On CDA Legislation

An attempt to usurp the Commonwealth Development Authority’s fiduciary responsibility is, at best, ludicrous, and shortsighted at worst. The same can be said of legislation to repeal the educational tax credit law.

Both legislation depict adolescent tendency to hone policy instability that have done more harm than good for these islands in terms of luring lasting investments. It is a shallow and hollow approach to encouraging investments at a time when the NMI’s economic pillars have constantly been assaulted severely by external and internal influences.

For once in our lifetime, can we discuss issues on a deliberative basis to ensure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing? Can we part with our fully honed “shoot off the hip” tired old paradigms and make way for reasoned analysis? Take stock: despite our efforts on trade missions, there’s nothing up that alley except “expressions” of interest. We seem to have become amnesiac that the culprit is policy instability. Whatever happened to employing the learning curve?

The concerns of senators are sufficiently addressed in a system born and derived from pertinent statutes that established CDA two decades or so ago.

Indeed, it involves a process that all must endure. Too, CDA has walked the extra mile to help loan recipients deal with delinquent accounts. Property foreclosure is the last resort to settle non-paying clients. It comes with the territory one risks in obtaining a CDA loan! Why would friends and relatives be given special treatment while exempting good paying clients?

Where’s justice in this half-cocked legislation?

The NMI is riddled with a humongous deficit that piles up by the year, i.e., $77 million owed the retirement fund, $300 plus million in unfunded liability; cumulative administration deficit of over $100 million, $18 plus million owed CUC, to name a few. Given this financial scenario, would politicians salivating with their insatiable desire to spend beyond their means really earmark more money for schools the equivalence of what they are receiving today under the current law? Or is the reverse more likely to occur when every penny is divvied up for precinct pet projects? Leave the law alone for it ensures that recipients (students) are the direct beneficiaries of educational tax credits.

Finally, please take stock: It is this shallow and adolescent tendency of midstream boat shifting (promoting policy instability) that makes the NMI a laughingstock among substantive investors. Many have opted to go elsewhere rather than chance loss of lifetime investments here as a direct result of constant political interference.

John S. DelRosario, Jr.
Koblerville