIA helmsman Ferdinand (Danny) Aranza taking the lead to rebuild a broken bridge once used by both sides of the Pacific to bring issues of mutual interest under discussion.

It is especially refreshing that OIA will focus its attention on economic issues to assist the CNMI–what has and continues to be its fiduciary responsibility–attain not only a higher standard of living but a progressive standard of living. However the Clinton administration may be lame duck at this juncture, Aranza is tasked to demonstrate to this group of US Citizens that the “economic good times” doesn’t “leave anybody behind”, CNMI included.

Equally important in rebuilding this partnership is the ability of the Clinton administration to exercise the equal application of federal policy to any and all insular areas. In other words, it can’t play favorite by granting American Samoa an industry wage yet take the punitive attitude to do otherwise with the CNMI. Both places have the service and manufacturing industries to strengthen and refine in its dedicated efforts to improve locally generated revenues.

Here at home, local leadership must equally be proactive in the enforcement of laws, an area that definitely leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, we seem to have neglected addressing and resolving qualitative issues that affect our people since the bubble years of the local economy. We never prepared for that rainy day and that rainy day has descended on these isles since three years ago. Revenue has plummeted from a projected $246 million to $210 million for the new fiscal year and still sliding further south.

It is dizzying how we’ve allowed–with our grand sense of mañana–some 2000-plus tourist related businesses to shut their doors permanently. We had the agility to tax them to death with umpteen number of strangling regulations and crumble to pieces in our own fragility when local revenue generation took a major slide into the thirty percentile in the tourism industry.

The uncertainties and instability of the CNMI as an investment venue so planted in the minds of prospective investors revolving around OIA’s federal takeover bid have definitely derailed any decency in encouraging last investments. Local government must buckle down to assisting midsize and small businesses with economic stimulus plans in addition to addressing and resolving qualitative issues of the people it promises to render brighter tomorrows under its tutorship. This is the time to do it. Si Yuus Maase`!