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‘More heads to roll at Public Lands’
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Posted on Feb 24 2006
Acting Public Lands Secretary John Del Rosario will continue to implement workforce reduction within the former Marianas Public Lands Authority, saying the agency has “excess baggage.”
“Some will have to go. We don’t need that many people in the department,” said Del Rosario in yesterday’s press conference at the Governor’s Office.
Del Rosario took over the department’s top post effective Wednesday evening or immediately after the enactment of Public Law 15-2, which abolishes the MPLA.
There are some 64 people working at the former MPLA.
So far only three individuals have been sacked from the agency: commissioner Edward Deleon Guerrero and independent legal counsels Ray Quichocho and Antonio Atalig.
Atalig, as MPLA independent legal counsel, had not been public knowledge until this week when the new management disclosed that MPLA was to issue him a check worth over $19,000 in legal fees.
Meantime, Del Rosario said that agency employees’ salaries would have to be reduced to fit the Civil Service salary level.
As an autonomous agency, MPLA had the freedom to offer bigger salary packages to its employees.
For instance, MPLA had paid its commissioner $84,000; finance chief officer, $71,400; and several others earning above the salary cap.
MPLA’s in-house legal counsel Alan Lane receives $84,000 plus fringe benefits, while Quichocho received nearly $600,000 in two years.
“We will have to be under this law [salary cap]. …I made this very, very clear. Everybody has to follow the law,” said Del Rosario.
The law puts the cap at $54,000 a year, he cited.
Meantime, sources said that Lane, who keeps his post at the department, is believed to be getting an exemption from the salary cap owing to the nature of his profession.
