Senate’s attempt to override CIP bill fails

Senate members tried but failed to override the governor’s veto on a bill moving the expenditure authority over federal funds from the Executive Branch to the Legislature.

The Senate, which held its session on Rota yesterday, discussed the override of House Bill 14-144 for an hour but, due to an apparent lack of support from majority members, its voting was deferred.

Senate minority leader Pete P. Reyes pushed for the override, with Tinian senator Joseph M. Mendiola backing him up.

On Tuesday, 12 members of the House of Representatives voted to reverse the governor’s veto on the measure over a week ago.

House Bill 14-144 seeks to require legislative approval prior to the use of federal funds. The Legislature used to exercise this authority over 702 funding but it stopped since February last year when the federal government signed a new 702 CIP agreement with the CNMI, taking away the local matching requirement for capital improvement projects.

The Governor’s Office said that the new agreement “unambiguously provides that the CNMI Executive Branch is the grantee and spending authority for all federal funds to be used for CIPs.”

In an interview, Senate majority leader Paul Manglona said most members wanted more time to act on the bill.

“A lot of issues have arisen since we first passed it. Other members raised issues and so is the Governor’s Office. We need to hold back and do what is reasonable and what is right. We can’t just override it just for the sake of overriding the governor’s veto. We need to bring in legal counsels and different affected agencies and address this issue reasonably,” he said.

Manglona, a political ally of the governor, said the issue can be tackled by putting politics aside.

“It’s political time. It’s politics time in the CNMI but if we want to do an override similar to what the House did, we have to do it right. The way it was addressed, it’s very unclear,” he said.

For instance, he said that when the bill was tackled in the House, it did not include federal highway funding but only the 702 CIP funding and Compact Impact funds.

“The House only wanted those two. What happened to other federal grants say, for Public School System, Ports Authority, etc? So obviously, there are different legal opinions here. So why rush it? Is it just to override the governor because it’s election time? In the past, we used to appropriate 702 funds. If it is what they [House lawmakers] want, I have no problem with that but other issues came up, which we have to address,” said Manglona.

In his veto message, Gov. Juan N. Babauta said that the bill, authored by Speaker Benigno R. Fitial “impermissibly encroaches upon the authority of the U.S. Congress to appropriate federal funds” as it amends the CNMI law related to the use of “federal grant funds” to require legislative approval on “state” level prior to the expenditure of such funds.

If passed into law, he said the bill would be rendered invalid, “pursuant to the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.”