18 govt. employees exceed salary cap

There are employees in this administration and the previous administration who have not complied with all the requirements under the Compensation Adjustment Act and Public Law 11-41 to exceed set salary caps.

This was determined by the Office of the Public Auditor in a 16-page report it released yesterday, which essentially echoes the previous determination made by the House of Representatives on the issue.

That determination says that, while many employees’ salaries have been certified to the Legislature as required under the law, 18 of the employees who were appointed and contracted from January 2002 to the present appear not to have been approved yet through the legislative sanctioning process.

“Employees who are currently being compensated above salary caps, without proper certification and sanction, do not have proper approval to receive their elevated salaries and are therefore being improperly paid the amount that exceeds the cap,” according to the OPA report.

Based on their review of existing status and regulations on personnel matters, Public Auditor Michael S. Sablan said that granting salaries to employees beyond the salary cap requires two steps: certification and legislative sanction.

Under l CMC §8248(b), which applies to technical personnel such as doctors, engineers and architects, the certification requirement requires simple notification to the Legislature and Civil Service Commission.

All other employees who exceed the cap fall under the jurisdiction of 1 CMC §8250(c), which requires certification to the Legislature and CSC of the diligent effort to recruit.

The report stressed that, in both the previous Tenorio administration and the present Babauta administration, no certification to exceed the salary ceilings has been submitted for legislative sanctioning.

The OPA identified 18 personnel in the current administration who exceed the salary cap, of which 10 are not sanctioned or certified, while of the eight who were certified, only one was done properly. “It has to be noted that seven of the employees who exceed the salary cap are holdovers from the prior administration,” the report said.

The OPA identified 14 employees who exceeded the salary cap in the prior administration. Of this number, none were sanctioned but the OPA said that, in the case of seven employees, it was uncertain if they needed to undergo legislative sanction.

Under the Babauta administration, the employees identified to exceed salary cap include one whose salary includes a 20-percent differential, which causes it to exceed statutory cap (DPS Commissioner Edward C. Camacho).

Majority are those whose certification letters that are deficient because they fail to certify that a diligent effort was made to recruit a professionally or technically qualified person willing to accept the salary within the caps (Executive Secretary Celina Babauta, Senior Policy Adviser Robert Schwalbach, Special Assistant Francisco I. Taitano, DEQ Director Juan I. Castro, and DPS Deputy Commissioners Santiago F. Tudela and Franklin R. Babauta).

One has a letter justifying the need for employment but lacking language regarding recruitment efforts (Kimberly C. Conner), while the rest are those with employments that have not been sanctioned yet by the Legislature (Tracy Towai, Rudolfo M. Pua, Joseph Rosario, Pedro Untalan, Franz Reksid, Joaquin Taitano, Vanessa Ince, Adriano C. Brenn and Robert Schrack).

The report also identified 45 doctors at the Commonwealth Health Center, including Health Secretary James U. Hofschneider, whose salaries exceed the salary cap but have not obtained legislative sanction. There were also four architects and engineers identified to have the same problem.

Sablan said the OPA consulted several agencies in conducting the review, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Attorney General’s Office, the Governor’s Office and the Law Revision Commission.

He pointed out, though, that the compilation of information presented in his office’s report was not conducted in accordance with government auditing standards issued by the U.S. Comptroller General and should not be considered an audit.

At the same time, the report does not include employees at the Legislature, Judiciary, the Washington Representative’s Office and autonomous agencies.