‘Benavente not getting a penny more’

The Marianas Visitors Authority board said that it will pay outgoing MVA managing Vicky I. Benavente based on her contract which expires in June next year.

MVA board chair David M. Sablan said that, following a consultation with the agency’s legal counsel, Eric Smith, the board decided “to honor [Benavente’s] contract.”

“The contract is binding and therefore we have to buy the remaining time of the contract. We have to,” said Sablan in an interview yesterday.

During its board meeting Thursday last week, the board unanimously voted to terminate the contract of Benavente effective Jan. 13, 2006.

Sablan said yesterday that the board’s decision was “to take away all the agony” Benavente has felt over the last month or since the electoral defeat of the Babauta-Benavente team in the Nov. 5 general elections.

Benavente is the wife of Lt. Gov. Diego T. Benavente.

Sablan disclosed that the MVA managing director has been getting prank calls asking her to leave her post immediately.

“This will take away all the agony that she’s been put through over the last month. A lot of people have been calling in asking when is she leaving. ‘You’re not wanted there anymore,’ blistering calls. I don’t know who they are and maybe we should not even pay attention but when you sit there—and she recently lost the election—and you get all these prank calls, won’t you quit?” asked Sablan.

He said that when he learned of it, he brought it to the entire board for discussion.

He said the board did not let her tender resignation because she has a contract to fulfill.

Besides, the board is satisfied with Benavente’s performance.

He said it is “for humanitarian reason” that the board made its decision, coupled with its desire to give the new constituted board under the new administration a free hand to hire its own managing director.

“She has to fulfill her contract until June but I felt, for humanitarian reason, and coupled with the need to accord the new administration [freedom]…, I have decided to bring this matter before the board, and the board agreed with me,” he said.

He further said, “it’s not really up to her to tender a resignation.”

“She has a contract to fulfill. She probably feels that she’d go through the agony or finish her contract but again, I want to reiterate the fact that she’s not an ordinary lady. She’s the wife of the lieutenant governor and basically, that’s why she’s receiving all these prank calls and harassments. In order to end this, the board decided that we might as well terminate her and pay her off so she could move on,” said Sablan.

The chairman said that by terminating Benavente, she is not getting more than what her contract provides.

“How can we pay more than her contract? She will not be getting more. She’s entitled only to what is coming to her under her contract. And not a penny more,” said the board official.

In a separate interview, Smith said that what the law says is that the managing director serves at the pleasure of the board, not that she needs to tender a resignation.

“The law says that she serves at the pleasure of the board so the board can terminate her if it wants to without cause. She can be terminated. But there is no law that says she has to submit a courtesy resignation. Some people feel that that’s what they should do but that’s their own belief of what the political process is,” said the legal counsel.

Benavente officially took over the position in June 2004, replacing Jonas Ogren.

She served as deputy managing director from 1998 until her appointment as head of MVA last year.

Benavente started as a management intern and marketing assistant under then Marianas Visitors Bureau in 1988.