‘SEDC finding on land lease extension without merit’

Minority bloc lawmakers in the House of Representatives dismissed as “without basis and unsubstantiated” a business council’s finding that land lease restrictions in the CNMI serves as “significant disincentives and deterrents to investment.”

“The House minority members find wanting, and is troubled by the unsubstantiated findings and conclusory assertions of SEDC [Strategic Economic Development Council],” said the bloc in a report recently submitted to the House leadership.

It said that SEDC, a task force created during the term of former Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio to aggressively pursue the expansion of the local economy, appears to have not made any meaningful review in terms of data and hard facts as to the real reasons that caused the decline in the CNMI economy.

SEDC, the minority said, failed to look at the rationale of the restrictions as embodied in Article 12 of the CNMI Constitution.

“It simply concluded that Article 12 is the cause of the lack of foreign investments in the Commonwealth. It blithely ignored the adverse effects of the Asian economic crisis [and] the ripple effect of the Korean airline crash on Guam in 1997…,” it said.

The minority members are opposing the passage of Senate Legislative Initiative 14-3, which seeks to extend land leases of private land from 55 years to 75 years; and House Legislative Initiative 14-10, which seeks to extend public land leases from 25 years to 50 years.

The minority said that the existing restrictions on land ownership—25 to 55 years—is “a very reasonable length of time to recoup one’s investment.” Besides, it said that parties could always negotiate another lease term before the original term expires.

The bloc said the government cannot afford to give out such a long-term leases, as proposed to private individuals and investors, particularly in light of the diminishing amount of Commonwealth public lands.

“The population of the CNMI is growing at a very fast pace…As we grow, the need for lands…will increase, not diminish. We should not lease out public lands on a long-term basis, only to find out 20 to 30 years from now that we need to buy back the lands leased to investors,” the minority said.

The initiatives were introduced separately by Sen. Diego Songao and Rep. Martin Ada.