GOP can run, but it can’t hide

The administration refuses to admit that it failed to plan for what is now a power crisis. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have suspended the CUC board of directors or hide behind a failed attempt to replace the current executive director with an OIA recommended nominee.

Today, it plays the juvenile “blame game” as a diversionary tactic to hide its very failure to pay for the $18 million it owed CUC in utility bills. Taxpayers are paying for it, adversely affecting family pocketbooks, health, education and public safety. If you still disagree, whatever happened to planning to avert the deepening power crisis? Wasn’t this issue the very beast that both the administration and CUC board treated with a ten-foot pole in weekly Cabinet meetings? It did everything except “plan for” the eventuality of what is now, again, a power generation crisis.

Too, can someone explain whatever happened to the $20 million left behind by former executive director Tim Villagomez? Was this money used for power generation repair? Obviously not, given the rolling blackouts and the saddling of taxpayers with another layer of utility bills that was never a part of family obligation. Or was the money used to award contracts to the politically connected? It’s called accountability and someone must explain this to fuel surcharge-ridden taxpayers.

No matter the political spin on the fuel crisis, this administration had four years to do something about it. It failed to do so! Thus, time is no longer on its side for it allowed events to overwhelm the thoughtful planning process.

Recently, an ultra-liberal Republican proposed to have the poker industry pay for utility subsidies. This reckless and rapacious attitude speaks volume of local Republicans who subscribe to a famous Reagan admonishment of how government views the economy: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.” Nice try, lai! And thanks for confirming our fear that “government is not the solution; but the problem.”

You simply ignored those who imposed the fuel surcharge. Definitely, it wasn’t the taxpayers who now pay dearly for it, or the poker industry that had been taxed to death in recent years. Is this too complex a question to understand? And is passing the payment of $18 million to taxpayers a responsible thing to do? Eh, we have our own share of utility bills too, yeah?

The most egregious aspect of this adolescent attitude on taxes is the deafening message it sends to investors that their investments can easily be annihilated by vicious “political will.” This administration did it to Verizon, apparel industry, Japanese investments, and now the poker industry.

Now, we must navigate the treacherous waters of a woefully bleak economic future for these islands. Understandably, I’d be on the edge after weighing the adverse effects of my failed agenda mirrored against the crushing hardship my people would have to endure because I wasn’t up to the task to improving the lot of governance.

Congratulations for “Making It Happen!”

John S. DelRosario, Jr.
As Gonno